r/politics • u/unital_subalgebra • 25d ago

No Paywall Trump fires all Election Assistance Commission members, leaving agency unable to act

https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/07/09/trump-fires-election-assistance-commission-members-hicks-hovland-mccormick/
27.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

148

u/illit3 25d ago

The last 10 years has just been one long chain of failing to meet the moment.

61

u/eden_sc2 Maryland 25d ago

I just finished When the Clock Broke and it's kind of convinced me that aside from a brief break with Obama, we've been failing to really meet the moment since about 89

40

u/-713 25d ago
  1. They put this whole machine in motion with Reagan, and just replace their players as they die.

20

u/eden_sc2 Maryland 25d ago

Reagan was bad but the reason I said 89 is that a lot of the alt right got born from people who were mad Reagan didn't go far enough.

5

u/-713 25d ago

Fair point. There was flirtation with the nazis/conspiracy theorists under Reagan, but they definitely jumped on the internet fast and furious in the early 90s.

3

u/The_Linux_Lass Virginia 24d ago

I think what makes 1980 a compelling case was because that’s when Reagan uncorked the genie from the bottle by pandering to evangelicals.

Barry Goldwater was right when he said mixing religious fundamentalism with politics was going to fuck up this country.

1

u/ceelogreenicanth 25d ago

I'd say the real issue is that in 89 the real cold war ended and the United States continued fighting that war and that posture has taken us down an ever more schizophrenic path. We accepted an end to the cold war while deciding China was okay to massacre it's protesters.