Return of the Zombie Goo-Goos, or: Why the “centrists” gang up with GOP to ensure that nobody can have nice things. Richard L. Hasen, “professor of law and political science at the UC–Irvine School of Law”, says “if the Democratic front-runner cares so much about voting rights, then she shouldn’t be politicizing them“:
Hillary Clinton spoke at Texas Southern University last week, where she put forward some good and provocative ideas for improving our elections. She wants Congress to fix the part of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court gutted in 2013. She wants to expand early voting periods nationally to at least 20 days. And most provocatively, she advocates automatic universal voter registration across the country, including a program to automatically register high school students to vote before their 18th birthdays.
But the partisan way she’s framed the issue—by blaming Republicans for all the voting problems—makes it less likely these changes will actually be implemented should she be elected president. Instead, she’s offering red meat to her supporters while alienating the allies she would need to get any reforms enacted….
Sure, partisan Democrats lapped it up, but Clinton is politicizing election reform in the process. While Republicans are responsible for most of the recent efforts to suppress voting, Clinton is accusing all Republicans of acting in bad faith. That message will likely alienate moderate Republicans who could be her natural partners for reforms in the future.
Slate readers may welcome Clinton calling out Republicans who are acting in bad faith. I understand that impulse, because I agree that Walker and Perry support restrictive voter ID laws not because they believe voter fraud is a real problem but to help get Republicans elected through suppressing the Democratic vote.
However, there are moderate Republicans who are willing to work with Democrats on election reform when the issue is less politicized…
And Professor Hasen will help ferret them out, just as soon as he’s proven via DNA sampling that unicorns are real. Discussions about voter registration shouldn’t involve voters! Such profound topics are best confined to an elite of sensible, well-read men in quiet rooms!
Hmm. Hansen “is the author of the forthcoming book, Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections.” Maybe he just objects to the competition from actual working politicians?
Baud
We should discuss it in quiet rooms.
Mike J
Perhaps if Republicans don’t want to be accused of keeping people from voting, they should stop trying to keep people from voting.
Linnaeus
Maybe those “moderate Republicans” should be talking their not-so-moderate colleagues.
Valdivia
I used to follow Hansen on twitter and had to stop about a year ago because he made arguments along this vein often enough that I just couldn’t take him seriously. I know he is highly respected in terms of his work but boy does he seem to have been absorbed by the Slate Pitch Borg.
Patricia Kayden
Where the hell are all of the moderate Republicans who want to fix the voter repression tactics of their fellow Republicans? Blood pressure rising. November 2016 can’t come fast enough.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: In hushed tones.
jl
For some reason the link opened to the part where Hasen said the substance of HRC’s proposals were excellent, but she is proposing them in a somehow too direct and intrusive way, and ‘too much too soon’, so Republicans will not support her on weaker reforms because their feelings will be hurt and they will be all offended and skeered.
OK, fine. that was enough for me. I don’t have time to read that kind of BS.
dmsilev
Assuming for the sake of argument that moderate Republicans still exist and have managed to escape the Tea Party Purity Police, perhaps these beings could speak up and say “yes, voting rights are important” and thus neutralize the partisanship of the issue.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a unicorn in my back yard and I have to trap the darned thing before it eats all the leaves off the trees.
piratedan
sure there are a plethora of moderate Republicans willing to work on sensible legislation for the common good Professor, pray tell me, when will they magically appear?
Corner Stone
Speaking of the center…
Our Chance to Capture the Center
By Martin O’Malley and Harold Ford Jr.
jl
@Patricia Kayden: I wondered exactly the same thing.
Baud
@Corner Stone: interesting move
ETA: Didn’t realize that was 2007.
Corner Stone
That is EVERY.FUCKING.REPUBLICAN.POLITICIAN.
ETA, and all the hateful bigots that vote for them, also too.
Misterpuff
I applaud Hillary for the voter suppression conversation. One, the village refuses to see it or comment. Two, it takes it right to the Republicans – All of them. And Three, best of all it reminds the base that they will be disenfranchised if they don’t get up and vote
Voting is the engine of politics. Hell yeah, its a subject for policy and Politics.
rikyrah
@Baud:
LMAO!!!
SiubhanDuinne
@dmsilev:
First, catch your virgin.
Misterpuff
@Corner Stone: Eight years ago. The lessons of those 8 years and the whole Obama administration and how there are no centrists or Moderates anymore may have sunk in to Gov. O’Malley.
rikyrah
It is already political.
He is whining because Hillary was going straight down the middle with something that is extremely American-The right to vote. And the GOP does not have a Frank Kuntz approved phrase that can pretty up denying people the right to vote.
rikyrah
@efgoldman:
I feel you.
Baud
OT. Via Newsmax, Fox apparently has a new show about Dick Cheney.
Tree With Water
As her wise and righteous defense of the the people’s right to vote has evidently disturbed Professor Hasen, how do think he would react were Hillary to speak in open, honest language of the Bush-Cheney plot to wage war? In the immortal phrasing of Alexander Haig, my guess is he would probably “break out in assholes and shit himself to death”.
Misterpuff
@rikyrah: They do, its “Voter Fraud” but the masses ain’t buying it.
Villago Delenda Est
Professor Hasen needs a good beating about the head and shoulders.
Corner Stone
@Misterpuff: Wait. People are capable of learning? GRTFOOH.
Zinsky
This Prof. Hasen is one very confused sumpfbitch. We shouldn’t discuss the surreptitious disenfranchisement of whole classes of Americans because the assholes in the other political party who are conspiring to take away these most basic rights might not work with us in the future?? That might be the most lameass excuse since Larry Craig blamed his “wide stance” while shitting for playing footsie in the men’s room!
cahuenga
Meh. Right up there with improved ketchup labeling and equal puppy petting rights.
Everyone who was going to vote for her agrees and everyone who who wouldn’t still won’t. Challenge us Hillary, please.
Baud
@cahuenga:
Ah, yes. The quintessential no-win situation for Democrats.
Corner Stone
@cahuenga: I’m not sure I understand your amusing analogy?
divF
@cahuenga:
But it is not necessarily true that everyone who agrees will vote for her (or vote at all). The point of her saying this is to energize people to vote, lest they lose the privilege.
Keith G
Hmmm. I think calling it a Slate Pitch is an inaccurate formulation. Professor Hasen writes for Slate, but is not on it’s masthead. Add to that that Hasen links to an earlier essay by Jamelle Bouie, a Slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race, which clearly supports HRC’s actions and reasoning. Bouie, appeared on Face the Nation. He was IDed as a Slate Writer and gave actual voice to his opinion that Hillary was correct in her comments.
Hasen has an opinion. Slate gave him, and others, space. It was not a Slate pitch as far a I can tell.
piratedan
@cahuenga: obviously that’s why the GOP is freaking out about her statements, they barely move the needle for a purity pony like yourself eh?
Bobby Thomson
@Keith G: Nope, they “gave him the space” because it’s a classic Slate pitch.
Shalimar
What the hell did I just read? He agrees republicans push voter ID laws for political advantage to keep Americans from voting, but Clinton shouldn’t politicize the issue by talking about the dishonest and unconstitutional thing they’re doing?
I think my brain just died from trying to figure out some sense from that.
satby
Whatever a Democrat says will always be too politicizing and at the wrong time (usually too soon).
and on another topic, I heard from Joy: “Bella is doing great! My mom picked her up this afternoon and Belle gave her the sweetest greeting. They missed each other :). Belle got her immunizations while she was boarded and goes back in a couple weeks for some tests. After the test results they will see if they can go ahead and schedule the spay and tumor removal.”
Edited to add: Bella was boarded over the weekend to start her heartworm treatment and be monitored.
Bobby Thomson
@Shalimar: Don’t spend a lot of time with it. Concern troll is concerned.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Show me just one of these theoretical “moderate Republicans”, for starters. Since that can’t be done, the task of finding one of these nonexistent moderate Republicans that could work on even one piece of legislation with “Hitlery Clintoon” without being murdered by one of their gun-toting constituents is left as a mental exercise for the reader.
satby
@CONGRATULATIONS!: and she didn’t accuse “all Republicans”. She accused the party and the three governors whose states had passed the most restrictive laws. By name.
Professor Hansen must fancy himself one of those sober, decent moderate Republicans if he takes her statement as “too polarizing”.
Screw him.
Keith P.
Even if this were true, they will always claim the issue is too politicized, so it would never happen anyway. It’s not like we’ve all been sleeping for the last 6 years.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
It just may be that he’s too old to catch a virgin. Or at least change that if he did.
Keith G
@efgoldman: I am not defending him, I think his logic is naff.
@Bobby Thomson: I guess that is possible, depending on definitions**. But tell me, why is it more of as Slate pitch than Slate staffer Jamelle Bouie’s earlier defense of Clinton? He is the one they pay to be a highly visible writer on their staff.
Hasen seems to be one of many freelancers.
**If you mean that Slate is choosing an article that challenges someone’s orthodoxy…if that’s a Slate Pitch then yes that is what is happening. I thought that was a good thing.
I took ‘pitch’ to mean an attempt to persuade to a different opinion. I do not see this a being a motive for Slate using this essay.
Pogonip
@Corner Stone: Gesundheit!
My German-speaking uncle informs me that the German for “have a good trip” is “gutenfart.”. He always wanted to reply “I’ve never had a bad one.”
srv
Omnes Omnibus
Show me the fucking list.
@Corner Stone: Good fucking god. Where’s Askew?
@SiubhanDuinne:
I live in a den of iniquity, now what?
Belafon
@Baud:
I like Neil Gaiman’s response to this:
Patricia Kayden
@satby: Nice to hear that Bella is doing well.
Ruckus
@satby:
Screw him.
Hopefully you are thinking of using a large, oxidized, powered logging tool to do this with.
Keith G
@srv: Stay off any:
1. Asian ferries
2. Libyan “fishing” boats
3. mountain traversing bus in a non G7 country.
kindness
Isn’t it about time for someone to be assembling those guillotines?
Zinsky
Another routine Third World bus plunge. No bigs.
The Thin Black Duke
I got something to say to these bozos who claim to be “moderate Republicans”:
Prove it.
Vote for a Democrat.
Otherwise it’s all bullshit.
Keith G
@kindness: Better hurry. After TPP is done, they will be made in Malaysia and probably a bit lacking in durability.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus: Shouldn’t that make it easier for you?
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: That is another way of looking at it.
sharl
Richard Hasen is a genuine expert on election law (Wikipedia entry, his blog), and as far as I can tell, a generally good guy.
But he’s completely out of his depth here. Unless and until he gets himself quickly up to speed about the nature of current U.S. politics, he should stick to the election law wonkery in which he excels.
Major Major Major Major
Open thread?
Part 18 of my big fish story is up.
Omnes Omnibus
@sharl:
This is all true, but, as you say, he is off his trolley on this one.
lamh36
I think I posted this video last night, but if I didn’t
This lil girl is awesome and she’s doing Re-Re’s “Respect” proud!!
https://youtu.be/y9vto-eWPaY
Corner Stone
I’ve always wanted to (metaphorically) punch this little blonde girl in the original Jurassic Park movie when she pulls out the emergency flashlight.
Mandalay
It’s not just dads who accidentally shoot their kids who get off with a finger wagging because they have “suffered enough already”.
It turns out that this overrated traitorous turd got off lightly in part because of testimonials from a Who’s Who of lying warmongers, including Lieberman, Feinstein, Graham and Blair.
They stick together like shit on a blanket.
Davis X. Machina
@rikyrah:
Yet.
We’re watching them getting ready to blame the demise of Obamacare on Obama, so I wouldn’t count them out. Up-is-downism as an art form…
Valdivia
@SiubhanDuinne: you said exactly what I was going to say. Isn’t that one of the main purposes of a den of iniquity? @Omnes Omnibus:
Davis X. Machina
@Zinsky: That’s our public-transit future. Riding around sitting cross-legged in the back of uninspected dump trucks. Because Freedom! and Low Taxes!
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: Okay, think of it this way… Once I find one everything is easy, but they are rare. Probably easier to find the unicorn first and let it find the virgin.
Davis X. Machina
@efgoldman: Sounds like Hingham-Cohasset-Scituate.
They’re striving manfully, a hundred years on, to avoid the contagion of the Irish, Portuguese and Italian hordes.
Voting Republican keeps them at bay. It’s like citronella.
Now if only they’d have nice candidates again, like Frank Sargent.
That Scot Brown person was god-awful.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: We’ll take the Portuguese and the Italians, but not the Irish.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Misterpuff:
And remember, Ford and O’Malley are just continuing third way policy…a Clinton creation.
srv
@Davis X. Machina: Thank god Kansas is flat?
Too soon?
Kropadope
@piratedan:
What I got from his/her statement was not a request for purity, but rather an admonishment for the barely-assailable HRC to go out on a limb for once.
Not all anti-Hillary arguments come from a perspective of purity. I, for example, worry about her competence, her deference to MSM narratives in decision-making, and lack of accomplishment.
ETA: BTW, I don’t count holding any particular office as an accomplishment. When one is in office for decades while accomplishing little, that’s good reason to anticipate further lack of accomplishment.
Omnes Omnibus
I am enjoying the Fritz Lang directed WWII movies. Loved Man Hunt – was nervous about it because I really like the book Rogue Male on which it was based but worried that they would take too many liberties with the story. Lang did not. Hangmen Also Die is pretty good so far.
Davis X. Machina
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Somewhere Ford is watching Barack Obama having what was supposed to be Harold Ford Junior’s presidency, and boy he is pissed.
It was his, dammit, not this jumped up non-entity from where, Kansas?.
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G:
That’s not what a Slate Pitch is. The Slate Pitch is like the elevator pitch for their publication. “OK, my big idea for this time is classic Slate. It’s so counterintuitive it’ll blow your freakin’ mind! Dig this: the way to make things more liberal is to act MORE CONSERVATIVE. Also, the real way to avoid sexism is to act MORE retro-macho.”
Amir Khalid
@Keith G:
Hey!
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Be honest. if you were asked to make a bus, how well would you do, sir? I call you out as no bus-maker. No bus-maker, you!
/Sideshow Bob
Amir Khalid
@Pogonip:
That would be “Gute Fahrt”.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus: I was going to make a smart assed comment but I will behave :P
jl
i was thinking that a big problem with this particular Sltatpitch is that if HRC did reach out to moderate Republicans who would be willing to cooperate on voting rights, they would all be Democrats now.
Elizabeth Warren for example. Moderate Republican, smart careful and thorough scholar who can get things done, practical. Very moderate. HRC can reach out to her! Slate would be happy.
I guess Lincoln Chaffee, and if he were still alive, Arlen Specter are two other examples.
I guess there are one or two of them still in GOP and moderate enough in the right way to reach out to on voting rights. Huntsman, maybe. But name a GOPer in office or with any power who will waste a second listening to that guy.
patrick II
@Shalimar:
How else do you create change in America other than politics? Second Amendment solutions?
Omnes Omnibus
@jl:
I read that as: I guess Lincoln Chafee if he were still alive….
It amused me.
Chris T.
Great! Name 143.*
* Or whatever the actual number that would be needed to actually have something pass through the House. The Senate is an even tougher problem, but let’s start with the more-than-100 needed in the House.
Omnes Omnibus
“Your mother’s were slimy rats! Their milk was sour!”
… from the current Fritz Lang movie in case anyone was wondering.
SRW1
@rikyrah:
I like what you did there to the Name of Frank Luntz. If only for the admittedly rather obscure reason that the equivalent to the American ‘Joe Sixpack’ for generic, nondescript persons in German is ‘Hinz und Kunz’.
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
Kind of kills the joke.
Omnes Omnibus
@SRW1: Most comments in German kill jokes.
dww44
@efgoldman:
The way I feel exactly. I guess I’m a partisan but I’ve been a lifelong Southern Democrat all my life and I never used to get so angry. But when this party, via ALEC, seeks to undo every institution that is necessary for a functioning democracy and undergirded everything I value, I no longer believe they will change nor will most of my friends and family. It took me a long time to realize that. They are not going to change. So, I try to turn that anger to constructive pushback. Like building a functioning Democratic party in my state.
SRW1
@Omnes Omnibus:
Germans are Nazis even to fart jokes.
Omnes Omnibus
@SRW1: In my experience, German humor is either enormously broad slapstick or so viciously biting that non-native speakers are unlikely to get it. Berlin cabarets had a reputation for more than half-clothed women dancing and singing.
Morzer
I do wish Ricky Hasen would stop politicizing politics.
Fred
Speaking of politics. I hear Bernie Sanders got 41% in the Wisconsin straw pole. Hillary Clinton got 49%.
No doubt Hillary will continue to dance to the left as Bernie takes a chunk out of her posterior. But if she ran on the Karl Marx platform would she bother to even give the left lip service in the White House. Gotta punch them hippies to be a serious person and all.
Maybe Bernie could actually win this thing. If he did it would sure put a sock in the “Americans really are looking for another Reagan” MSM BS.
Morzer
@Fred:
Rand Paul and his father have won an array of straw polls at various GOP functions over the last decade or so. It hasn’t meant anything in terms of their getting the nomination. I doubt that second place in a straw poll means anything other than you did okay in a relatively small field of possible choices.
SRW1
@Omnes Omnibus:
The first is certainly true, the second I have a hard time judging since I am a native speaker. I suspect, though, that what is known in Germany as ‘politisches Kabaret’ very likely quailfies.
Unfortunately, that was before my days. I have heard the same rumors. though.
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
I quite enjoyed the less than half-clothed women singing and dancing, but that’s probably because I am an originalist and culturally conservative.
Zinsky
@ Davis X Machina: You may be right. I didn’t mean to be callous, since it sounds like a horrible tragedy. I remember National Lampoon observed years ago that every few months, usually in a tiny 2 inch high column on page 13 of the New York Times, about a bus plunge in a Andean or Himalyan Third World country, that kills dozens. It has become routine.
Kay
Well, I really appreciate Hasen’s wonderful blog. I once sent him an email about a voting rights case in Georgia and he was responsive and polite and also posted the link I sent him.
For me it changed with Bush’s US attorney scandal. That was about pressure to prosecute people- ordinary voters- for “voter fraud”. That to me takes it out of the realm of partisan squabbling or ideological differences into something much more grave and serious- a threat by the state to individual voters.
In fact, that was the nut of the Georgia case I sent him. It was a school board election and the allegation was the majority AA electorate had gotten their candidate in using voter fraud. It was no joke. They were set to prosecute people. The case fell apart but it took years to disprove the allegations and they ruined peoples lives. Absolutely appalling behavior, and not “red meat for the base” but an attempt to put people in prison.
It’s too late to “find common ground”. She and others have to win.
Kay
This is the Georgia case I’m talking about:
This was outrageous what they did to these people. So, you know, the next time you hear about how this is just “red meat for the base” remember “multiple felony counts” based on absolute bullshit.
There may be moderate Republicans who get their feelings hurt but no one on the voting rights side is packing them off to prison for winning an election or voting.
bjacques
So systematic denial of voting rights on a national scale is the new normal that only needs “reform” and only in small amounts? Riiiight.
To conservative friends I’ve been running with the idea of voter ID, as they argue that many other countries, like Sockalist Europe, have it so it must be okay. Welp, despite state voter ID laws looking suspiciously alike, the variation in implementation by state and the frequent but not at all deliberate lack of infrastructure for processing the ID applications make for a messy landscape. Maybe a national ID is needed. Maybe base it on the SSN and, to make it easy to distinguish from other types of ID, give its number an easy-to-remember numerical prefix like 666.
As for “centrist” Democrats, the Republicans can keep running to the right while trailing a balloon labelled “The Center” and certain Democrats will keep chasing it.
Kay
@bjacques:
They’ll never do a national voter ID because it runs up against state power. The conservative position can’t really be reconciled with a national plan.
Kay
I have to say too, that it’s extraordinary that we now just accept that Republicans are suppressing Democratic voters.
Hasen admits that.
5 years ago it was a “conspiracy theory” and no one was allowed to say it.
satby
@Kay: It’s a given, but the upstanding strict constructionist real Americans© are ok with it rather than being appalled, because it’s suppressing the right kind of voters.
Matt
Or, y’know, it might remind said “moderate Republicans” (should they exist) that their party has been hijacked by racist god-botherers who hate democracy.
calling all toasters
If Martin Luther King cared so much about civil rights, he shouldn’t have racialized them.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Given that it’s a provable fact that Republicans have raised being assholes to a high art, it’s curious that these think pieces about politicizing this or that issue are always about Democrats, but never written about Republicans when their discourse toward Democrats is rude. IOKIYAR I guess.
J
@Omnes Omnibus: Don’t miss the Ministry of Fear and Cloak and Dagger! (I share your liking for Rogue Male).
SFAW
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Don’t you mean “Both sides do it”?
dmbeaster
@Keith G: The idea is that Slate will give space to any contrarian just for the sake of that, no matter how idiotic the contrarian stance. That seems to apply to the Hasen article. Even though a media outlet is not running the opinion as its own, they should exercise some editorial judgment and not just print any stupid crap.
Harry R. Sohl
Oh, really? Name one, bitch!
boatboy_srq
Hasen reads like just one more Republican apologist complaining that Democratic pols won’t adopt GOP talking points and policy planks, and that keeping their own policies and proposals front and center doesn’t improve bipartisan governing (by which they seem to mean that Dems cave to every GOP proposal without getting anything in return). Why exactly are we discussing this?
pluege
Hansen completely misses how US society works:
1) liberals point out what’s wrong and how to fix it:
2) conservatives (including their corporate media enablers) disparage what liberals say
nothing happens, or maybe the opposite of liberals want
3) liberals keep bringing it up
4) conservatives keep disparaging
5 to n) repeat 1 thru 4 ad nauseam
a) liberals keep bringing it up
b) eventually more and more people start to get the idea despite all the conservative/media axis of disparagement
c) conservative/media axis continue disparagement
d to n+z)) repeat (a) thru (c) ad nauseam
eventually enough people get it that conservative/media axis start to see the writing on the wall. This is the stage we’ve been at with climate change for a few years, but where getting pretty close to the liberal victory. When divestiture gets started, it’s game over – liberals win.
after more ad nauseam things actually change pretty much in line with what liberals said originally.
tell me that isn’t what happened with:
defeating social security privatization
obamacare (although didn’t get universal healthcare yet)
rejecting republican all war all the time
consensus that bush/cheney are lying dogs
same-sex marriage
eventually we’ll get it gun control as well – because liberals are right and the NRA terrorists are wrong.
HRC is right to push the dialog.
Lurking Canadian
Didn’t we just see this bullshit two weeks ago with somebody claiming the Republicans were just about to take action on climate change until Al Gore politicized it?
Cleek’s law is all you need to understand politics in the US.