It seemed like hyperbole to suggest that Republicans could be so racist as to bring back Jim Crow – whether every Republican oligarch genuinely subscribes to scientific racism or other justifications of white supremacy is beside the point. What aligns the corporatist elite with the cross burning rednecks who slap confederate flags on their pickup trucks is the fact that the oligarchs need some means of identifying who their voters are and who they aren’t, and historically, the one tried and true method of that is to stoke racial animus. There is really no other way for Republicans to win elections. They have to be the party of racism.
Jim Crow starts with taking away the vote, but it doesn’t end there. Just like the oppression of women won’t start with bans on abortion – that’s just the start of a long process toward undoing much of the gains women have made the last 150 years. Being a “conservative” in America means being a supremacist and a chauvinist, and taking away the hard-earned rights and status of others.
. Didn’t they already bring it back? My assumption is that in effect that’s what the law they just passed does. Bring back Jim Crow. Admittedly Georgia has Stacey Abrams, and her skills may be enough to defeat the intent of this law in the next few election cycles. But the other purple states don’t have a Stacey Abrams, and such laws passed in places like AZ, FL, and TX will likely be successful. I wouldn’t be surprised if the R legislatures in PA and WI pull something like this off in those states as well, with an outside chance that even MI might go Jim Crow.
They pretty much did bring it back, which brings me back to what I said a while ago: fuck you, John Roberts. Don’t think that being the court’s ‘centrist’ or ‘moderate’ is going to save your shitty legacy on this one, you elitist white prick.
My assumption is that if it comes down to HR1 vs. the Georgia law, that the current SCOTUS would strike down HR1 and uphold the Georgia law. I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. But where would the SCOTUS votes come from? Roberts as the 4th? Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, or Coney-Barrett as a 5th? Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito both die from a heart attack? It all seems too unlikely.
Alaska, for all its sometimes backward ways, is a role model for voting. A senator, Mike Shower (R-Wasillamoron), has a bill pending that would set back voting in the state by decades. Per an article in the Alaska Daily News:
“SB 39 would make it far harder to register to vote, obtain an absentee ballot and (would) even steal power from local governments to improve their own voting systems – local governments that, it should be noted, subsidize state elections by providing critical staff and logistical support for free. Successful all-mail elections would be banned only to be replaced by far more cumbersome and expensive state templates (a model that nearly collapsed in the face of the pandemic because poll workers tend to be senior citizens).”
Senator Shower (R-Douchebagville), in his role as chair of the Senate committee overseeing the bill, also prevented public comment during hearings.
In addition, the governor has ordered the closure of DMV facilities in small coastal and interior towns. The DMV offices are hubs for voter registration in those towns.
I really hope the ACLU is ramping up operations country-wide to contest these laws.
Not necessarily. The filibuster could survive with changes. The filibuster isn’t absolute; there are several exceptions where it does not apply to certain kinds of laws. For example, reconciliations, although there’s a limit of three of those per year. So they could (and I think, most likely will) make another exception about laws having to do with voting rights.
As far as the Supreme Court ruling it unconstitutional: they’d really have to bend themselves into pretzels to rule that way. Not saying they couldn’t, but the Constitution clearly gives Congress the power to regulate federal elections.
One thing I think is important to note is that as much as they try to act like they’re above it, SCOTUS justices do a lot of political maneuvering. They probably wouldn’t entirely strike down HR1 immediately while the Democrats control congress and the presidency, because court packing could possibly come into play. I definitely think Kavanaugh would be willing to be the 5th vote to at least keep part of it.
What I think is more likely is that the SCOTUS waits until there’s a divided government and then neuters it.
My take is that SCOTUS justices try to perpetuate the notion that they’re apolitical so that people don’t lose faith in the institution, lest they create a dynamic in which people are okay with overt executive meddling or defying the Court and its rulings. Some justices - and Roberts might be one - are comfortable being ideologues up to the point where their ideology has visible adverse consequences. I wonder if Roberts would have ruled the way he did on voting rights if he had foreseen the extremes to which Republicans would be willing to go to subvert democracy. It’s entirely possible that he wouldn’t change his mind if presented with similar opportunities in the future - I don’t know.
This presentation from Sheldon Whitehouse during the Barrett confirmation completely changed my perspective on that. The level of coordination between conservative/business groups and the entire court system is ridiculous. And while the courts do seem to put a lot of effort into giving arguments that pass the red face test for some hot-button issues like abortion and gay rights, there are some areas (including election integrity) where there is obvious partisan motive and the SCOTUS very consistently sides with conservatives. We can only hope that voting rights is a bigger issue in the public eye now than it was in 2013 because I really don’t think Roberts regrets any aspect of that decision other than the optics.
I can only hope that this will motivate the hell out of more of those voters who have been deliberately targeted for being blocked at the polls. The suburbs do seem to have changed a lot over the last few election cycles, but I wonder how much of that change was a revulsion to Trump and his over-the-top antics, and if this is a situation in which “a more capable” or “smarter” version of him could reverse the trend.
It all pisses me off, especially in former Jim Crow states. Where there has not been proven voter fraud, I cannot understand why registering and voting should now be made more difficult, and I cannot reasonably explain it as being driven by anything other than naked political self-interest and a concerted GOP goal of voter suppression.
Both trumpy and Mitch have said right out loud that if voting were easily accessible to all who are eligible no Republican would ever get elected again. I’m not going to cite this because it’s been in lots of places on this board and elsewhere.
Hell, they’re not even pretending anymore that voter suppression has any other goal than to stop Democrats from getting elected.
In addition to pissing off black voters, Pubbies may also entrenching the opposition of another marginalized (to a degree) group of voters – the yoots. If you are an impressionable young voter in the birth of forming your world views, voting rights is an issue where the two major parties demonstrate clear differences in values. And I think “making voting easier” versus “making voting more difficult” is a decision that young folks interested in fair governance will decide towards the former.
So this could be a strategical error by the right as much as it is a moral failure.
Italics mine. There’s a very large assumption there.
Plenty of youth attended Trump rallies, and plenty more grow up arch “conservative” = racist reactionary in the parts of the country where this stuff is going on.
As Dirty Harry almost said:
Nuthin’ wrong with votin’. As long as only the right people get to vote.
Yeah, but the young are also more amenable to change.
I may have attended a Trump rally in my late teens or early twenties. I did vote for Dole in 1996. I strongly considered voting for Bush in 2000, but went third party instead.
It was the actions of the Republican party, not the message of the Democratic, that got me to realize what a bad path I was on, and to change sides.
The issue with young voters is that this may actually succeed. Young voters tend to be less motivated. Even liberal leaning young people may get the message that rather than fighting like hell for their right to vote, that it might be easier to take the path of less resistance and just not show up.
Still, Biden won the overall Zoomer vote by almost 30 points. Trump won white yoots by a narrow majority but that generation is 50% minority.
But Gen Z is so far the most politically engaged generation to come along in decades. Yootful voters turned out at about a 55% clip this past November, one of the highest ever recorded. They believe that government should be a force for making peoples’ lives better and they believe that their vote mattered in 2020 (they were right). I don’t believe they will discourage easily and furthermore, I think that they will combine with the Millennials to become the dominant voting bloc for decades.
The white percentage of the electorate slips 2-3 points with each presidential election. It’s already down to 67%. If Republicans can’t tailor a winning message for young minority voters, they are fucking toast in the future.
Believe me, I sure hope you’re right. I’ve just been watching the youth vote swell & fade many times over the years. And heard “The Rs are demographic toast by the next election” almost as long as I’ve been a voter. And I’m old enough to have voted for Carter.
Hey, I voted for George freakin’ McGovern! I’ve seen lots of ebbs and flows, too. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen demographic phenomena like the Millennials and Zoomers. I really think they’re different, maybe because they’re starting at a higher level of awareness than generations before them. And they’re only 50% Anglo, which counts for much in our peculiar nation.
. Didn’t they already bring it back? My assumption is that in effect that’s what the law they just passed does. Bring back Jim Crow. Admittedly Georgia has Stacey Abrams, and her skills may be enough to defeat the intent of this law in the next few election cycles. But the other purple states don’t have a Stacey Abrams, and such laws passed in places like AZ, FL, and TX will likely be successful. I wouldn’t be surprised if the R legislatures in PA and WI pull something like this off in those states as well, with an outside chance that even MI might go Jim Crow.