July 28: Some Basic Realities For Democrats on Voting Rights
Watching an intra-Democratic argument on voting rights strategy intensify in Washington, I offered some advice to both sides at New York:
There has been an underlying disagreement within the mostly Democratic coalition favoring voting rights that was nicely captured in this New York Times report on Friday:
“A quiet divide between President Biden and the leaders of the voting rights movement burst into the open on Thursday, as 150 organizations urged him to use his political mettle to push for two expansive federal voting rights bills that would combat a Republican wave of balloting restrictions … In private calls with voting rights groups and civil rights leaders, White House officials and close allies of the president have expressed confidence that it is possible to ‘out-organize voter suppression,’ according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.”
Both sides in this argument are partly wrong. Those who expect Joe Biden to force the For the People Act or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act through the Senate via some major revision in the ability to filibuster are probably expecting the impossible. Yes, perhaps if Biden personally and insistently and abrasively lobbied Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema to abandon her very consistent defense of the filibuster, up to and including encouragement of a primary challenge to her when she is up for reelection in 2024, she might decide her current and very insistent independent-maverick “branding” isn’t going to keep working for her. But Joe Manchin? He would be thrilled to get attacked by a Democratic president or Democratic advocacy groups for insisting that he won’t support voting-rights measures unless at least some Republicans support them. His state is so very red that the threat of a primary challenge to the sole remaining successful West Virginia Democrat is a laugher.
Short of a nuclear attack on West Virginia, it’s hard to identify anything Biden might do to Manchin that wouldn’t run a high risk of backfiring. And he does need Manchin on the reconciliation bills Democrats are using to get around the filibuster to enact Biden’s social and economic agenda. It’s just too bad voting-rights bills don’t qualify for reconciliation.
Yes, it is intensely frustrating that Biden cannot bring himself to come out forthrightly for filibuster reform, but it probably doesn’t matter since it is not happening unless the Democratic Senate Conference gets bigger, making senators like Manchin and Sinema irrelevant on the subject. So at some point voting-rights advocates need to focus on that goal.
At the same time, White House claims that Democrats can “out-organize voter suppression” are partially wrong as well. Yes, restrictive provisions like voter-ID requirements, limits on voting by mail, and even voter-roll purges can be countered and perhaps overcome by intensive efforts to educate and energize the voters Republicans are trying to keep from the polls. But you cannot out-organize a partisan gerrymander, or a law that lets election officials or state legislators overturn the outcome of an election after votes are cast.
Voting-rights advocates will eventually have to play the cards dealt to them by the system as it currently exists. That means refraining from too much anger aimed at Democratic pols who have little choice but to concede defeat on some legislation and concentrate on legislation (i.e., those reconciliation bills with many items vital to the people whose voting rights are also under attack) they can enact with no margin for error in the Senate and little in the House. At the same time, Biden and his staff and Democratic “pragmatists” in Congress should never for a moment be cavalier about the legislative obstacles they face in defending democracy itself. They may have to accept a tactical defeat on voting rights in this Congress. But they should never, ever, give up on making it happen later if not sooner.
Just a few comments on the Ohio vote, and the
exurban/small metro issue. It was interesting to read your comment about Kerry not doing as well in the metro areas of Ohio. When reading the analysis I did not notice any comment about the 20 percent reduction in polling places in Lucas, Stark, Cuyahoga, and Franklin counties. This is part of what led to the long voting lines in these areas. Also there were additional voting machines placed in the exurban and rural counties where Bush was strongest. These are external issues that must be taken into consideration when comparing votes to 1996 and 2000.
I am familiar with a lot of exurban voters and I can say that they did not become Republican after they moved to those areas or soley because of 9/11.
The citizens who reside in these counties moved
away from the urban/suburban area because of their families. They were tired of the crime, traffic, constant redistricing of their schools, wanted larger homes for expanding families that were less expensive in the outlying areas, and finally wanted to escape the city property taxes. When looking at the logic behind their concerns, a lot of it is contradictory, like better schools and lower taxes. But the fear used by the Bush campaign from 9/11 resonated with these voters. The Democratic Party must find a common sense message that will resonate with these voters. The Republicans have been far to successful at introducing wedge issues that put Democrats on the defensive. These wedge
issues sometimes do not even fit on the national stage, but our candidates spend time defending these issues. Issues like Gay Marriage, Abortion, Guns, School Prayer etc…. In my opinion we need a candidate ( governor) who has a background in business etc… who understands how middle class Americans live and can develop a message to resonate with the voters. If our candidate has a message and plan to take the country forward, then the wedge issues will not stick. The party cannot rely on Washington insiders who have voted on these issues to lead the party.
By saying this I am not advocating that we change
our postition on issues or tack to the right. It is not necessary to make those changes. Our last two candidates for President have come to the voters with a plan for every problem and end up looking like snake oil salesmen. The emphasis has to be on the direction for the country. The plans can be brought up when necessary, but not in every speech.
Actually, Bush made big gains in NYC, especially Staten Island (which went from 54-46 Gore to 57-43 Bush). In Brooklyn, Bush gained by 9 points (from 16% to 25%). As Ruy said awhile ago, Bush gained a little bit everywhere- but more in some urban communities but exurbs.
As to the broader point: Crewes’s view is supported by the gradual meltdown of GOP support in big cities (which indicates that people who were already Republicans have been moving away). In the first half of the century, even after the New Deal, Republicans were dominant in some big cities (Philadelphia) and competitive in others (St Louis). From the 50s to the 70s or so, Republicans were the minority party in cities but dominated most suburbs. Now, Republicans have lost inner suburbs as well, are are competitive only in outer suburbs (which matter a lot) and rural areas (which have flipped massively to Bush in the past two elections). If rural areas were as Democratic as they had been a decade or two ago, Bush would have been clobbered.
ttcrewes, you might want to look up the series on “The Great Divide” that was done by a couple of writers for the Austin American-Statesman this summer.
Basically, the writers looked at county-level election data going back over the past 30 years or so and found that the percentage of Americans living in “landslide” counties– that is, counties won by either the Republican or Democratic presidential candidate by a margin of 20 points or more– has steadily increased over time. In other words, there seems to be some sort of geographic-level sorting-out of political preferences going on.
Here’s a link to the series:
http://www.statesman.com/specialreports/content/specialreports/greatdivide/index.html
I have observed the growth of an exurb (Dutchess and Ulster Counties, NY) over a twenty-year period and I think the idea that Bush carrying such areas has significance is ludicrous.
The people who have moved to the exurbs from the suburbs and the cities are those who can afford the commutation and the 5-acre zoned homes. They are the bedrock of the Republican Party and always have been. The only thing they changed was their zip code.
Furthermore, the areas they moved to were often heavily Republican anyhow. Most rural areas outside of the South always were, and the ones in the South have been turning red for years anyhow in reaction to the civil rights movement. Dutchess County, lifetime home of Franklin Roosevelt, voted 2-1 for his Republican opponent in all four elections.
So to note that a fast-growing exurb county went for Bush is to note that the kind of people who like Republicans haven’t changed their minds. We already knew that. What we NEED to know is why the sons and daughters of the unionized workers of Canton and Youngstown failed to vote for Kerry in sufficient numbers.
So, assuming that the medium sized city hypothesis is correct, then some of the gnashing of the teeth on organizational matters and logistical difficulties of GOTV can be canned to some degree because the population density is still high enough that traditional Democratic GOTV methodologies can stay pay off if we can find the correct message/presentation to appeal to people? Correct?
What is missing from the discussion of the exurban new communities is whether when someone moves, say from Staten Island, which is part of NYC to Orange County, which is 40 miles away, does their political viewpoint actually changed? Were they a democrat in Staten Island and then change to a Republican in Orange County? Or are the Republicans in Staten Island just segmenting out to Orange County so that NYC is now MORE Democratic and there is no net gain for Republicans. Is this just a permutation of the evolutionary phenomenon of the Reagan Democrats, whose parents were Roosevelt Democrats, having Republican children who are who are now clustering in places where they can afford to live? I doubt that the exurban environment is exuding some weird influence on this demograph that morphs them into republicans. They were repubs already. Which is not to say Republicans have not made inroads in the last generation among upwardly mobile state college educated whites. It is just to say that such people, like most Americans, are choosing to live in economically lateral communities, which is no surprise. The problem for Democrats is not the rise of the exurbs. The problem for Democrats is the alienation of socially conservative middle class whites that started in the 1960’s in the South and has gradually moved Northward. On this particular issue, I’m with George Eliot, “Breed tells more than pasture.”