But I am slightly less pessimistic about the midterms than I was 6 months ago...

I think it is highly likely (more likely than not) that American democracy ends in 100 days, and if not in the midterms, then it is more likely than not it will end in 2024 with the presidential election and President DeSantis or Trump's second term...

We will see... there is a sliver of a chance we somehow thread the needle and avoid collapsing into a fascist authoritarian nightmare...

I am pretty much done with being optimistic that the American people will do the right thing.

There has been a rapid decline in rationality in our nation, and the GOP, Right wing media, have been the cause in large part. The American has always had an inclination to hold irrational beliefs even when the facts are in front of them- as Asimov said: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

But, in the past couple of decades, that cult has become militant in its defense of the lies that it worships... they have spun an alternative, counter-factual, reality to bolster their beliefs.

I very much feel like one of the survivors of a zombie plague- a large portion of the population has become mindless, unreasoning, dangerous and aggressive... but unlike the zombie movies you can't dispatch them with a shovel or a crowbar, and these zombies vote.

So yeah, MAYBE there is a chance we keep them from seizing power in 100 days, and MAYBE we avoid it in 2024... but I feel it is almost certain that by the end of this decade our democracy will be gone- replaced by an authoritarian, strongly white-nationalist, christo-fascist theocracy.