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.
I agree that this is unacceptable, yet it is not surprising. The old Democratic establishment does not want to reform its party “from the grassroots down” because they would loose power. The people would be in control, not the McAuliffes.
More here: http://www.politicalthought.net
With his habit of hurling epithets like “Republican lite,” Howard Dean is the best prime example of somebody who (in Nick’s words) “is deeply invested in restarting the DLC/liberal food fights” and would therefore be part of what Nick calls “the rump establishment.”
Dean has done much at the grassroots level and has much to contribute to the party, but he is far too polarizing a figure to be a plausible candidate for DNC chair.
It’s not a left-right thing really … what does that mean anyway? There are probably some “right” things that I could get behind. From where I am, a blue area in what once was a blue state, the party needs to remember its real roots — the people. Those inside the Beltway haven’t a clue, and because of that all they manage to do is try to emulate Republicans. Well, I’m not a Republican. And if someone doesn’t take this party away, far away, from that, I’d say it’s time for a true third party. Read Adam Werbach’s Nov. 3rd Theses (http://www.3nov.com/images/Nov3Theses_letter.pdf) for an idea about that. And forget about any nudges to the center. The party has gone too far in that direction already. And you know what it says to voters when one party keeps trying to look like the other party? That the other party’s right. And it’s not.
To me it’s completely about wresting the party away from the corporate/beltway leadership and building a grassroots party. That’s why I think Dean, Ickes and Rosenberg are the only acceptable candidates.
But really, I don’t think that there is any question that it should be Dean.
Except for being prematurely right about Iraq and bold about his criticisms of the Bush administration, Dean is not particularly liberal. He was part of the DLC at one point. It was however, his strong criticisms of Bush that got the Dems back in the race.
In this last election most of the volunteers on the Kerry campaign started in the Dean campaign. When his candicacy tanked, Dean started DFA, the organization raised $5 million contributed to over 700 candidates up and down the ballot and made a difference in some long shot and pivotal races.
What did Leo Hindery do in ’04? What did Wellington Webb do?
Moving left or right could pull in some swing voters is the classic political theory. But it’s wrong, most people are just not ideological. More important to the vast majority of people is: Does this party or candidate really stand for something? And that’s what Bush succeeded on making the election about: And more people thought they knew where Bush was coming from.
What the Democrats failed to do is to position the central question as simply: Does this guy have any clue about what he’s doing?
Those are the simple things that most people vote about, not ideological tests. And focusing too much on ideological tests detracts from the clear message on other items.
So definitely the most important thing is to stand up for something. That to me is the core problem right now – can one point at anything which the Democrats have stood their ground on in the past 4 years?
First , Kerry did not lose…the election was stolen through frudulent manipulation of the electronic voting system.
That said, Howard Dean is the only possible person to lead the Democratic Party.
We do not need to move ANYMORE to the center. The Democratic Party is already Republican lite!!!
It has to be Howard Dean…there is no one else articulate, passionate or honest enough. All this pontificating is diplomatic and appeasing but too corporate!
I agree with Nick Confessore that this is more a battle between an entrenched establishment and reform forces, with both sides having their fair share of both liberals, moderates and even a few conservatives.
Where I disagree with Confessore’s opinion is his suggestion that it is the OUTSIDERS, the REFORMERS who want to make this a battle about ideology. That may have been true a few years back, but my experience in the Dean campaign has taught me that the #1 reason people got involved in that effort was because they were sick and tired of Democrats rolling over every time the Republicans or the establishment media barked.
It had nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with testicular fortitude.
On the other hand, we have people like Al From and Peter Beinert who continue to frame the debate as one about ideology, as if they are the great defenders of the Democratic big tent against the crowd of pitchfork wielding radical lefties.
I suspect this may have something to do with where both Confessore and I are coming from. He is closer to the insiders than I am, so he can’t see what is so painfully obvious to us out here in the “heartland”.
“Pretty much anyone who is deeply invested in restarting the DLC/liberal food fights is by definition part of this rump establishment, since the distinction of vision between Democratic centrists and liberals pale next to the differences between the Democratic average and the Bush-era conservatives.”
I disagree. There a fundamental differences between DLC and progressive Democrats over, for want of a better term, economic populism that goes to the core of the party’s beliefs. While I would not dispute the need to shake up the party’s beltway establishment, that pales in the face of resolving what the party stands for.
I also thought the TAP piece presented a caricature of progressive Democrats, then and now. Gee, I remember when TAP wasn’t trying to emulate TNR’s rush rightward. Now with such items as this Tapped piece and the presence of people like Matthew Yglesias, I’m beginning to wonder.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way. From where I was working (for the first time ever, in a very red Florida county) all of the leadership and most of the effort came from DFA and MoveOn. I am shocked and infuriated that Kerry lost, that the entire national slate was beaten so badly, with a few brilliant exceptions. When someone suggests Joe Lockhart for chair, I want to scream.
. Top-Down or Bottom-Up .
I think that in addition to the Liberal/Dino conflict and the Washington/Heartland struggles there is the Top/Bottom struggle.
In the past the parties have been lead by the people on top, but with the Dean/Trippi group there was the start of a leadership from the Bottom. Many of us in the Virtual community are starting to suggest that it is possible to have a party that interacts with us rather than just uses the WEB as a way to gather money and foot soldiers.
It may be that this time the struggle for the DLC leadership is between those who want a classical party structure and those who whould like to explore if the party can really be organized as a Bottom-Up representative group.
If the Bottom-up’ers are represented then perhals we can develop the tools, community, etc. so that we can really separate the CORE democratic/progressive/populist… issues from those that are desirable or wedge issues, and then ofcourse proceed to properly frame/communicate these to the people who also believe in them.
It is hard not to come across as a sychophant, great post Ruy, I wish this could be fed into an amplifying circut.
I can’t say I agree. Since we live in an age where just a slight nudge to the center on a few key issues (partial-birth abortion? terrorism? gay marriage?) could mean the difference between getting a Democrat elected–both as President and to Congress–those small policy differences between Democratic centrists and liberals become very much personified, though they pale materially in comparison to the average Democratic views the Bush-era conservatives. Love the site and the book. thanks.