Tuesday’s Morning Joe featured a segment lambasting the Tennessee legislature for – not being Democrats. The bizarre hit job covered The Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum’s piece asserting that the State of Tennessee could not be classified as a democracy, but instead was a fascist dictatorship. The reason for this? Well, because voters elected a Republican supermajority.
It turns out one party winning elections in a state where few people from the opposite party live was really just fascism.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski, quoting Applebaum, stated that
…to stay in office in a state where few people vote and districts are gerrymandered, Tennessee legislators need to appeal to only a tiny number of very dedicated, very partisan people. The competition for those votes can quite quickly turn into a competition for who can sound most radical.
She continued reading, comparing Tennessee to more conservative countries, while bizarrely adding in communist Venezuela:
As in Hungary or Poland or as in Venezuela, the experience of radicalism can make people more radical. Total control of a political system can make the victors not more magnanimous, but more frustrated, not least because they learn that total control still doesn't deliver what they think it should.
Brzezinski and Applebaum here showed their pure, unadulterated hatred for anyone who disagrees with them. First, there was the hypocrisy of demanding Republicans not have areas with a supermajority while neglecting the fact that Democrats controlled plenty of states with their own supermajorities.
Applebaum admitted in her piece, and to Brzezinski, that in Sumner County “there are no Democrats in Sumner county. They haven't won an election there in a couple of decades.”
So this imaginary fascist coup in Sumner County that ended democracy-how did it happen? Democrats just didn’t move there.
According to her, Republicans shouldn’t be allowed to live in such numbers where they might get enough votes to have a supermajority. But whose fault was that? Democrats like disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo literally told conservatives to leave New York because he didn’t like their values. So they went to Tennessee and other red states, only to be derided as fascists because they won elections.
She also attacked Christianity being part of the “constitutional Republican” platform- “a quasi-religious movement that believes it has God on its side and that its opponents herald the apocalypse.”
Continuing to suggest Tennessee was no longer a democracy, Applebaum cited as one of her reasons why Tennessee wasn’t a democracy the two black Democratic lawmakers who were expelled from the legislature for protesting for gun control on the floor.
What she left out was that they were disrupting official proceeding with a megaphone in order to protest for gun control after a far-left transgender terrorist shot up a Nashville Christian school in a gender ideology-motivated terror attack against Christians.
If liberals can’t help throwing fits about Republicans winning certain areas due to Democrats not living there, they should just start making an effort to challenge Republicans in those elections instead of demanding Republicans essentially stop existing.
MSNBC’s anti-democracy rant was sponsored by Liberty Mutual and Consumer Cellular. Their contact information is linked.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s Morning Joe
07/18/23
7:22 AM ET
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MIKA BRZEZINSKI: And on that, Anne Applebaum, in your latest article for The Atlantic, entitled "Is Tennessee a Democracy," you discuss what happens after one party wins everything but still wants more. And you write in part, quote, “to stay in office in a state where few people vote and districts are gerrymandered, Tennessee legislators need to appeal to only a tiny number of very dedicated, very partisan people. The competition for those votes can quite quickly turn into a competition for who can sound most radical.”
You continue, “there's another element. Call it the lesson of Sumner County, the place where Republicans won everything, control everything, and yet still feel aggrieved and victimized. As in Hungary or Poland or as in Venezuela, the experience of radicalism can make people more radical. Total control of a political system can make the victors not more magnanimous, but more frustrated, not least because they learn that total control still doesn't deliver what they think it should.
No county commission or state legislature can possibly meet the demands of a quasi-religious movement that believes it has God on its side and that its opponents herald the apocalypse. But that doesn't mean they give up. It just means they keep trying, using any tool available. Eventually, they arrive at the point described by Tom Lee, the lawyer for the Sumner county election commission, "It's not enough to get your majority and get your way, they have to make the minority lose their voice."
And Anne, if you could tell us more about the lesson of Sumner County and possibly how it can replicate or is replicating nationally.
ANNE APPLEBAUM: So, Sumner county, it feels almost unfair to pick on them, but it's a county in Tennessee that's controlled by not even by Republicans but by a group that calls itself constitutional Republicans. Because there are no Democrats in Sumner county. They haven't won an election there in a couple of decades. And what you see is the radicalization of those who are there. So the division is between constitutional Republicans and normal Republicans, who they call RINOs.
And there’s a constant attempt to show that this is a -- they're making a break with the past. They're firing the HR director. They're refusing to let the electoral commission move into new offices. These are all really tiny, small, local issues, but they're illustrative of what happens when you have one-party system, when you have a one-party state.
And of course, we all saw it in Tennessee on a bigger scale a few months ago when we saw the Tennessee legislature expel two black members who had protested on the floor of the legislature. And one of the reasons they did that was because they had been - their microphones had been cut off. They weren't being allowed to speak. There were big demonstrations outside in the run up to those events because of a mass shooting in Nashville. People wanted some kind of action. And on the floor, nothing was happening. It was as if there were no politics.
It was one of the effects of having a super majority, is that which the Republicans have in Tennessee. Is that they don't really have to listen to anybody. They don't have to listen to the public, they don't have to listen to the Democrats. They don't have to listen to political opponents because, they’re you know, they're there based on a tiny group of partisans who show up to vote.
And the lesson, again, is that when you have that kind of control, it doesn't make you nicer. It doesn't make you more magnanimous. You don't say, well, we control everything now. Let's let our opponents speak for a while.
The opposite is happening. It’s becoming more and more difficult for Democrats to be heard in the legislature and more broadly. And of course, you know, what happens there? I picked on Tennessee, but there are a number of other states that could have been, too, where you have almost the same phenomenon.
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