From its birth, America's democracy has been under attack -- from a number of directions, by different (usually relatively small) groups of people, with varying results, up to and including our Civil War and the January 6, 2021, insurection.
So it's useful to take its pulse from time to time to see how it is doing.
I have written about this in the book Columns of Democracy, numerous newspaper columns and blog posts. But I've just watched the report by Stephen Schmidt and now believe it to be one of the best analyses I've heard or read -- no screaming or wild claims, "just the facts, ma'am," as Dragnet's Joe Friday used to say. [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/just-the-facts/]
Schmidt played major roles in the Republican party for years. Schmidt was communications director of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the National Republican Congressional Committee, during President George W. Bush's administration he was a deputy assistant to the president and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2004, he was a member of the senior strategic planning group, led by White House adviser Karl Rove, that ran President George W. Bush's re-election campaign and oversaw the reelection "war room". He was the White House strategist responsible for the U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. He was campaign manager for the re-election campaign for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and headed up the day-to-day operations of the McCain presidential campaign. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt]
I don't lay this out to make the case that he's a dues-paying member of the Trump Cult. He's not. He was in on the creation of The Lincoln Project -- an organization he has now left. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lincoln_Project] He has also left the Republican Party.
Here's the video. Watch it and judge for yourself:
Amanpour and Company, PBS, "Lincoln Project’s Steve Schmidt “There’s a Battle for Control of MAGA Empire," posted Sept. 15, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqlwfRTHRqg
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