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Democracy US-style ... November elections where Big Lie candidates abound ... Key states in the grip of Trump-nominated electoral officials ... Hundreds of new state laws to reshape the vote ... GOP plan for permanent minority government, with assistance from the Supreme Court ... Trouble in wait for Republicans' Pravda ... Roger Fitch's reports from our Washington bureau
President Biden has had a legislative victory, despite Democrats struggling with a small house majority and not-quite-majority senate. The upper house, in nominal Democrat control, has been held hostage by Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Republicans had come to rely on the two "Blue Dog" Democrats to obstruct Biden's legislative agenda, and were taken by surprise when the two voted for a reduced remnant of the key Democrat infrastructure bill, the optimistically-renamed Inflation Reduction Act.
There were liberal jokes that Manchin had shocked Republicans by revealing he's a Democrat, but the conservative Bulwark was all praise for Manchin's manoeuvres.
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The party pre-selections for this year's November elections are now largely complete in US states, and it's clear the paranoid fringe is becoming the party establishment in most Republican-controlled states, where Donald Trump's election-denying supporters have chosen the nuttiest, coup-supporting, election-liars among their party's appalling range of candidates - some of whom received covert Democrat assistance.
The Democrats' controversial gamble assumes that genuinely crazy "MAGA-loon" candidates will repel independent voters and be easier to defeat in November; Republicans meddle in Democrat primaries for opposite reasons, spending to defeat progressive opponents.
The tactic may be working for Democrats in deep-blue Maryland, where the craziest Republicans standing for governor and AG have won pre-selection, and it may work elsewhere, now that the contents of Donald Trump's safe have been revealed.
Already-tainted Republicans, like Wisconsin's Ron Johnson, perhaps the most detested US senator (after Ted Cruz) and an unashamed insurrectionist, could lose to a centre-left Democrat, Lt Governor Mandela Barnes, although Wisconsin remains emblematic of America's two-party decline.
There's a danger in newly-minted Republican cranks, e.g, in Pennsylvania, where the TV personality Dr Oz (Mehmet Oz) could win a senate seat.
Missouri's senate primary perplexed Trump cultists, as their hero couldn't decide which of two dreadful Erics to support: the disgraced former governor and wife-beater Eric Greitens, or the current AG, Eric Schmitt, who joined in frivolous and baseless lawsuits to overthrow the 2020 election - (Schmitt won).
A greater worry: the number of overtly partisan candidates for "secretaries of state", i.e, state election administrators. Big Lie candidates for such offices dominated this year's Republican primaries.
Using the "stolen elections" pretext, candidates for state election administrators obliquely promised to throw the November elections for Republicans, and many of these candidates won party pre-selection.
Alarmingly, Republicans in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania chose Big Lie candidates for offices that regulate or rule on elections, based on the hope they would conduct elections for the benefit of Republicans. These nominees will be well-placed to tamper with the presidential vote in 2024 if they win office this November.
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