A chilling laboratory of authoritarianism I thought this piece by Don Moynihan was one of the best analyses I’ve seen of the attack on democracy we’re seeing in Wisconsin. It’s long but if you have time, read the whole thing. You’ll understand what’s happening in Wisconsin but also where the Republicans are headed nationally. This is who they are now: “DEMOCRACY IS A SYSTEM IN WHICH parties lose elections,” according to the political scientist Adam Przeworski. By that measure Wisconsin is not really a democracy. Sure, the Republican Party of Wisconsin routinely is defeated in statewide elections. Indeed, since 2018, they have lost fourteen of seventeen such races. But can they be said to really lose when they refuse to accept their defeat and instead use power accrued by undemocratic means to minimize or even reverse those losses? In this, Wisconsin was the pre-Trump canary in the coal mine, alerting us to the undemocratic depths to which the GOP would descend. The state’s Republicans then became bolder following Trump’s Big Lie example. Now they are threatening to impeach a newly elected justice on the state’s high court, Janet Protasiewicz, who has not heard a single case. Their rationale? That she had characterized the state’s election maps as “rigged.” Never mind that she’s right about Wisconsin’s highly gerrymandered districts; her election threatens their hold on power and they are growing desperate. IMAGINE YOU ARE A VOTER IN WISCONSIN. Let’s say you want Medicaid expansion, a broadly popular policy. Wisconsin is now only one of ten states that does not…