It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, is leading to a new era of voter suppression that parallels the pre-1960s era—this time affecting not just African-Americans but also Hispanic-Americans, women, and students, among others.
[….]In Texas, the law could require voters to travel as much as 250 miles to obtain an acceptable voter ID—and it allows a concealed-weapon permit, but not a student ID, as proof of identity for voting. Moreover, the law and the regulations to implement it, we are now learning, will create huge impediments for women who have married or divorced and have voter IDs and driver’s licenses that reflect maiden or married names that do not exactly match. It raises similar problems for Mexican-Americans who use combinations of mothers’ and fathers’ names.
[….]Reps. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., and Keith Ellison, D-Minn., have introduced in Congress a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to vote. It has garnered little attention and no momentum. Now is the time to change that dynamic before more states decide to be Putinesque with our democracy.
It’s a stupid strategy, because it just further alienates not just African-Americans but also Hispanic-Americans, women, and students, among others. I don’t know if it hastens or delays the decline of the power of the Republican party, but it makes the decline more certain.
I’m more fond of Khruschev than of Putin, so a (political) message to the would be vote suppressors: we will bury you.
kc
Would it be wrong of me to gloat if a bunch of Republican women found themselves prohibited from casting a ballot?
Knight of Nothing
@kc: No. But I don’t think that will happen: the truly evil part of voter suppression laws is that they are arbitrarily enforced so that the “right kind of voter” doesn’t usually have trouble.
Then again, if enough middle-class, white voters are hassled, it may well be the downfall of this current round of voter suppression.
schrodinger's cat
This is indeed a stupid strategy, don’t they already win these states by huge margins right now, what is the need for voter suppression?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Sorry, OT – but this story is awesome. The video of the mayor freaking out about the reporters in his driveway is just too good not to share.
mai naem
@Knight of Nothing: Maybe the Dems need to go to the “right” area and confront the right whackjob wimmen.
kc
@Knight of Nothing:
Sadly, I think you’re right. Nice white ladies will probably be given the benefit of the doubt.
Omnes Omnibus
I don’t think a Right to Vote Amendment is going get any traction, but, if it can be used to trumpet the facts of attempted and ongoing voter suppression effort, it will serve a valuable role. BTW Pocan is my representative. I think an Attaboy call is in order.
Patricia Kayden
“It’s a stupid strategy”
Stupid to you, but I’m sure Republicans aka T’Baggers think it’s legitimate and smart. It delays the inevitable demise of the Republican party for a few more decades.
mai naem
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: OMFG, Ford is going to the big house or whatever the hell they do in Canada with crackheads. I have family who live in Toronto, who, BTW, always act snotty like Canadians’ shit don’t stink. heehee
Origuy
Khrushchev’s remark was badly translated; he meant that Communism would outlive Capitalism, not kill it. Wrong either way.
Omnes Omnibus
@mai naem: A Canadian smashed my elbow and left me to die.
Knight of Nothing
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree with both of your points, and hey, and Ellison is my rep! Call it a twofer.
Barry
“It’s a stupid strategy, because it just further alienates not just African-Americans but also Hispanic-Americans, women, and students, among others. I don’t know if it hastens or delays the decline of the power of the Republican party, but it makes the decline more certain. ”
No, it’s very smart, and very evil. The right is facing a demographic wave, and doing their d*mnedest to prevent that wave from voting.
Holden Pattern
The thinking is that given the overrepresentation of white rural and exurban conservatives in politics, particularly in the Senate, the current SCOTUS and the current supreme courts of a lot of states, that with luck, voter suppression will buy them enough time to lock in a constitutional order that is going to be almost impossible to change and that favors those people and the big big money that owns them.
You can’t just undo supreme court decisions, and it takes far fewer legislators to prevent something from happening than it does to make something happen, particularly when the other party is managed largely by timid careerists.
It isn’t at all stupid. It’s smart, and it’s the only option they have, because the Republican Party is whipsawed between the need to grow their base beyond resentful white conservatives, and the impossibility of growing their base without alienating the resentful white conservatives.
Yatsuno
@Origuy: Ya beat me to it. The translation error was rumoured to be politically motivated but nothing was ever proven on that score. It wouldn’t surprise me however.
Ken T
I think Voter ID is an issue that the Dems could actually take away from the Repubs. I agree that a constitutional amendment is going nowhere in the forseeable future,but what about legislation that mandates EVERY eligible voter be provided with an acceptable ID on their 18th birthday (which would just so happen to also ensure that they are registered to vote at the same time)? Not that I think that legislation would go anywhere, either, but it would turn the tables and put the Republicans in the position of objecting to Voter ID when the Democrats are for it.
schrodinger's cat
BTW Ted Cruz, the immigrant’s son is opposed to immigration reform. I read somewhere that his father became a US citizen fairly recently. Like 5 years ago. How is that OK with the crazy caucus.
kc
@Barry:
Because not being dicks to minorities is not an option for them.
OT, but Jeff Goldstein is the scum of the earth. http://wonkette.com/533041/blogger-may-wish-to-rethink-calling-rep-john-lewis-disgraceful-slaver-who-turns-fire-hose-of-obamacare-on-america#more-533041
mdblanche
I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to feel sorry for some of the people swept up in this. For example, maybe this guy should have exercised a little more personal responsibility.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@schrodinger’s cat: Because he’s the right kind of immigrant. Cuban and restorationist/dominionist/crazycakes.
kc
@mdblanche:
Huh. All he has to do is sign an affidavit and he can vote.
I object. Frankly, if the man is too lazy to ensure that his name appears in the same on all official documents and rolls, he shouldn’t be permitted to vote at all.
catclub
“message to the would be vote suppressors: we will bury you. ”
I remember learning that the translation of the sense of this is “We will still be around when you are gone.” Rather than something with any overtones of murder. Of course, given the actual course of events — ironic.
ETA: And I am slow. Others there first.
Lurking Canadian
@mai naem: Unless I am mistaking him for somebody else, Ford has already been ordered removed from office by a court order, and ignored it. The only way he’s leaving is in handcuffs, and maybe not even then. I’m sure I remember seeing some wingnutty comments to the effect that even a crack conviction should not overrule the Will of the People.
EconWatcher
I’ve got a five-spot that says it hastens, rather than delays, their downfall.
Their problem is, they’re incapable of subtlety. If they could squeeze disfavored voters in a plausibly deniable way, they could benefit.
For example, they had a nice thing going for a little while when people were confused about the difference between registration fraud and actual voting fraud, when they could cite instances of the former as their alibi for ID requirements and other restrictions at the polling booth.
But then, as is their wont, they got all greedy and coupled ID requirements with restrictions on early voting, restrictions on voting hours on election day, and all kinds of stuff that has no discernible connection at all to preventing fraud. And people started to figure it out.
Plus, the problem with big conspiracies is that everyone has to keep his mouth shut. You’ll always end up with at least one guy who can’t, like the dude in NC who was spouting off about preventing lazy minorities from voting.
Would you like to go into battle with a teabagger, trusting your fate to his restraint and discretion? I didn’t think so.
Lurking Buffoon
While these new suppression laws are certainly harder to work around thanks to the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, I can’t help but think that such efforts will backfire. Which is to say, the people whose votes they try to prevent will become all the more determined to vote. It’s almost feels like it already happened… recently too.
Knight of Nothing
What I never hear enough of, and what dems should be shouting from the mountaintops, is that these laws make no sense from a cost-benefit analysis, and never have. (I apologize for pimping my own blog, but we had our own bout with Voter ID last year, and thanks to some great and timely PR campaigns, we defeated it).
catclub
@Ken T: I like this.
Omnes Omnibus
@EconWatcher:
They can’t help themselves. BTW your own comment here should be enough to talk you off the ledge you were on the other day.
Mnemosyne
@Holden Pattern:
I agree that it’s their only option, but I don’t think that makes it a smart move. It just means they don’t have anything else they can even try.
Felanius Kootea
@mdblanche: Bet he didn’t realize it would affect him.
Elizabelle
@Ken T:
What do you all think about a national ID, issued on or before a citizen’s 18th birthday?
It could be used for voting, employment eligibility verification, national medical insurance, boarding airplanes, whatever we need ID for.
Especially in view of many young people not driving or owning cars as much as previous generations. And people living in cities.
And the elderly, letting their IDs expire once they stop driving. (That happened with my mom, and with some other BJ peeps’ families too.)
Big Brother is already here, in terms of NSA overreach.
Why not go with national ID and solve a few problems in one fell swoop?
becca
The RATS Court will go down as one of the worst in modern history. These guys must believe they will write the historical narrative of their decisions.
Their reputations are doomed to infamy. And ridicule.
Elizabelle
I think also the DOJ sues to prevent ANY state from cracking down with voter ID laws until it can be proven that those states’ residents have obtained ID, free if need be. Like up to 97% of the state.
The voter ID requirements are a poll tax, plain and simple.
kc
@Knight of Nothing:
Right-wingers are happy to throw efficiency out the window if it helps them step on the people they don’t like. Witness Florida’s drug-testing of welfare recipients.
piratedan
@Elizabelle: i like the concept, but I also wonder what else we may end up cramming onto the card and the thoughts of fraud and identity theft…. still something should be doable, kind of like when you’re born and the SSN administration gets a their first form indicating your presence.
Elizabelle
@kc:
Or the $24 billion cost of the recent government shutdown, which dwarfs any of their beefing on Solyndra and the other “scandals”.
Chris
@kc:
Actually, I wonder how many of them would patriotically say “well, it’s just too bad that those measures are necessary to prevent the horrid leftists from stealing an election by voting, but for the good of the country I’m willing to take a bullet.”
I read a comment on a wingnut blog years ago where everyone was saying that Americans living overseas shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they were all a bunch of liberals, and someone chimed in to say “I’m an American overseas, but I’d be okay with losing my vote if it meant those fucking liberals weren’t allowed to tilt the election.”
mdblanche
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Say, remember the days when if you were told a country’s government was in the pocket of a single extractive industry, its Senate made ours look honest by comparison, and its biggest city’s mayor was tied to drug trafficking, you assumed it was to our south?
@kc: I know. He should consider himself lucky he wasn’t arrested right then and there for whatever fraud scheme I suspect he must be up to.
celticdragonchick
@kc:
A female judge in texas had to file an affidavit in order to vote in local election last week because her driver’s license has her maiden name as her middle name, which is not what is on her voting ID card.
Knight of Nothing
@kc: ha! True enough. But they are supposed to be all fiscally responsible and business-friendly, or whatever. Aw, screw it, what am I saying.
@Elizabelle: National ID might be a workable solution to other problems, but for voting, I’m pretty old school. I just don’t see why it is needed at all. The vote is supposed to be a free, anonymous, and Constitutionally-granted right. At least here in Minnesota, the process of voting is simple, transparent, and free from corruption, fraud, or other issues. So why mess with it?
fuckwit
The canonical reply to this is, and must be, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypRW5qoraTw
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
BTW Ted Cruz, the immigrant’s son is opposed to immigration reform
You mean Ted Cruz the Canadian citizen?
Elizabelle
My mom and I “early voted” in Virginia this week. (Technically, “absentee in person.”) I was delighted to see that we got paper ballots. Woo hoo!
However, had to laugh because neither Mom nor I presented an ID bearing an address proving we were Virginia residents.
I still have an out of state driver’s license (have to update it one of these days), so used my passport.
My mom, who’s got light dementia, pulled an expired military dependents’ ID out of her purse. (She does have a state-issued ID card. Saw to that this summer.)
Could see the poll worker wondering just where it was we do live, since neither of us “proved” we were at either address, but we’d complied with acceptable IDs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: No, you would still have people who need to drive forever to get one. People will get married and change their names. There isn’t a voter fraud problem, so we don’t need to solve it.
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle: I like it. But civil libertarians would go batshit, then apeshit, then whaleshit. And Christian Right folks have freaked out about that kind of thing before, something having to do with the mark of the beast or something.
g
@kc: My understanding, from a report I heard on NPR about this, is that when they give you a provisional ballot you then have a certain amount of time to show up with the “correct” identification documents before they will then process your ballot. Having no experience at this, I’m not sure whether the fact that he signed the affidavit means that his vote will in fact be processed, or whether he will still have to show up and verifiy.
fuckwit
@catclub: It’s true. It’s an idiomatic expression, which means, they will still be shuffling around on their walker long after you’re gone. “Dude, I smoke like a chimney and I have no health problems, and you have all kinds of issues. WTF?” “I know, you’ll bury me”.
Elizabelle
@Knight of Nothing:
I agree with you that voter ID is a solution to what is not in actuality a problem. And that, unlike driving a car, voting is a right, not merely a privilege. You can never get some people to comprehend that.
However, the Republicans have made this fictional issue front and center. It might be easier to see that people get IDs than combat them in the court of public opinion. (And it is opinion. Not fact.)
Also: close eye on voting machines. We need a paper trail.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus:
So you eliminate that by bringing the national ID to the public.
Don’t most European democracies have national ID cards, and it works just fine?
Have ours up and running by the time we get single-payer (and we will, in our lifetimes.)
Elizabelle
@FlipYrWhig:
I realize libertarians and Christian fundamentalists will have a shit fit, but, for once, that’s a feature and not a bug on our side.
Do Xians also moan about tax deductions to churches which overstep into the realm of politics? Didn’t think so.
IowaOldLady
@g: I thought I heard that report too. As I recall, the clerk at the polling site gets to decide if your name is “subtantially the same” and if it is, you sign the affidavit and vote. Otherwise, you fill out a provisional ballot and then you have to go somewhere and show ID within a certain time frame.
At least I think so. Kay will know.
schrodinger's cat
@Cacti: I thought he was a Cuban citizen.
C.V. Danes
Not just the Republicans, but confidence in our democracy, period.
Elizabelle
@Cacti:
Ted Cruz was born to a woman born in the United States who happened to be living in Canada when she popped out Ted. His mother was born in Delaware, the first state, no less.
Unfortunately, he is ours.
And I do love how anything I’ve ever seen about his father says that he “landed” in the United States (Austin, TX) I believe. None of that swimming or fence-jumping, like those other filthy migrants.
Scott S.
They don’t have to craft restrictions that last for very long. All they need is to suppress enough of the vote to get a teabagger in the White House. Once they’ve got that, he can declare some sort of National Emergency (“Iranians have NIPPLES!”), cancel future elections, and trust that the press will nod and smile and agree that the President certainly is a very manly Republican, isn’t he?
Elizabelle
RE the Roberts Supreme Court:
Someone needs to write a readable and entertaining book about the 19th century robber-baron loving Supreme Court. Or even make a good movie about it. (Mr. Tarantino?)
Because you can see why it was such a disaster, and an impetus to reforms by Theodore Roosevelt and the progressives/good government types who followed him.
Get it into the public discussion. We have been here before, and it didn’t work then.
And no, that someone cannot be the execrable Jon Meacham or anyone who gets slobbered on by the Morning Joe fools.
Suffern ACE
@Elizabelle: And you know, all that stuff about “That Kenyan’s kid ain’t a real american” that has managed to piss off every immigrant group with the Right? I still have no idea how a bunch of white liberals mocking Cruz’ parentage, or joking that his real name is “fereign” is supposed to keep those immigrant groups from getting pissed at the Left.
Ted Cruz is an evil snot, not because his name is Rafael and he comes from Cuba and his mom was in Canada. But because he is an evil snot.
Lee
We already have one. It is the 15th amendment and here is the text:
If anyone does not understand any of the words or phrases, I’ll be more than happy to explain them to you.
rikyrah
thanks for keeping us up to date, Kay.
whole lotta women in Texas about to get a serious wakeup call this election.
schrodinger's cat
@Suffern ACE: Agreed, I don’t think he is evil because of where he was born, or his father’s nationality. I was just laughing at the hypocrisy of the GOP.
ETA: He=Cruz
Xecky Gilchrist
The problem the Republicans have is they keep forgetting they haven’t yet repealed the 13th and 19th amendments.
Elizabelle
@Suffern ACE:
Agreed. I don’t like the Cruz-bashing by implying he’s not American.
It’s not like there’s not a surfeit of other Ted Cruz stuff to complain about.
(FWIW: I think he read “Green Eggs and Ham” quite nicely, even if he didn’t get the point.)
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Suffern ACE: Most of us know that the Rafael jokes are shorthand for birther hypocrisy, but it’s very much an insider’s joke. I like schrodinger’s cat‘s construction much better.
Botsplainer
Conservatives keep ominously talking about the progression of ballot box to ammo box, so what option does that leave for blacks, latinos and women?
I’m kind of liking the idea of the application of Second Amendment Solutions to the sorts of pasty faced teabigot activists that would work the polls as challengers and would deny people their votes.
Hungry Joe
@Elizabelle: Well, once you say “Don’t most European democracies … ?” you’ve pretty much lost the argument. European democracies are the ones with health care that nobody gets but it doesn’t matter because they’re so backward over there that they still use leeches and bleeding. They also don’t have freedom because we’re the only ones with freedom. And they all have to ride in those sissy trains because they’re not allowed to own any cars except Citroens, which don’t run.
ranchandsyrup
@Hungry Joe: Euros don’t have THE CONSTITUTION or any sort of grand charter whatsoever.
Felonius Monk
No matter whether the subject is voting rights, the Affordable Care Act, the federal deficit, or any other topic, you can always tell who the Republicans are —– they are the ones with smoke blowing out of their asses.
Elizabelle
@Hungry Joe:
I get so tired of our “American exceptionalism” when it means that we’re doing it stupidly.
You can improve on others’ systems. You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. (Facepalm.)
schrodinger's cat
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Thanks Sister friend.
Hungry Joe
@ranchandsyrup: Exactly. And name one European country that has the Grand Canyon.
fuckwit
@rikyrah: That’s the point. The Rethugs are terrified of That Lady In The Red Sneakers. They’re trying to keep women from voting. What they don’t realize is the wrath they are about to unleash. What’s the marriage and divorce rate in Texas? Highest in the country, or somethnig like that? There a lot of women in TX whose voter registration names don’t match their driver’s licenses. This is going to be a shitstorm. I hope the shitstorm happens BEFORE 2014 though, because WE NEED TO TAKE BACK THE FUCKIGN CONGRESS NOW! This can’t wait until 2016.
daverave
@Origuy:
Not sure that that game is quite over yet…
Warren Terra
Well, Richard Posner could briefly have predicted, but can no longer do so.
kc
@celticdragonchick:
Yeah, I saw that, and the first thought that popped into my evil mind was “That sucks. I hope that happens to a shitload of married/divorced white Republican ladies.”
schrodinger's cat
Women who haven’t changed their name after marriage will be spared from this nonsense. Lesson, don’t change your name.
Elizabelle
@kc:
So I guess lesbians are Texas Republicans’ preferred voting class? Among them wimmens.
aimai
@mdblanche: If enough guys are hasselled and have to fill out affidavits that slows down voting in their precincts. Maybe enough to piss them off.
Barry
@Knight of Nothing: “What I never hear enough of, and what dems should be shouting from the mountaintops, is that these laws make no sense from a cost-benefit analysis, and never have. (I apologize for pimping my own blog, but we had our own bout with Voter ID last year, and thanks to some great and timely PR campaigns, we defeated it). ”
They are excellent, from a cost-benefit analysis. Remember, they spend state money, obtained from taxes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: I am not a big fan of solving problems that don’t exist. Yes, as far as I know, most European countries have some form of national ID and it works just fine. I am not opposed, in principle, to a national ID, but I would oppose doing it until we can make sure that everyone can get one with little inconvenience and no expense.
gogol's wife
@Origuy:
How is it a mistranslation? It means literally, “We will bury you” (“Мы вас закопаем”). It’s a metaphor, granted, but it’s a threatening one. When I look up that verb, the first example given is “We buried the dead dog in the yard.”
Omnes Omnibus
@gogol’s wife: If I say my team got killed, I generally don’t mean that they were line up against a wall and shot. I think the suggestion of a mistranslation is that the translator was literally correct but missed a nuance of what was being said.
Keith G
@Patricia Kayden:
Exactly right.
If a combatant is certain of facing a major loss, the logical thing to do is to delay a final battle and hope for improving conditions.
Face it, their choice of bitter obstructionism has had, for them, positive payoffs.
1) The momentum of the first Obama election got strangled in its crib.
2) Obama’s second term political capital is vaporizing before our eyes..
3) The coming demographic shift will first have to deal with entrenched policy structures that are now being cemented in place by the GOP.
4) The Robert’s Court will be a gift that keeps on giving as it reinforces GOP ideology and delays any judicial-aided turnarounds.
5) Despite Obama making real progress in important areas, the conservatives have continued to frustrate Democrats and keep them from achieving a sense of operational initiative over the government. Therefore causing the Democrats and their leadership to appear feckless and weak.
We can laugh at, and tease, the shitheads that make up the other side, but they aren’t doing bad for themselves and our self righteous snark sure as hell ain’t stopping them.
Hold the flowers since the interment will not be anytime soon..
Gin & Tonic
@gogol’s wife: But, even bowing to your superior knowledge, in English the phrase more colloquially has a murderous sense, while in Russian (with закопаем) it has more of an undertaker’s sense. We will bury you [when you are already dead] as opposed to We will bury you [after having killed you.] That’s my impression, anyway.
BGinCHI
If you come for the king, you best not miss.
catclub
@Hungry Joe: Heck, Arizona has the London Bridge, too.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
Either this blog or Sadly, No! had the most dead-on summary of “American Exceptionalism” a couple years back;
American: “I notice you people like to keep your car on the road when following a narrow mountain path.”
Non-American: “Yes, we do. It seems like the safest and most effective way to do it.”
American: “Well WE aren’t like you! We’re going to do it our OWN way!”
Non-American: “Does that mean you’re going to drive the buss off the cliff?”
American: “FUCK YEAH! WOLVERINES!” [cue the death scene]
I can’t stand “American exceptionalism;” it causes more harm than good and barely means anything these days in any case.
kc
@Elizabelle:
So I guess lesbians are Texas Republicans’ preferred voting class?
Yes, and feminazis.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: Doesn’t every nation think that they are exceptional?
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: And they are all correct.
aimai
@g: I’m pretty sure that the affidavit allows you to vote a regular ballot (under penalty) and the regular ballot gets regularly counted. IF they make you take a provisional ballot that is held seperately and not counted until you demonstrate who you are.
polyorchnid octopunch
@mai naem: Nay, they’re not acting like Canadians. They’re acting like Torontonians, or as they’re more colloquially known, douchebags.
/me puts on his asbestos undies.
Knight of Nothing
@Barry: Fine. A cost-benefit analysis of the stated purpose of the law. Better? :-)
BGinCHI
@polyorchnid octopunch: As opposed to those liberal humanists in Alberta.
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, and it’s obnoxious and eyeroll-worthy in every other nation, too. But I don’t think every nation takes the whole concept so seriously or injects it as relentlessly into its politics, a la “Obama doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism” meme that’s been going around for five years. Might be wrong.
Suffern ACE
@Chris: I’m trying to think of a country that would make its marker of distinction the fact that it’s healthcare cost 3 times more than anyone else’s while actively excluding 15% of its working population from its already overpriced basic care. It’s like being proud that your thatched roofed huts with fireplaces take twice as much energy to heat, but have the benefit of being smaller and only muddy when it rains.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: They are not as dangerous because they can’t act on their delusions.
Omnes Omnibus
OT: David Attenborough explaining the Miley VMA performance.
BGinCHI
@Suffern ACE: These guys have always been in the tank for big thatch.
Patricia Kayden
@Keith G: “Therefore causing the Democrats and their leadership to appear feckless and weak.”
Hate to say it but the Dems are feckless and weak. I was shocked that they stood together during the GOP shutdown, although they’ve begun to splinter since then. And Reid not doing whatever it takes to stop Republican Senators from filibustering every dang thing is a perfect example of Democratic fecklessness and weakness.
I love President Obama but really wish Democratic Congresspeople were as tough and wily as the Republicans. They’re not.
nineone
Love that “Candy Says”
!00 dead Jesse Helmses say “You Lie!”
@Keith G:
(Said in Dr. Smith vox) We’re doomed. DOOMED! Tee-Hee.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodinger’s cat: Having grown up in Canada, I don’t remember that we talked about being exceptional the way Americans go on and on about it. Canadians are proud of their country (and rightly so) but not in an over the top way that Americans tend to be. The fuss made over the American flag and anthem is a bit amusing to me even though I am now an American citizen.
hoodie
It’s not particularly stupid if you understand that the GOP has nothing else to offer and, therefore, nothing to lose by engaging in voter suppression. They at least subconsciously know they can’t sell their staple opportunity, pull-yourself up by your bootstraps mythology to the growing demographic groups, who know it’s a steaming pile of bullshit. Things like immigration reform won’t really fix that, because their attacks on the safety net, education, etc., still look like they’re pulling up the ladder behind them. Voter suppression may actually be quite an effective tactic, if you want to alienate newcomers from the idea of government actually solving their problems. I suspect that many in the GOP would prefer a dysfunctional apartheid state/banana republic where they have a favored status to a stronger and more stable functioning democratic republic. We’ve certainly seen examples of that elsewhere.
Omnes Omnibus
@Patricia Kayden:
There actually are policy differences on the Democratic side. OTOH, the Republicans all have two simple policy goals, dismantling the safety net and obstructing progress. It makes it easier for them.
Patricia Kayden
@Omnes Omnibus: Too funny! It all makes sense now.
pluege
keeping people who vote against you from voting doesn’t strike me as very stupid. Strikes me as a good way to stay in power. I can see the logic of the republican view: if the people you piss off can’t vote, who cares. What it does do is moves the society closer to violent upheaval. BUt plutocrats and oligarchs have been fostering that dynamic since the dawn of modern society. Rest assured that there is no internal self-control on the republican/conservative psyche or conscience that can or will constrain the republican/conservative effort in the area.
the bush regime took us to the US to this precipice – I really would not have been surprised if they had staged some faux terrorist attack to cancel the elections in 2008 like guiliani tried to use 911 to cancel the mayoral election in 2001.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Also, “tough” is often synonymous with myopic. First be smart, then be tough.
BGinCHI
Do these dipshits know we already lost the Alamo?
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/UN-takeover-of-the-Alamo-horse-hockey-4939918.php
schrodinger's cat
@Patricia Kayden: I do think it is post 9-11 phenomenon. I don’t remember seeing as many flags before 9-11, or single flag pin for that matter. What began as a spontaneous outpouring of national pride was twisted by the Bush administration and the Republicans for their political gains. Just my observational anecdata.
gogol's wife
@Gin & Tonic:
All the Russians I know think he said мы вас закопаем. Now it looks as if that was a back-translation from the English, and the original Russian was мы вас похороним. (more in the sense of “we’ll give you a funeral,” rather than we’ll physically dig your grave) I’m sorry, but that sounds even more threatening to me. Khrushchev wasn’t a particularly refined speaker. I’m sure he meant for it to sound threatening.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: ::headdesk::
Comrade Dread
@Omnes Omnibus: Why can’t folks just let this die?
Jay in Oregon
@mdblanche:
The thing is, I don’t even know if that is considered a problem. If you manage to make sure that only the right kind of people get to vote, then it doesn’t matter if the voter turnout is 100,000, or 1,000.
burnspbesq
This strategy is not only stupid, it’s not going to work. In case you haven’t noticed, Section 2 and the bail-in remedy under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act were not affected, even a little bit, by the Shelby County decision, and both DOJ and private plaintiffs are on the case. All of this crap legislation is going to get enjoined and will never affect an actual election.
BGinCHI
@gogol’s wife: Look at you and your fancy Cyrillic keypad.
Llelldorin
@schrodinger’s cat:
No, it predates 9/11 by a lot. Flag-burning, of all things, was one of the parade of kulturkampf issues the Republicans used to trounce Dukakis in ’88.
jonas
Yeah, but if you make it so these groups can’t retaliate against you at the ballot box…
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Dread: You didn’t click on the link, did you?
@jonas: As burnsie noted, these laws are going to be eviscerated in the courts.
Xecky Gilchrist
Khrushchev didn’t really say “we will bury you,” he said –
what?
HOW many?
Oh, dear.
Well, it’s not really what the post is about anyway.
schrodinger's cat
@Llelldorin: I was a kitten uninterested in American loliticks back then.
BGinCHI
@Xecky Gilchrist: Wipe that smirnoff your face and popov.
Omnes Omnibus
@Llelldorin: Faux-patriotism has been a staple of the American right for a long time. It goes at least as far back as the McCarthy era.
Napoleon
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hell, back to MacArthur
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: But was it always this toxic? May be I didn’t pay that much attention back then but I don’t remember politicians running around wearing flag pins during the Clinton years.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: It goes in waves. I think it becomes more public during periods of conservative ascendance – like the one that is on a downswing now. It is a device for silencing opposition. Tie yourself to the flag and try to make it look like any opposition to you and attack on the country. They seem to lack recognition of the concept of a loyal opposition.
Llelldorin
@schrodinger’s cat:
It was worse. The 1988 election had to be seen to be believed, and those who remember the 1960s and before assure me that it was historically nothing special.
Chris
@gogol’s wife:
I had always heard that the way he said it translates to “we will be there at your funeral,” which I took to simply mean “we’ll be there to see your system collapse.” Kind of like the speech twenty years later where Reagan said “the West will transcend communism; we will not bother to denounce it, we’ll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history.”
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel?
gogol's wife
@Chris:
Okay, I guess this is irritating some people, but the original comment about it said that it was a mistranslation. To say that either “my vas zakopaem” or “my vas pokhoronim” means “We will bury you” is not at all a mistranslation. The first one means bury in the sense of piling up dirt on top of you, and the second one means we’ll give you a funeral. You may want to argue about it being taken out of context, or about the metaphorical sense of it being lost in Cold War rhetoric, but it’s not a mistranslation. That’s all I was trying to say. Yes, the Russian can be metaphorical just as the English can be, but it also has a threatening tone to it, just as the English does.
Chris
@Llelldorin:
I think the modern form of flag-waving shit goes back to losing Vietnam, which added a huge dose of insecurity to our arrogance and that we’ve been trying to compensate for ever since. (Since the party line is “we lost because Lyndon Johnson, Edward R. Murrow and the hippies stabbed us in the back,” it really lends itself to ideological loyalty tests of the “do you believe in American exceptionalism?” variety, too).
Chris
@gogol’s wife:
Fair ’nuff.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: Basically.
catclub
@schrodinger’s cat: My man Ambrose B. points out that it is actually the first. And disses Samuel Johnson in the bargain.
Mullah DougJ
@Origuy:
In Soviet Russia, system bury you.
slippy
@Ken T:
Well, this is essentially what Obama has been doing with every issue: taking the issue away from the GOP and making them run against their own ideas.
I think it is brilliant: mandate Voter ID, but also mandate that they are provided by age 18. Make “Voter ID” a federal thing, get the GOP to shut the fuck up about it or accept that yes, all of us are actually Americans and we have a right to vote.
The other option is to start asserting our right to vote at gunpoint. I don’t have a problem with that, honestly. I’m getting a little bit fucking sick of these people deciding who and who is not an American. I believe a correction of some arrogant little fuckwads’ opinions may be in order.
slippy
@Ken T:
Well, this is essentially what Obama has been doing with every issue: taking the issue away from the GOP and making them run against their own ideas.
I think it is brilliant: mandate Voter ID, but also mandate that they are provided by age 18. Make “Voter ID” a federal thing, get the GOP to shut the fuck up about it or accept that yes, all of us are actually Americans and we have a right to vote.
The other option is to start asserting our right to vote at gunpoint. I don’t have a problem with that, honestly. I’m getting a little bit fucking sick of these people deciding who and who is not an American. I believe a correction of some arrogant little fuckwads’ opinions may be in order.
nineone
@Patricia Kayden:
This is a Republican meme and has not been true for years.Tough and wily don’t enter into it.Republicans are being asswipes and you blame Harry for not spanking their butts. Why won’t Harry lead? Please, that’s on them, not on Reid and Obama.
Kyle
@Chris:
When angry confronted with this question by a teatard, the best response is, “Yes, I believe you’re an exceptionally stupid American.”
WereBear
It takes some foresight and the patience of granite. But I believe it is working. They become so frustrated by being stymied, that, like Rumpelstiltskin, they throw a tantrum that tears them apart.
catclub
@nineone: And meanwhile the Republicans think Barney Frank caused the Housing bubble because he forbade ( while being in the minority, no less) the Congress and president from reining in Fannie and Freddie.
Delusions that the other side is powerful are reciprocal.
Elie
@Patricia Kayden:
I’m not sure that is true.
What is clear is that they cannot separate the substance of their ideology from the impulses to try to suppress and restrict. One thing is a deep part of the other — they must suppress and discriminate and they can’t change their ideology without loosing who they are at the core — nativists and racists. They just cannot change their strategy because they have no strategy per se — they are just who they are — racists, homophobes, mysogynists and very very scared and lost white people. Our country is going to have to out live them. They cannot change…
Kay
@Elizabelle:
I don’t think this is a good approach for us. You’re ceding the whole ID argument to them and you won’t get anything back. They’re never, ever going to put in a national ID, but you’ll have agreed with them that photo ID is necessary for voting.
It isn’t about voter fraud. Because it isn’t about voter fraud, we can’t “fix it” with ID. The problem was created in order to restrict voting. If the solution no longer restricts voting, they’ll simply create a different problem and solve it with a solution that restricts access to ID.
The next anti-fraud crusade will then be “fraud in procuring the now-mandatory and universally-agreed upon voter ID”. Then what do we do? Iris scans?
Voter ID is a slippery slope that actually happened. The original laws didn’t even require photo ID. Now they all do. The original batch of laws had provisions for students, and homeless people, and all sorts of safeguards. Now they don’t.
Texas is deliberately excluding ID that may be held by Democrats and including ID that is more likely to include Republicans. From 2006 to 2013 we went whooshing down the slope, and the laws get worse every pass. Now we have two-tier voting being proposed.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I still don’t understand how the courts allowed them to require ID for in-person voting but keep the requirements loose for absentee voting. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? It’s a lot easier to fake a mail-in ballot (sorry, Washington state) than it is to impersonate someone, well, in person.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
Because all Indiana needed was “closely related to a legitimate state interest in preventing voter fraud, modernizing elections, and safeguarding voter confidence.” It’s not a tough standard to meet.
The analysis of the majority didn’t go beyond that, to “why aren’t you putting in this other regulation? Because you have bad intent?”
It’s funny, because that was always the access argument: “you have bad intent because you’re not restricting absentee balloting”.
But the picture is shifting on voting. Democrats got better at organizing and early vote (of any kind-in person or absentee) is a great tool for organizers because it extends GOTV over weeks. Republicans don’t have an advantage in absentee ballots anymore. I have some doubt if they ever did, honestly. I haven’t seen anything that says conclusively that they did. To me, it’s like “Democrats vote in the evening and Republicans vote in the morning”. I don’t know if it’s true.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@kc:
One should note the governor of Florida’s wife is on the board of the directors for the drug testing company. This just simple grifting under color of Nativism.
Ken T
@Elizabelle:
“I realize libertarians and Christian fundamentalists will have a shit fit, but, for once, that’s a feature and not a bug on our side.”
Elizabelle: That was my point as well, when I started this. I don’t think the law would pass, but it would make an excellent wedge issue against the Republican coalition. The libertarians would hate the “national ID” concept (I don’t like it much myself, either), and the establishment would hate the automatic registration of every 18-year-old (which I like very much). But it would be very difficult for either group to keep claiming that Democrats are in favor of voter fraud.
Ken T
@Kay:
Kay: The problem is that a majority of the public sees nothing wrong with requiring ID. Full stop. That’s as far as they get. They never hear the arguments about discriminatory documentation requirements, they just look in their own wallet, see their own driver’s license, and say “what’s the problem?” So while they may not agree that ID is necessary or that it’s a big deal, they do start to wonder why Democrats are so set against it. And thus the meme that any D election win is tainted spreads through the population. THAT is the true election fraud, and the Republicans are winning that battle. Millions of intelligent, educated, generally liberal, but politically uninvolved Americans believe without question that Democrats engage in voter fraud. And that belief does more to undermine our democracy than all the screaming tea partiers put together.
Kay
@Ken T:
So to convince them that Democrats aren’t winning elections relying on voter fraud, Democrats should launch a national ID program to fight voter fraud?
Jimmy Carter tried this. It was an absolute disaster. Conservatives are still using it to justify these laws.
If people believe any election where poor people take part is “tainted” I would suggest they may have a bigger bias than they’re letting on.
I’m sorry, I just think this approach is very misguided. It’s like if you accused me of shoplifting and I said “I agree we need more store security!” I wasn’t shoplifting and I don’t agree we need more shoplifting safeguards. Is your irrational fear of shoplifting cured by my implicit acceptance of the accusation? I don’t think so.
The whole “every election where a Democrat wins is tainted” idea shouldn’t be endorsed by Democrats, certainly. Surely we’re within our rights to object to that, ya know, since it isn’t true.