Voter suppression isn't the Democratic problem.
Gerrymandering and vote nullification are the problems.
Democrats lost their credibility as advocates for fair elections when they opposed voter ID rules.
It is the 21st century. People are accustomed to showing their IDs to get onto an airplane or into a big city office building or to cash a check. Eighty percent of Americans support requiring voter IDs. Click: Monmouth poll Democrats fuel Republican suspicion about the 2020 election when they speak out against voter ID rules. It gives a basis for the Trump-Fox-GOP worry Democrats want "caravans" of people of uncertain identity to vote Democratic.
The 2020 victory for Biden came because more young people and suburban people with education and jobs voted Democratic. Republicans are becoming the down-scale party of nativist populism. Under the new party alignments, voter ID rules may help Democrats, not hurt them. They should give this up.
Republicans are making their own errors. Restricting voting by mail would have weighed against Democrats in 2020, but traditionally it had been Republicans who used absentee voting to get out their vote. Republicans are re-fighting the last war. Old voters tend to vote Republican. The people who will most need absentee voting are seniors.
Republican messaging backfires. They have positioned themselves as the party skeptical of the votes of the "wrong sort" of people: Blacks who live in urban areas and Hispanics everywhere except Florida. Trump and GOP vote-skeptics point to Wayne County, Michigan, i.e. Detroit. They assert fraud in "Democrat cities" with suitcases of ballots brought in--allegations found untrue, but which continue to circulate. In fact, as Attorney General Bill Barr noted to a skeptical President Trump, Trump was not the victim of a vote-dump in Detroit. Barr told Trump he got more votes in Detroit in 2020 than he did when running against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump was getting stronger with Black voters. The GOP is also discovering that they have policies that appeal to Hispanic voters, and would do better with them if they would stop openly insulting them as drug-using rapists and thieves. The GOP gives Democrats an easy-to-understand message for Black and Hispanic voters: The GOP is trying to take your vote away. Don't let them.
Still, none of this may matter. The elections of 2022 could be a giant win for the GOP. Indeed I expect it.
Democrats blew the crime issue. They turned a moment of national consciousness about racially biased policing into a message that Democrats were so completely captured by the anarchist-left voices in their party that they tolerated and justified street violence. Events in Seattle and Portland created a big swing toward the GOP in every race except Trump's presidential race, where Trump's own personal negatives were too much to overcome.
The Trump "stolen election" meme gives enlarged GOP legislative majorities political space to do unapologetic partisan map-drawing. GOP voters will expect it. The map of Ohio congressional districts show how easy it is for legislatures to draw maps that take a Democratic majority of votes, yet create a 75-25 split for Republicans.
In 2020, election officials felt duty-bound to administer an election like an honest referee on a ball field. They caught hell for doing so. Mike Pence gets boos. Georgia and Arizona officials got censured. They face the wrath of partisan activists and are greeted by silence from GOP officeholders, even ones who don't for a moment think there was a stolen election. GOP leaders don't want to stand in the way of partisan energy, and can justify keeping quiet. Although there is no evidence the 2020 election was stolen, lack of evidence is not proof something is utterly impossible. Who can really know anything with absolute certainty?
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| Click: Legislatures did not dare in 2020 |
Over-rule the voters? We can't do that.
Now they can. Trump sold the idea that Democrats stole the election of 2020 and therefore it is honorable to seize it back. The Stop the Steal insurrection was done sloppily. In 2022 and beyond it will be done right. Plan A is gerrymandering, which will probably be more than sufficient. Plan B is vote nullification by election officials locally and at the legislatures. The Constitution allows it and elections cannot be trusted, so it's OK.
Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. They had months to get the urban crime issue right, and they failed and kept failing. Black voters are not the Democrats' problem. People who live in tough neighborhoods don't like crime. The problem is that Democrats are afraid of their own anarchist left. The professors and graduate students in English and Gender Studies departments do not speak for a majority of Americans. Until Democrats figure that out they will lose elections they should be able to win with ease.
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3 comments:
I guess so, but I would disagree that college professors are bringing down the Democratic party. That's just Regressive propaganda picking on an easy target.
A wise man once said: "Good manners isn't giving respect to those may not deserve it, it's showing respect for yourself". Universities are laboratories of diversity and criticism of woke is just the same backlash against political correctness that preceded it. Why? Because it makes bigots uncomfortable.
Regressives whine that their speech is curtailed in academia, but that's because fundamentally it's hate speech, full of lies and inappropriate in an educational setting.
And I'll repeat, the violence in Portland and elsewhere was committed by a tiny fraction of the protestors, and many have been prosecuted. I sympathize with those whose neighborhoods were disrupted, but a heavy handed response would likely have led to injuries and even deaths.
Can you really blame officials for their restraint? Only if you applaud Bull Connor's attack dogs, billy clubs and fire hoses.
I have been teaching at a community college for almost 20 years now. I have seen the disdain (occasionally verging on what looks like hatred) of far left academia towards America at first hand.
I particularly remember in the first year after 9/11 how PCC’s left-wingers went on and on in campus-wide email about how 9/11 was all America’s fault and our response should be feeling shame and contrition and take the terrorist attack as valuable feedback about how bad we were. Unfortunately for them, I was there. I took them on personally, just me against the crowd of them. But they were still outnumbered.
That was 2002. Somehow my career at PCC survived. I have no doubt that if something like that happened these days I would get canceled. I would do it anyway.
I am not really a Republican. I am a hippie Buddhist Grateful Deadhead techie from the cosmic consciousness wing of the 1960s movement. My sympathies were always more with the Democrats until the left went crazy and the Democrats went along with it.
If the Democrats choose to, they can ride “the squad” straight down to political hell. If they so choose, they will deserve the enormous backlash that those idiotic positions are about to cause. And I will be a proud component of that backlash.
All from the perspective of white is might and right. Democrats are failing because they cannot bully. Inclusive message hits no target. Watch Amy Goodman trying to listen to all voices. Nothing sticks because minorities who have not turned white cannot be heard. The Democratic Party is actually not a party any longer. No unions. No working class, The educated middle class is satisfied. Go along, get along. I’m making it, too bad about you. Here’s a charity I give to. Go get your hand out. Pay for the military. Kick the climate change down the road. Accept the gays and transsexuals and not stand with them but cheerlead from the sidelines selling hope and chump change. Write and write and talk and talk. Would Democrats rush the Republican state Capitals and batter down the doors and spray paint the representatives? No. Too this, too that. Polite. No bullet flying though my house. My son was not shot by a cop. My uncle is not sleeping in a tent in my old neighborhood, Echo Park.Los Angeles, nor is your uncle. What’s my point? We got it good. Good enough. Good enough to be a Democrat.
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