This is the Tom Hartman program.

The back Tom Hartman here with you, American democracy is in worse shape than we thought.

Just take a look at the Republican Party.

Republicans control 23.

They have total control of 23 states now.

And they are embracing conspiracy theories and moving forward with legislation that

dismiss the idea of democracy and replace it with the idea of oligarchy essentially,

of single party rule, of rule by the rich.

And you combine that with six right wing cranks on the Supreme Court, put there by in several

cases what I consider to be illegitimate presidents and what you have is a recipe for

a disaster for the world's largest, most prominent and wealthiest and most powerful democracy.

And that is a crisis of democracy.

This crisis of democracy is really deep in this country right now.

It has seized the Republican Party.

It has seized the Republican base.

Now the good news is the Republican base seems to be shrinking.

There was a study just published today out of Maricopa County, out of Arizona, but looking

at the actual votes that were reported and what they found was about 75,000 people who

voted for Trump in 2016, voted in 2020, but they didn't vote for Trump.

They either voted for Biden or they voted down ticket for a whole bunch of Republicans

and they did not vote in the presidential race.

In other words, 75,000 roughly people in Arizona, Republicans in Arizona just decided enough.

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