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Frequently I will hear from TPM Readers who tell me that they fear and believe authoritarianism is on the rise both in the United States and abroad and, critically, that it is on the cusp of winning. This is an understandable fear and belief, and it may be right. But I do not think it is the most accurate assessment of the information before us. Rather than Team Democracy battling back against and defeating Team Authoritarianism, or vice versa, in a final confrontation or series of final confrontations, we’re seeing something different. We have a new model in which we no longer have parties of government of right and left but rather a civic democratic party and an authoritarian populist party. There’s a good chance they’ll be contesting elections for a while, even as the authoritarian populist party is trying in various ways to end them or radically change how free they are.

I’m not sure what can be done about West Virginia, a sad thing since it’s a state born in refusal to commit treason on behalf of the Confederacy, a good thing. In any case, the headline of this article is that the West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner is the state’s top elections officer. He’s now running for governor. And in a recent debate for the GOP gubernatorial nomination he said the 2020 election was stolen and … well, it was stolen by the CIA, folks.

But it gets worse.