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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: September 2011

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira: Jobs Trump Medicare, Social Security ‘Reform’

Conservatives are still trying to get the public refocused on “reforming” Medicare and Social Security, while putting investment in jobs on hold. But the public isn’t having any of it, as Ruy Teixeira explains in this week’s edition of his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’:

Right after the debt ceiling deal last month, the public was asked whether creating jobs or cutting spending should be our nation’s highest priority now. By an overwhelming 62 percent to 29 percent margin, the public prioritized job creation. Sounds like a cue for serious action rather than small-bore proposals that won’t have much of an effect on the problem.

And fooling around with America’s two most popular social benefits programs is also off limits, as far as the public is concerned:

…The American people also have some priorities about what they don’t want to happen as Congress continues its deliberations about the long-term budgetary situation. By a lopsided 64 percent to 35 percent, they say they don’t want major changes in Social Security and Medicare included in future deficit reduction proposals.

It couldn’t be clearer, says Teixeira: “Create jobs and don’t mess around with Social Security and Medicare. A simple recipe for Congress if only they could be induced to follow it.”


Dawn of the Deniers

It’s not fun, but it is time to wrap your head around the fact that the presidential nomination front-runner of one of America’s leading political parties is also its most rabid climate-change denier. As the lead editorial in today’s New York Times reflects:

The Republican presidential contenders regard global warming as a hoax or, at best, underplay its importance. The most vocal denier is Rick Perry, the Texas governor and longtime friend of the oil industry, who insists that climate change is an unproven theory created by “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.”
Never mind that nearly all the world’s scientists regard global warming as a serious threat to the planet, with human activities like the burning of fossil fuels a major cause. Never mind that multiple investigations have found no evidence of scientific manipulation. Never mind that America needs a national policy. Mr. Perry has a big soapbox, and what he says, however fallacious, reaches a bigger audience than any scientist can command.

The editorial goes on to point out that the rest of the GOP presidential aspirants, save the Hapless Huntsman, have also voiced considerable skepticism about climate change as a major problem. When pressed, Romney goes all mush-mouth, suggesting that he probably knows better. Newt has done a 180 towards denial, but integrity was never his thing.
I know Republicans who are neither climate-change skeptics nor evolution-deniers, but they don’t have much to say about it. I guess they are either intimidated by the tea party fanatics, or maybe they believe, wink wink, that their candidate is just making appropriate noises to get through the primaries and will heed the top scientists once elected. It’s a risky proposition with candidates like Perry and Paul, who would have an awful lot to repudiate.
Conservatives like Huntsman won’t find much support for their concerns about global warming from the intellectual right. Organs like the National Review address pollution-related issues with bland paeans to ‘market-based’ solutions as the panacea or articles ridiculing bizarre examples of environmentalism, such as “Gaia vs. the Big Death” in the current on-line issue.
If the GOP deniers win the presidency and congress, breathing organisms could be screwed for generations. But cheer up, at least it will provide a promising premise for a sci-fi flick: What would happen if a cult of science-denying ignoramuses achieve global domination? Dawn of the Deniers, maybe.
Cynicism aside, Democrats do have an opportunity here. Asked “Do you think the federal government should or should not regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to reduce global warming?,” 71 percent of respondents in a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken in June last year supported regulation. The same percentage responded affirmatively to a question about supporting funding to continue enforcing greenhouse gas regulation in a CNN/Opinion Research Poll taken in April of this year.
Thus far, however, no Democratic presidential candidate has taken full advantage of the Republicans’ bull-headed stupidity on this issue. President Obama’s strategists should prepare a debate module, punctuated with a memorable one-liner to expose the dangerous idiocy of the climate-change deniers. The Democratic echo-chamber, such as it is, should parrot the one-liner ad nauseum until most reasonable voters are embarrassed to vote for the Republican.
Progressive writers have been very good on exposing Republicans pandering to ignorance about global warming and climate change. For our political leaders, however, it’s been limited to occasional jabs in speeches. But the time is now ripe to do more. We can’t give the Republicans another pass on this one. Too much is at stake.


Out of the Frying Pan

So Rick Perry avoided the ideological inquisition in South Carolina on Labor Day, having canceled at the last moment to go back to Texas to monitor spreading wildfires in the state. And the same concern may get him out of Wednesday presidential candidate debate in California at the Ronald Reagan Library.
This is an excellent development for a front-runner whose debate chops are less than well-established. It’s good to be king, as the saying goes. But it ain’t bad being a governor, who can cope with emergencies and generally look like someone engaged in real life, while your opponents are running their mouths.


Labor Troubador Inspires WI Workers to Keep Strong

Labor Day 2011 has come and gone, but the spirit still reverberates in Madison, where Tom ‘the Nightwatchman’ Morello tore it up in Madison’s Labor Day celebration at the Barrymore Theatre yesterday. From Andy Downing’s report at Madison.com:

Appearing here in his solo guise as The Nightwatchman, Morello, still best known for his work as lead guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, spent a bulk of his 70-minute set leading a rousing demonstration that felt informed by the same sense of purpose as this year’s Capitol Square protests. At times, the events even shared a soundtrack. Such was the case when the guitarist gave an encore performance of “Union Song,” a tune he first played in town this past February during a rally on the steps of the Capitol.
Elsewhere, Morello delivered solemn acoustic ballads (a hushed “The Garden of Gethsemane”), rousing foot stompers (“Black Spartacus Heart Attack Machine”) and throwback numbers both by Woody Guthrie (“This Land Is Your Land,” introduced here as “America’s alternative national anthem”) and clearly reminiscent of his work (“Union Town”).

In his profile of Morello, The Nation’s John Nichols notes that Morello would be welcomed to Madison this time by Fire Fighters Local 311 Bagpipers, who have been leading mass marches in that city, playing their “ancient instrument of popular insurrection.”
Mere reportage can’t really do justice to the Morello experience, which usually includes a fierce pro-worker rally speech (clip of earlier Wisconsin rally speech here), along with guitar rifts channeling the spirit of Jimi Hendrix in top form. No YouTubes of the Barrymore event are posted as yet, but here’s Morello’s ‘Union Town’ video featuring scenes from Madison, where he has visited to boost the cause on other occasions:

Morello’s visit was part of the ‘Justice Tour’ he is leading in battleground states under attack from wingnut anti-labor politicians. “They’re raising money for nonprofit media (via The Nation Institute) that expose corporate abuse and highlights union struggles,” reports Nichols. “But most of all, they’re celebrating the rise of a new pro-labor, pro-democracy movement that marches to the sound of guitars–and bagpipes.”
Now if we can bottle a little of that spirit for the next election…


Political Warfare Over Voter I.D. Laws Escalates

Ryan J. Reilly has an update on the origins and legal strategy behind voter i.d. laws being passed around the country. Reilly shines a floodlight on where they come from and what they are really about:

It all started in January, as many new Republican state legislators who had been swept into statehouses across the country in the 2010 elections started pushing like-minded legislation soon after they took office.
“These bills started popping up everywhere and what started as a trickle almost seemed like a flood,” Carolyn Fiddler of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told TPM.
Altogether this year, 20 states which did not have voter ID laws and 14 states that already had non-photo ID laws have considered legislation requiring citizens have a photo ID to vote, according to the latest figures from the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Of those 34 states which considered voter ID legislation, six of them enacted laws: Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
Many suspect some sort of coordinated campaign behind the voter ID bills. Back in March, Campus Progress uncovered model legislation published by the conservative group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Fiddler isn’t so sure they’re entirely responsible.
“I know a lot of folks point to ALEC and what they’re doing but what my experience tells me is that a lot of these legislators are influenced by their colleagues in others states,” Fiddler told TPM. “They say, ‘hey that works! Let’s try to push that thing here’.”
A few years back, there was a centralized group, the American Center for Voting Rights, that was dedicated to pushing the idea that voter fraud was a major threat. Now it’s more a loose network of conservatives who have used their influence at think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the pages of various conservative media outlets to push voter fraud as a threat to democracy.
The Tea Party is also getting in on the game, with a group in Texas playing a major role, starting an affiliated group called “True the Vote” that hosted its first national conference back in March. Speakers insisted that their efforts were non-partisan and that they wanted everyone to be able to vote.

As for the motivation behind the new i.d. laws, Reilly reports:

“There’s a lot of reason to think that voter ID laws depending on how they’re constructed could have a harmful effect on minority voters,” University of Michigan Law School Professor Samuel Bagenstos told TPM. Bagenstos was the number two official in the Civil Rights Division until he returned to Michigan this summer.
The VRA, Bagenstos said, “puts the burden on the state to prove that the change in voting isn’t discriminatory in purpose and effect.”
“The people who are proposing those laws say there’s a problem with voter fraud,” he said. “But since the overwhelming majority of voter fraud that occurs occurs via absentee ballot and not at the polls, there’s a very tenuous connection.”
Since the legislatures proposing voter ID laws don’t typically come out and say that they’re trying to stop minorities from voting, it’s usually much easier to argue that regardless of what lawmakers intended to accomplish when they passed the law that it would have a discriminatory effect.

Reilly notes that advocates of i.d. bills in Texas and Arizona are focused on weakening or gutting the section 5 pre-clearance provision of the Voting Rights Act, making it easier for states to pass voting laws that disempower minority communities. Attorney General Holder says the Justice Department “will continue to enforce the Voting Rights Act…”
Ironic that the conservative advocates of ‘smaller government’ are fine with increasing regulation and spending more taxpayer dollars to fund a “solution’ to the non-existent problem of voter fraud.


Wisconsin Uprising Still Key to Dems ’12 Hopes

Drawing from his Wisconsin roots, Tom Hayden has written a highly insightful guide to the Madison uprising and it’s relevance to the politics of 2012. Hayden’s article in The Nation, “Cheese, Brats, Beer, Polka, Unions! The Homegrown Revolution in Wisconsin,” serves as an informative companion piece to the excellent work of The Nation’s Madison-based correspondent John Nichols.
Hayden explains the damage done to Wisconsin’s public workers by Governor Scott Walker and Republicans in the state legislature, reviews the inspiring response of working people and then describes the current political moment and its opportunities:

Last week when I visited, the movement was showing no signs of abating, with several thousand demonstrating at the Capitol. The legislature will reconvene in mid-September.
The next target of voter recall is likely to be Governor Walker himself, assuming the movement sustains the energy to collect 700,000 valid signatures this winter. Already Walker is making nervous but thus-far empty gestures about sitting down for talks with his adversaries. Opinion surveys across the Rust Belt show majority opposition to repeal of collective bargaining. In Ohio, an even harsher version of the Wisconsin law is likely to lose when put to a voter referendum in November. The Wisconsin uprising has broken the momentum of the Tea Party in critical Midwest states.

That alone would be an impressive accomplishment. But there is more to be encouraged about, as Hayden reports:

This is a homegrown revolution, not one led or fed by outside forces or agitators in the grip of ideology. International unions and Democratic Party strategists based in Washington, DC, didn’t start the fight, but were drawn into it by their rank and file and thousands of independent citizens across the state (including players from the Packers). Politically active observers noticed the freshness from the beginning. Dawson Barrett, a graduate student active at the University in Wisconsin-Milwaukee, e-mailed me on the first day, saying “crazy shit going on in Wisconsin…this is escalating quickly…high school and university students are having walkouts ALL over the state to support their teachers and family members…. The governor announced the national guard is ready!” The historian Paul Buhle e-mailed from Madison on February 16 that “it seems (for a moment anyway) as if a new era has opened.”
This was a qualitative shift of forces exceeding anyone’s imagination. Only months before, the conservative elements of Wisconsin populism reared up to defeat Senator Russ Feingold, the very embodiment of the La Follette tradition. Tea Party-led Republicans were frothing against Barack Obama and the Democrats for seeming betrayals of their 2008 promises, and Feingold was among the fallen Democrats. No one predicted the governor’s overreach nor the cycle of progressive revolt that soon followed.

Hayden goes on to illuminate the unique cultural roots of Wisconsin’s protest heritage, exemplified in the title of his post:

These examples suggest an important clue to social movements: that cultural or identity factors play a critical role alongside those of class, race and gender. Wisconsin was a homeland for populist, labor and socialist politics among European immigrants a century ago. “Sewer socialism” was a description of the success of Socialist Party mayors, especially German ones, in my parents’ youth. On February 17, Buhle wrote: “As I moved along with the tight-packed crowd, late in the afternoon, coming out of the demonstrator-filled Wisconsin capitol building and passed the statue of Hans Christian Heg [[Norwegian immigrant, Union Army officer] toward the street, I touched the engraved lettering. ‘Fell at Chickamauga.’ It occurred to me that my great-great-grandfather, farmer-abolitionist Ezra Fuller, did not fall at Chickamauga, and that makes me a lucky survivor of another civil war.” (Readers’ guide: Hans Christian Heg joined a Wisconsin militia called “The Wide Awakes,” which tracked down slave-catchers before the Civil War. He joined the abolitionist Republican Party and fought in the Civil War, dying under Confederate fire in 1863. There are at least eight memorials to Heg scattered around Wisconsin towns.)
Not only was immigrant memory a unique factor, but can anyone remember the last time when the forces of law and order have sided with the trespassers in taking over government buildings for weeks at a time? The very legitimacy of Walker’s authority and legislation fell under siege after he threatened to lock the Capitol and deploy the National Guard, a unique moment in modern political history. The daily, months-long cooperation between the Madison and state police, firefighters, teachers, construction workers, students and homeless people far surpasses the momentary links between “Teamsters and Turtles” at the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999.

Hayden chronicles a marathon sing-along of innovative protest songs inside the state capitol and connects the continuing protest to the 2012 election, urging President Obama to play a more substantial role in encouraging the protests:

The Wisconsin drama is central to the 2012 election, as is the Tea Party Republicans’ broad assault on the base of the Democratic Party, and the state’s place in the Rust Belt electoral vote. Barack Obama won here in 2008 with a healthy 56.22 percent. But having beaten the respected Russ Feingold in 2010, Republicans hope to make it competitive in 2012. Wisconsin is also critical for maintaining Democratic control of the US Senate in 2012. Democratic representative Tammy Baldwin, a strong progressive, would become the first openly gay or lesbian member of the Senate.
Obama had been a regular visitor to Wisconsin until the fight over collective bargaining broke out in February. In a national television interview, he criticized the attack on labor rights, but he has been mostly silent while the drama unfolded. Many speculate that Obama and his advisers are concerned that too close an association with militant labor demonstrations will lose middle-class votes in several swing states. In addition, the president’s team may have believed that class war in Wisconsin was inconsistent with his negotiations to avoid default by achieving a budget deal with the likes of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan. For Democrats in Wisconsin, however, the sense of abandonment by the White House has been real, and could erode Obama’s public support in 2012. Even on his Midwest listening tour in August, Obama’s bus rolled right past the Wisconsin border.
“If Obama had come here in February,” says Paul Soglin, “there would have been 150,000 people in ten-degree weather.” Among many labor leaders, John Matthews, the longtime director of the Wisconsin teachers’ union who pushed the original February walkouts, agrees with the need for Obama to step into the battle.
As long as Obama appears to be disengaged, his support is waning in Wisconsin. He must resume his frequent appearances in Wisconsin, or send Vice President Joe Biden or Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. Walker’s challenge to Wisconsin Democrats is at the forefront of the Republican challenge to Obama. In addition, Wisconsin will be the center of a hotly contested US Senate race that may determine control of the upper chamber in Washington. “If Elizabeth Warren can beat Scott Brown in Massachusetts and someone like Representative Mazie Hirono wins the open Hawaii seat, Wisconsin will be the key to holding fifty-one seats,” Nichols argues.
Democrats in Wisconsin also need Obama, according to Nichols, to help mobilize the African-American vote in places like Milwaukee to supplement the white liberal forces opposed to Walker’s draconian budget cuts…

As Hayden concludes, “The Tea Party has thrown down the challenge in Wisconsin. Time will tell how well the president can polka.”


Gallup: Public Image of Unions in Flux

According to the latest Gallup poll, unions also have some work to do in upgrading their image with the American public, As Steven Greenhouse reports in his New York Times article “A Challenge for Unions in Public Opinion,”

…A slim majority of Americans, 52 percent, approve of labor unions and that the difference in views between how Democrats and Republicans feel toward unions has reached record levels.
The Gallup poll, released on Thursday, found that the approval rate for unions was unchanged from 2010 and was up from 2009, when unions had the lowest approval rating, 48 percent, since Gallup began this survey in 1936.
Showing a huge partisan difference in views, the poll of 1,008 adults found that 78 percent of Democrats approve of unions, while just 26 percent of Republicans do, the lowest percentage ever for Republicans.

Greenhouse’s article also quotes Jeffrey M. Jones, managing editor for Gallup, “This could reflect a greater politicization of union issues given the fact that many state-level efforts to curb union influence were promoted by Republican governors often backed by a Republican-controlled legislature.” Jones also cites “…a draw in the court of public opinion, with labor unions neither gaining nor losing Americans’ support overall compared with last year.”
Well, sure. But it could also reflect lousy coverage of the leadership unions have provided in producing virtually all reforms benefiting workers. Greenhouse adds that union leaders note that “the approval rate was 65 percent less than a decade ago…conservative politicians and think tanks have been putting out a flood of negative information about organized labor.”
Nonetheless, there is some good news in the poll in terms of the trend line:

The Gallup poll found a strong rebound of Democrats’ and independents’ views toward unions over the last two years. Approval among Democrats rose to 78 percent from 66 percent in 2009, and to 52 percent from 44 percent among independents…

But Greenhouse reports that the good news is offset with an 8-point drop in approval among Republicans, to 26 percent from 34 percent last year — up from 29 percent in 2009. This may reflect the GOP’s superior echo chamber.
It’s not hard to see a case for unions doing more public education in this poll. What may be less obvious is the challenge facing the mainstream media on Labor Day 2011 — to do a better job of reporting on the gains won by unions, in modern times, as well as during the last century.
Strengthening the labor movement is essential for empowering the Democratic party. But it is also the key to reducing the growing gap in income and wealth between working families and the rich, and for restoring the economic vitality of America.


Measures of Worker Discontent Offer Clues for Dems

Lyman Morales has an article up at Gallup.com, “More U.S. Workers Unhappy With Health Benefits, Promotions,” which should be of interest to Democratic campaigns and candidates on Labor Day. As Morales reports:

U.S. workers are more dissatisfied today with their health insurance benefits and their chances for promotion than they were before the global economic collapse. These are the biggest movers since August 2008 on a list of 13 specific job aspects Gallup tracks.
The findings are from Gallup’s annual Work and Education poll, conducted Aug. 11-14, 2011. The majority of workers are at least somewhat satisfied with these job aspects, which Gallup asks about each year, but often fewer than half are completely satisfied. On-the-job stress remains the aspect workers’ are least positive about overall, as it was last year, with 28% of workers completely satisfied…

According to the survey, the top sources of worker dissatisfaction in percentages include: job-related stress (34); pay (30); health insurance benefits (30); employer retirement plan (28); chances for promotion (26); vacation time (20); recognition for work accomplishments (19); and job security (18).
If there is anything surprising here, it is that job security doesn’t rank higher among the list of concerns, although some of it could be included in the nebulous category ‘on-the-job-stress.’ And job security as a concern has increased only 5 percent since the ’08 (pre-Bush meltdown) survey, compared to an 11 percent hike for health insurance benefits.
It may be that many workers have a sense that their employers have cut about as many workers as they can. Perhaps the main perceived effect of high unemployment on employed workers is lower wages, more expensive health insurance and diminishing retirement assets. In light of this view, ‘it’s still the economy stupid’ for Dems, which is verified by the most recent priority-ranking polls by CNN/ORC, CBS News/New York Times and Bloomberg.
In terms of political impact, on-the-job concerns may not be a leading determinant of political attitudes. Everything can be fine at your job. But if a family member or good friend is having a tough time finding work it, it might affect your vote.
But the Gallup poll suggests it can’t hurt for Dems to do a better job of addressing sub-themes like stronger protection for retirement assets, clarification of health reform benefits and payroll tax cuts targeting the middle class. Dems have long supported all of these causes, albeit with unimpressive message discipline and low amplification.
On Labor Day 2011, Dems still have work to do in convincing swing voters that they are the party that best represents the interests of working people.


The Inquisition

A few days ago I mentioned the Labor Day Palmetto Freedom Forum event for Republican presidential candidates in connection with Rick Perry’s problem on immigration policy, noting that America’s preeminent nativist, Steve King, will be one of the “panelists” in Columbia. (I subsequently wrote a TNR column on the possibility of a high-profile ambush of Perry by King.)
But totally aside from Perry and King and immigration policy, this event is a fascinating reflection of the obsession with ideological purity among conservatives at the moment, and of the success of the GOP’s hardest-core ideologues in positioning themselves in the presidential nominating process. National Review‘s Katrina Trinko has the rundown on how the inquisition will work:

The event, the product of a partnership between conservative kingmakers Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) and Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa), is designed to prod the candidates into going beyond their standard sound-bite responses.
“One question that I’m confident will be asked,” King says, “is, What are our first principles and how do you apply them? And, if you’re elected president, what would you change to better reflect the first principles that made America great?”….
Joining King to question the candidates will be DeMint and Princeton University professor Robert George, a noted social conservative and founder of the event’s sponsoring organization, the American Principles Project. The schedule gives the panel 22 minutes to quiz each candidate. That’s the same length of time as a sitcom episode, but King hopes that the combination of pointed questions and answer times that can be extended beyond the one or two minutes given in standard presidential debates will lead to responses that are more thoughtful soliloquy than one-liner. “If they are just re-running something we’ve heard before, then I think the follow-up question might come in a little more quickly,” King remarks.

So instead of a debate format where candidates are given 30 seconds to a minute to field brief questions from journalists, and perhaps engage in some scripted or unscripted interaction, the South Carolina event allows three of the most strident conservative ideologues in America to grill each candidate for an uninterrupted 22 minutes. And two of the three “panelists” happen to be large political figures in two of the first three major nominating contests in 2012. So pleasing them will be in the candidates’ interests not only because they represent hard-core “base” constituencies, but because their endorsements could have a tangible effect on what happens next winter when votes are actually cast.
It’s quite a power play, and unlike anything we’ve seen before in either party. Could anyone imagine the Left pulling off a similar coup? Yes, there was a Democratic candidates’ debate at the 2007 Yearly Kos conference, but it was in a standard debate format, moderated by the exquisitely civil Joan McCarter and the decidedly non-lefty Matt Bai–not an interrogation undertaken by ideologues wielding litmus tests and raw political influence.
It should be quite a show, and will affect the presidential campaign whether or not it produces headlines.


Republican War on Voting Exposed in Rolling Stone

Ari Berman’s Rolling Stone article “The GOP War on Voting” should help alert a lot of young voters in particular about how they are being targeted for political disempowerment by the Republicans. But Berman’s piece is not only about young voters; it’s about the GOP effort to smother the electoral power of all pro-Democratic constituencies. Berman explains:

…Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. “What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century,” says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.
Republicans have long tried to drive Democratic voters away from the polls. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” But since the 2010 election, thanks to a conservative advocacy group founded by Weyrich, the GOP’s effort to disrupt voting rights has been more widespread and effective than ever. In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process.
All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states – Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia – cut short their early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures – Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic – including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.
Taken together, such measures could significantly dampen the Democratic turnout next year – perhaps enough to shift the outcome in favor of the GOP. “One of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time,” Bill Clinton told a group of student activists in July. “Why is all of this going on? This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate” – a reference to the dominance of the Tea Party last year, compared to the millions of students and minorities who turned out for Obama. “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.”

Berman reviews the Republican’s bogus claims of voter fraud as a major electoral problem to justify burdensome identification requirements, encapsulated in Stephen Colbert’s warning that “Our democracy is under siege from an enemy so small it could be hiding anywhere.”
Berman rolls out the tally of voter obstruction in recent state-wide legislation in four areas:

Barriers to Registration Since January, six states have introduced legislation to impose new restrictions on voter registration drives run by groups like Rock the Vote and the League of Women Voters. In May, the GOP-controlled legislature in Florida passed a law requiring anyone who signs up new voters to hand in registration forms to the state board of elections within 48 hours of collecting them, and to comply with a barrage of onerous, bureaucratic requirements. Those found to have submitted late forms would face a $1,000 fine, as well as possible felony prosecution.
As a result, the law threatens to turn civic-minded volunteers into inadvertent criminals. Denouncing the legislation as “good old-fashioned voter suppression,” the League of Women Voters announced that it was ending its registration efforts in Florida, where it has been signing up new voters for the past 70 years. Rock the Vote, which helped 2.5 million voters to register in 2008, could soon follow suit. “We’re hoping not to shut down,” says Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, “but I can’t say with any certainty that we’ll be able to continue the work we’re doing.”
The registration law took effect one day after it passed, under an emergency statute designed for “an immediate danger to the public health, safety or welfare.” In reality, though, there’s no evidence that registering fake voters is a significant problem in the state. Over the past three years, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has received just 31 cases of suspected voter fraud, resulting in only three arrests statewide. “No one could give me an example of all this fraud they speak about,” said Mike Fasano, a Republican state senator who bucked his party and voted against the registration law. What’s more, the law serves no useful purpose: Under the Help America Vote Act passed by Congress in 2002, all new voters must show identity before registering to vote.
Cuts to Early Voting After the recount debacle in Florida in 2000, allowing voters to cast their ballots early emerged as a popular bipartisan reform. Early voting not only meant shorter lines on Election Day, it has helped boost turnout in a number of states – the true measure of a successful democracy. “I think it’s great,” Jeb Bush said in 2004. “It’s another reform we added that has helped provide access to the polls and provide a convenience. And we’re going to have a high voter turnout here, and I think that’s wonderful.”
But Republican support for early voting vanished after Obama utilized it as a key part of his strategy in 2008. Nearly 30 percent of the electorate voted early that year, and they favored Obama over McCain by 10 points. The strategy proved especially effective in Florida, where blacks outnumbered whites by two to one among early voters, and in Ohio, where Obama received fewer votes than McCain on Election Day but ended up winning by 263,000 ballots, thanks to his advantage among early voters in urban areas like Cleveland and Columbus.
That may explain why both Florida and Ohio – which now have conservative Republican governors – have dramatically curtailed early voting for 2012. Next year, early voting will be cut from 14 to eight days in Florida and from 35 to 11 days in Ohio, with limited hours on weekends. In addition, both states banned voting on the Sunday before the election – a day when black churches historically mobilize their constituents. Once again, there appears to be nothing to justify the changes other than pure politics. “There is no evidence that any form of convenience voting has led to higher levels of fraud,” reports the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College.
Photo IDs By far the biggest change in election rules for 2012 is the number of states requiring a government-issued photo ID, the most important tactic in the Republican war on voting. In April 2008, the Supreme Court upheld a photo-ID law in Indiana, even though state GOP officials couldn’t provide a single instance of a voter committing the type of fraud the new ID law was supposed to stop. Emboldened by the ruling, Republicans launched a nationwide effort to implement similar barriers to voting in dozens of states.
The campaign was coordinated by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which provided GOP legislators with draft legislation based on Indiana’s ID requirement. In five states that passed such laws in the past year – Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – the measures were sponsored by legislators who are members of ALEC. “We’re seeing the same legislation being proposed state by state by state,” says Smith of Rock the Vote. “And they’re not being shy in any of these places about clearly and blatantly targeting specific demographic groups, including students.”
In Texas, under “emergency” legislation passed by the GOP-dominated legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Perry, a concealed-weapon permit is considered an acceptable ID but a student ID is not. Republicans in Wisconsin, meanwhile, mandated that students can only vote if their IDs include a current address, birth date, signature and two-year expiration date – requirements that no college or university ID in the state currently meets. As a result, 242,000 students in Wisconsin may lack the documentation required to vote next year. “It’s like creating a second class of citizens in terms of who gets to vote,” says Analiese Eicher, a Dane County board supervisor.
The barriers erected in Texas and Wisconsin go beyond what the Supreme Court upheld in Indiana, where 99 percent of state voters possess the requisite IDs and can turn to full-time DMVs in every county to obtain the proper documentation. By contrast, roughly half of all black and Hispanic residents in Wisconsin do not have a driver’s license, and the state staffs barely half as many DMVs as Indiana – a quarter of which are open less than one day a month. To make matters worse, Gov. Scott Walker tried to shut down 16 more DMVs – many of them located in Democratic-leaning areas. In one case, Walker planned to close a DMV in Fort Atkinson, a liberal stronghold, while opening a new office 30 minutes away in the conservative district of Watertown.
Although new ID laws have been approved in seven states, the battle over such barriers to voting has been far more widespread. Since January, Democratic governors in Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire and North Carolina have all vetoed ID laws. Voters in Mississippi and Missouri are slated to consider ballot initiatives requiring voter IDs, and legislation is currently pending in Pennsylvania.
One of the most restrictive laws requiring voter IDs was passed in South Carolina. To obtain the free state ID now required to vote, the 178,000 South Carolinians who currently lack one must pay for a passport or a birth certificate. “It’s the stepsister of the poll tax,” says Browne-Dianis of the Advancement Project. Under the new law, many elderly black residents – who were born at home in the segregated South and never had a birth certificate – must now go to family court to prove their identity. Given that obtaining fake birth certificates is one of the country’s biggest sources of fraud, the new law may actually prompt some voters to illegally procure a birth certificate in order to legally vote – all in the name of combating voter fraud.
For those voters who manage to get a legitimate birth certificate, obtaining a voter ID from the DMV is likely to be hellishly time-consuming. A reporter for the Tri-State Defender in Memphis, Tennessee – another state now mandating voter IDs – recently waited for four hours on a sweltering July day just to see a DMV clerk. The paper found that the longest lines occur in urban precincts, a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act, which bars states from erecting hurdles to voting in minority jurisdictions.
Disenfranchising Ex-Felons The most sweeping tactic in the GOP campaign against voting is simply to make it illegal for certain voters to cast ballots in any election. As the Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist restored the voting rights of 154,000 former prisoners who had been convicted of nonviolent crimes. But in March, after only 30 minutes of public debate, Gov. Rick Scott overturned his predecessor’s decision, instantly disenfranchising 97,491 ex-felons and prohibiting another 1.1 million prisoners from being allowed to vote after serving their time.
“Why should we disenfranchise people forever once they’ve paid their price?” Bill Clinton asked during his speech in July. “Because most of them in Florida were African-Americans and Hispanics and would tend to vote for Democrats – that’s why.”
A similar reversal by a Republican governor recently took place in Iowa, where Gov. Terry Branstad overturned his predecessor’s decision to restore voting rights to 100,000 ex-felons. The move threatens to return Iowa to the recent past, when more than five percent of all residents were denied the right to vote – including a third of the state’s black residents. In addition, Florida and Iowa join Kentucky and Virginia as the only states that require all former felons to apply for the right to vote after finishing their prison sentences.

Berman notes that the ACLU and other groups are challenging the GOP-lead disenfranchisement campaign, calling on the Justice Department to be more assertive in fighting the racially-discriminatory ‘reforms.’ Berman cites a 2008 MIT study indicating that less than two-thirds of eligible citizens voted and “9 million voters were denied an opportunity to cast ballots…because of problems with their voter registration (13 percent), long lines at the polls (11 percent), uncertainty about the location of their polling place (nine percent) or lack of proper ID (seven percent).”
Berman believes “…Such problems will only be exacerbated by the flood of new laws implemented by Republicans. Instead of a single fiasco in Florida, experts warn, there could be chaos in a dozen states as voters find themselves barred from the polls.”
Clearly Democrats should not entertain any complacency regarding voter suppression the 2012 election, just because things went well enough in 2008. The 2000 election may have been the ugliest presidential election in U.S. history, with the ‘Brooks Bothers Riot,’ abuse of felon disenfranchisement laws and the shameless politicization of the U.S. Supreme Court. But the stage is now being set for massive disenfranchisement of targeted constituencies next year, and this time Dems should plan accordingly.