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.
Ed: A lot of what’s seen in these polls just confirms their limited use at this early point, especially when the nomination hinges on something as weird as the Iowa caucuses.
The nuance that Tiparillo talks about emphasizes an oft-repeated point that seems hackneyed but also makes sense: Obama’s voters, recuited by Oprah or not, are not good bets for caucusing in Iowa, and they will likely only turn out in NH if Obama has momentum coming in. Basically Obama has the Bill Bradley voting base, and I haven’t seen much from the Obama campaign that indicates they’ll be much better than the Bradley campaign at targeting them and bringing them out to vote.
Unlike Bradley, however, Obama isn’t so naturally strong in NH that he can use it as a firewall against losing Iowa. If Obama loses Iowa, he has enough money to stay on TV until March, but it would be an ultimately vain Bradley-esque denoument.
These polls say Edwards is doing better in SC. At this stage in the campaign, this can only reflect Edwards’s recent TV buy there. Polls really echo TV buys pretty well (see the inflated Richardson numbers in IA and NH). It’s more likely that Edwards has always had a fairly entrenched but small base there, that his TV buys haven’t moved him much, and that he is buying TV in SC to maintain what he has in case he wins IA and loses NH. Maybe he bought the TV to make people think he’s confident in his internal Iowa numbers. The same dissonance with polls is possible in Nevada, which is a caucus: Even if the only people who show up are HERE members, polls will inevitably reflect a much wider universe. (Maybe most importantly, no one knows who the Nevada caucusgoers are for sure, but there probably won’t be many of them, and it may not matter who wins.) In any case, the poll only tells a small part of the story.
Even if everyone realizes the CW is overreliant on polls, they are such attractive reference points that it’s impossible to put them in realistic perspective.
Iowa has always been decided by field organization and this time will be no different. Obama has always looked like a third-place candidate in Iowa because he just doesn’t have enough precincts and his turnout strategy is oddly Howard Dean-like. Thus he has an outsized place in the narrative of this campaign.
The most crucial narrative is the Edwards vs. Hillary battle on the ground in Iowa. Hillary has the decided edge here.
Once Iowa is over, the campaign finally takes shape in time for open primaries, and polls start meaning a lot more.
Tiparillo:
I was surprised, too, though it may be a good reminder that despite Edwards’ faithful channelling of netroots rhetoric, his actual base of support is among rank-and-file union folk and/or older Democrats who aren’t likely to be that attracted to Obama. From that perspective, it’s also not surprising that Obama supporters who perceive HRC as the ultimate blast from the past would prefer Edwards in a one-to-one with Hillary.
Ed Kilgore
Wow – I have a hard time believing that the Edwards voters will break that dramtically for Clinton.
My impression from a limited sample is that Edwards voters – much like the cnadidate – are not fans of Clinton at all.
But this poll is about New Hampshire in particular so…..