For Republicans, 2020 Election is Political. Democrats Understand It is Existential.

It is clear — from the audacity of their actions, from the near-unanimity of their ranks — that the Republicans view the 2020 presidential election solely as political: that is, the absolute need, no matter the cost to institutions or norms, to retain governing power.

Their latest audacity and its cost? Ramming another conservative onto the Supreme Court (Amy Coney Barrett), at the cost of destroying the Court’s conservative-liberal balance, making it 6 to 3, and rewriting their own rules of blocking President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland. Audacity upon audacity, Republicans pronounce themselves shocked, shocked that Democrats, growing ever confident of winning both White House and Senate, should even consider “packing” the Court as they themselves are doing. Republicans can read polls as well as any pol, thus knowing a blue tsunami is heading their way, this particular audacity comes off as deeply cynical, a last “win” before their banishment to the political wilderness.

But Court-packing is only the latest Republican audacity. Others include: voter suppression, faux-dropoff boxes for ballots, gerrymandering (and cutting short the 2020 census to favor future gerrymandering). But most egregious: standing by a President, Donald J. Trump, who not only destroys the institutions and norms integral to American democracy since our inception, but takes us into territory where we never, ever should be: into strongman rule, autocracy. Nearly…