April 9: Democrats Have a Clear National Position on Voting Rights. Republicans? Not So Much.
Some of the contradictions in Republican talking points on election law and voting rights are becoming clear to me, so I wrote about it at New York:
During the intense controversy raised by Georgia’s new election law, which included a negative reaction from Major League Baseball and a number of corporations, many defenders of the law have played a game of whataboutism. What about voting laws in Colorado, the state to which the MLB’s all-star game has been shifted? What about liberal New York? A lot of these comparisons have been factually challenged, or have zeroed in on one benign feature of the Georgia law while ignoring others. But it does raise a pretty important question: What is the posture nationally of the GOP or the conservative movement on the right to vote and its limits?
Not long ago you might have said that Republicans and conservatives were firmly committed to the view that rules governing voting and elections —even federal elections — were purely within the purview of state and local policy-makers. But that was before Donald Trump spent four years disparaging the decisions made by liberal and conservative jurisdictions on voting procedures whenever they contradicted his often-erratic but always forcefully expressed views. If, for example, voting by mail was as inherently pernicious as Trump said it was, almost daily from the spring through the autumn of 2020, allowing states to permit it was a Bad Thing, right? That simply added to the complaints made by Trump after the 2016 elections that California’s alleged openness to voting by noncitizens cost him a popular vote win over Hillary Clinton, and the widespread Republican whining after 2018 that the same jurisdiction had counted out Republican congressional candidates (whining that somehow subsided when Republicans did better in the exact same districts following the exact same rules in 2020).
And that was before Team Trump and his many Republican enablers spent the weeks and months after November 3, 2020, shrieking about state and local election procedures around the country, culminating in efforts to get the U.S. Supreme Court to
overrule state court interpretations of state election laws. Indeed, since Trump, his congressional Republican backers, and the Capitol riot mob were trying to block the certification of state election results by Congress on January 6, you could say that a major segment of the GOP wanted the federal government to impose its will on the states with respect to voting and elections.
And if the prevailing conservative idea is that decision-makers closest to the people should determine voting and election rules, then it’s hard to explain the provisions in the Georgia law (and in pending legislation in Texas) that preempt local government prerogatives decisively.
So what doctrine of voting rights does the GOP favor, other than whatever is necessary to produce Republican election victories? That’s hard to say.
Yes, at the Heritage Foundation you will find experts who more or less think everything other than in-person voting on Election Day should be banned everywhere. And now and then you will get someone like Kevin Williamson who will articulate the provocative old-school conservative case for restricting the franchise to “better” voters, which was pretty much the ostensible case for the poll taxes and literacy tests of the Jim Crow South. Unfortunately, snooty contrarianism isn’t a particularly helpful guide to the development of voting laws, and most Republicans (other than those caught in a gaffe) are unlikely to agree out loud with the Williamson proposition.
Until quite recently, most Republicans agreed that the jurisdictions that had for so many years discriminated against the voting rights of minorities deserved extra federal scrutiny and some additional hoops to jump through before changing their rules. In 2006, George W. Bush signed a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act that did just that, after it passed the Senate unanimously and the House with scattered opposition. Then a conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key feature of the VRA, and now it’s almost exclusively Democrats (via the John Lewis Voting Rights Act) who want to restore it. Where are Republicans on that idea? With the states and localities, or just with the states and localities where federal intervention in voting and election practices doesn’t inconvenience Republicans?
Whatever you think of Democratic attitudes toward voting and elections, at least they can answer such questions coherently. They have united to an amazing extent around highly detailed legislation (the House and Senate versions of the For the People Act and the aforementioned John Lewis Act) that generally expands voting rights and sets clear federal standards for procedures in and surrounding federal elections. The Republican response to these proposals has been almost universally negative. But it’s unclear what, if anything, they would propose of their own accord.
If the implicit GOP position on voting and elections is simply that such rules are part of the give and take of partisan politics and that both sides are free to play fast and loose with the facts and get what advantages they can, then I can understand why they are loathe to make it explicit. But in that case, people who care about voting rights one way or the other should simply choose sides and have it out.
> Bush and Cheney are increasingly desperate. So their
> rhetoric will be increasingly shrill and over-the-top.
> They have painted themselves in a corner with their
> scare campaign.
I think the Kerry camp needs to be careful in the final debate. They’re saying the subject (domestic issues) should favor the Dems, but a *lot* of observers are saying “Shrub” actually fared better in debate#2 than when he had to defend his failed Iraq strategy.
—
My fear is “Shrub” and the GOP will try to exploit the usual cultural wedge issues in the final debate, and Kerry will give some vague Dukakis-esque responses. Maybe they will accuse the Democrats of banning the bible and requiring men to marry other men… It’s what they do when their Iraq policy is in shambles, there are fewer jobs than four years ago and the federal government is drowning in red ink thanks to the tax cuts.
MARCU$
Mimikatz, you wrote:
I think that Bush really damaged himself with undecided women in the second debate. His demeanor in the first half was the sort of swaggering, cocksure braggart that most women detest. He was rude to many of the questioners, particularly the older man who asked about drug reimportation and the last woman, who asked about his mistakes. Women tend to be more attuned to social niceties. Third, the abortion question. Of course rabid pro-life women would go for Bush. But his refusal to understand any nuances to that issue, and his favoring the fetus at the expense of the mother’s health or even her life, had to make many women cringe. Expect to see Kerry rise a few points in the next polls because of this.
Posted by Mimikatz at October 9, 2004 05:22 PM
===========================
I absolutely agree.
All the talking heads need to pull their HEADS out of their collective ass and look around. The ONLY voters who matter are those in the middle who are undecided or persuadeable. If oozing faux machismo would have won them, they wouldn’t be persuadeable now.
Many woman respond very negatively to men to exhibit the behaviors of Bush, mainly because most have been bullied by some similiar sounding male all too often. They know it instantly as the boyfriend or husband who was always going to have things his way, and wanted to shout down opposition. Or the boss, or the co-worker, or the husband of a friend.
Bush had to have lost all women who were anywhere near the fence.
I am predicting that Kerry will gain the lead from the second debate and not lose it again.
We should begin to see evidence of it tomorrow or Tuesday.
I think that Bush really damaged himself with undecided women in the second debate. His demeanor in the first half was the sort of swaggering, cocksure braggart that most women detest. He was rude to many of the questioners, particularly the older man who asked about drug reimportation and the last woman, who asked about his mistakes. Women tend to be more attuned to social niceties. Third, the abortion question. Of course rabid pro-life women would go for Bush. But his refusal to understand any nuances to that issue, and his favoring the fetus at the expense of the mother’s health or even her life, had to make many women cringe. Expect to see Kerry rise a few points in the next polls because of this.
RE: Angry Man
Between the blatant lies and the anger Bush’s public persona is morphing from “Someone you would like to have a beer with”* to Richard Nixon.
*I am only quoting the spin, I always thought that line was a load of nonsense
Two points.
1. Bush and Cheney are increasingly desperate. So their rhetoric will be increasingly shrill and over-the-top. They have painted themselves in a corner with their scare campaign.
2. In each debate there was an initial effort in the media to prop up Bush and Cheney’s performances. They quickly abandoned the effort in the first debate in the face of Bush’s obvious stumbling. With Cheney/Edwards and last night the effort is more resilient, but has weakened after time as the consensus pointed out reality. They are the incumbents defending a sorry record. They are defensive and angry. They insist they are right and their defense consists of outright lies or distortions or browbeating. All Kerry has to do is sound reasonable and truthful.
Expect them to now go back to the August formula – attack Kerry with lies and slander. But now people have seen and heard Kerry. That swiftboatliar won’t hunt.
It is disappointing that with such a strong performance by Kerry (better than the first debate, although the improvement in Bush was enormous), the polls wouldn’t show Kerry with a stronger win. The press will insist that it was a draw.
Kerry FINALLY introduced the point that the whole ‘wishy-washy’ (but he was talking about flipflops) issue was a mere spin. He needs to explain that more clearly.
The questions were also really favorable to Kerry. I really admired Kerry’s frankness with his “it’s not a matter of if but when” response to the question about another 9-11, but he should also have been more specific about the history (unsure when the 1993 attack and the following attack in E Africa he alluded to was? — chalk that up to tiredness). In my own mind, Kerry’s substantive forthrightness in answering that question contrasts with Bush’s “And he put a trial lawyer on the ticket” line. The irony of the latter is that trial lawyers are often resented as people who profit by demagogically appealing to juries in an emotional manipulative way — just like Bush was doing in his approach.
KERRY HAS GOT TO STOP USING THE WORD “PLAN” SO OFTEN. He needs to sharpen his attacks on Bush’s policies on health care as for the corporate interests.. He could have left Bush looking like an ogre in response to the environment question. He should take the opportunity as he lays into Bush in the last debate on either tax policy for the wealthy and/or pro-corporate health care policy to give a good NICE AND ACCURATELY HARSH picture of Bush the worst kind of stereotypical big business Republican and go into at least three or four specific environmental policies. Kyoto ISN’T winning him any points with the mainstream, although I support it. How he has made backroom deals with corporations that even the Republicans wouldn’t pass thru Congress and then name SEVERAL NEW ones: mercury policy should be specifically described, as well as one or two other horror stories like that.
On jobs, Bush keeps citing the 1.9 million figure. That is his BEST(and only) year of job growth, after massive declines, and it’s worse than the AVERAGE year of 8 years of Clinton. That punches Bush down at his main point on that issue.
It doesn’t even keep up with the growth of the potential job market.
He was a little confusing at the key point on how he had been consistent on the Patriot Act — the issue of being a flipflopper and explaining how he isn’t is probably more important than the issues of the Patriot Act as far as winning the elections. Kerry focuses on the issues — Bush on winning the election. But still, Kerry had a slightly better demeanor than Bush and was MUCH stronger on the substance. He answered the questions and devastated Bush’s arguments. The polls should (have) reflected that — though perhaps the talking heads (with the conservatives insisting it was a big win for Bush and the liberals taking a balanced approach of a narrow win for Kerry) have an impact.
Lookin’ good for K/E, but I’m still waiting for an Oct surprise(s). Read the Atlantic Monthly essay on Karl Rove if you don’t understand my anxieties.
Bush gave tired excuses for poor performances. He did not appear to have a real grasp of either Foreign Policy or Domestic issues.
Paul C. is right. Bush came off like a raving lunatic for the first 45 minutes. However, I thought Bush got the better of JK on the domestic issues, where his folksy, simple-minded stuff came across more succinctly than Kerry’s thoughtful, but long-winded responses.
Most people aren’t smart enough to follow along with complex lines of political reasoning, so I hope Kerry can sort of sharpen his domestic stuff before next Wed.
Thanks for the news on independents.
Bush did much better this time than last, but I still think that the main dynamic of the debates is to demolish the straw man that the Republicans have constructed. Kerry comes across as reasonable and presidential. Which he is. That completely undermines the Republican attacks. In contrast, there’s not a lot that Bush can do to undermine the Democratic attacks.
I am sure that Kerry beat Bush by 10 to 1 among people who only watched the first half hour of the debate. What did his people tell him –“George, if you say it loud enough, people will believe you.” My favorite line was Jeff Greenfield “Mr. Bush, two words — ‘anger management.’
way to go, kerry.
why won’t the main stream media report these internals?