The Republican slime are busy writing and passing very restrictive state laws making it more difficult for various people to vote, and making it easier for Republican Party officials or operatives to interfere with elections.

So, facts schmacts. It doesn't matter. If the Republicans can jerry-rig [aka, STEAL] elections, they have a better chance of winning. If they win, that is a fact that all the fact-checking in the world won't be able to correct.

We know what restrictive voting can do, because the southern state Democratic Parties had a monopoly on restrictive voting rules and regs for decades. By suppressing the black vote, they were able to dominate the US Congress and get very regressive votes passed. The southern lock on voting suppression was broken in the 1960s.

Republicans don't need to "steal" elections. The system already favors them and Biden won on quite thin margins. Without the shock of the pandemic, it seems unlikely that he would have won. These bills are restrictive but only on the margins, in the same way wide spread mail in ballots helped Democrats at the margins. That is, the only way these policy changes let Republicans win is that they are already quite close to winning anyhow. They wouldn't help them overcome large deficits, but when states are decided by 20,000 votes, the margins are crucial.

The Democrats went back to back running an incredibly unpopular candidate, and then a geriatric one who lacked the verbal mobility to navigate tough issues like showing support for police reform while condemning rioting and murder. I suppose the Biden campaign will go down in history as a success, but beating a candidate like Trump, with so many liabilities and a tanking economy, on razor thin margins doesn't seem like a huge success to me.

Despite a more intense focus on race, the Democrats failed to pick up support with minorities. Trump improved the Republicans showing with Hispanics. There is definitely something wrong with the messaging.

The Republicans can play to their base because it is large and has reliable turn out. The Democrats playing to their ideological stalwarts is playing to a much smaller group, mostly compressed in safe Democratic states. It's a garbage strategy and I see no signs it will change. Given the likelihood of a recession due to the massive corporate debt burden out there (an issue that could become catastrophic if even moderate inflation makes the real yields on the mountain of cov lite CLO garbage out there go negative), and the likelihood of Biden running again at 82, I would not be shocked if we have another Trump nightmare for four years.

I doubt Biden will run for a second term--just based on age.

There is more than the presidential vote at stake, and the Republicans have done a much better job at the state level of getting and keeping control of enough seats in legislatures to control redistricting, which is crucial to either party's long term strategy.

I agree; for the most part, presidential candidates--and other office seekers in some states--win or lose with slim margins. We have not had a major landslide election for president since Reagan in 1984 (525 Electoral votes to Walter Mondale's 13); Before that, Nixon's 520 Electoral votes to George McGovern's 17) and then Roosevelt's 523 Electoral votes to Alf Landon's 8 in 1936.

The Republicans and Democrats exchange control back and forth, and yet the Republic stands. Both parties have strong allegiance to our economic system. Both parties pursue similar policies in many areas. There are, of course, significant differences between the hard right of the Republican and hard left of the Democrat parties. The hard right Republicans, for instance, have strongly resisted New Deal programs like Social Security, Unemployment Compensation, Medicare, Medicaid, and single payer insurance. They haven't scuttled SS, UC, Medicare or Medicaid, but they have tried; and single payer insurance remains unachievable.

The hard right and hard left constitute a cohesive ideological POV, but they do not control very many seats in Congress.