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.
Perhap’s Obama’s infatuation with Reagan gives insight as to what his plans are as to how he will president as President. From Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s History of Presidential Elections, 1789-1984:
Reagan’s political strength was similar to that of Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was a personal not a party, phenomenon. Without Reagan, the Republicans would be much weaker. The first major political event of the year, therefore, was Reagan’s decision to seek reelection despite his age. At 73, he was already the oldest man ever to serve in the White House. The Democrats dared not to make Reagan’s advanced age an issue; his evident physical vigor and unbroken record of good health made the fact of his age a matter for public admiration rather than concern. This admiration was bolstered by the presidents insouciant response to the shooting attempt on his life in March 1981. “I forgot to duck,” he joked to his wife. As he was about to undergo surgery for removal of the bullet, he’s wisecracked to the surgeons, ‘I hope you are all Republicans.’
If reporters noted that Reagan worked only five or six hours a day, spent long weekends at Camp David, and took frequent vacations, this too, was not circumstance the Democrats could easily convert into an issue. After President Carter’s long hours and studious work, and the earlier crises of the Nixon and Johnson years, Reagan had hung President Calvin Coolidge’s portrait in the Cabinet room as a symbol of his esteem for that Republican predecessor. Like Coolidge’s famous naps, Reagan’s relaxed approach to the Presidency was not only acceptable to the country but actually reassuring. It was as if the man at the top was signaling the nation that things were not as bad as the news media would have the public believe.
Reagan’s administrative style was not an accommodation to his advancing years. It was a continuation of the way he had governed California for eight years from 1967 to 1975. He viewed himself as a chairman of the board, rather than as an active executive. He delegated to senior aides most of his administrative power over appointments, legislation, the budget, and supervision of departments and agencies. He involved himself on a day-to-day basis in only a few issues. He was content to prove by broad policy direction and to serve as his administration’s most persuasive spokesman. A at the middle and upper levels of his administration, there were frequent struggles for power and for control of policy among Cabinet officers and factions of the White House staff. Rivals waged ideological and personal feuds through “leaks” to the press. These conflicts did the President no political harm; Reagan stayed above these battles, clearly unconcerned about any inefficiency or loss of morale that infighting might produce, and serenely confident of his ability to impose his will if and when he chose to do so. Since the huge expansion of the activities of the federal government had begun under Franklin Roosevelt a half-century earlier, no President had governed with such a loose rein.
Reagan was unfamiliar with the details or even the main issues in many disputes, both foreign and domestic. Indeed, the breath of his ignorance was sometimes startling. In October, 1983, for example, at a time when U.S.–Soviet arms control negotiations were breaking down, The New York Times reported that Reagan told a group of visitors that he had only recently learned that most of the Soviet nuclear deterrent force was in land-based rather than submarine-based missiles. Surprisingly this disclosure evoked relatively little public comment.
Like Eisenhower, but to an even greater extent, Reagan stayed politically popular by distancing himself in public from his own administration. Scandals occurred and controversies flared, but the President, not ever having involved himself closely with most of these appointees or the problems confronting them, was untouched.
Having been elected as an opponent of big government, Reagan said in his inaugural address government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. Once in office, he continued in speeches around the country to attack Washington and the bureaucracy. He faltered to believe that he and his fellow citizens were allies against the government rather than that he had been chosen by them to direct the affairs of that government.
Reagan’s detached style of governing, his distancing himself from his own appointees and the career bureaucracy, and his blithe cheerfulness and impertubable optimism was central to the political problem faced by the Democrats in 1984. Reagan was dubbed “the Teflon President: nothing sticks to him.” It was significant that in the fourth year of his Presidency there were no anti-Reagan jokes of the kind that normally circulate about Presidents. There seemed to be no audience for them. Politicians of both parties reported that many constituents disagreed with the President’s policies, distrusted his intentions, or questioned his competence, and yet avowed that they liked him personally. Democrats in Congress and at the state level were consequently reluctant to mount against him the kind of sustained attacks that had weakened other recent Presidents.
This liking for Reagan did not have the firm foundation of respect for past accomplishments that undergirded a liking for Eisenhower in the 1950s. Nor was there the profound gratitude and loyalty from broad masses of people that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s innovative programs had evoked. Still less was Reagan a hero who inspired emulation and enthusiasm, particularly among younger voters, as John F. Kennedy did. The liking for Reagan was a reflection of his sunny disposition, a reciprocation of his positive approach. It also correlated closely with the trend of the economy.
If this is what we are ion for, I prefer to pass and prefer the Clinton gamble. Obama’s handlers are filled with “hasbeen” Democrats who would love to govern by committee!!!!! In my humble opinion, Obama is no JFK, RFK, and is being used as a poster child for evryon’es dream of a real capable African-American politician which he is average, and is a coriporation filled with deception. His hiuse and land deal, his arrogance, and lack of content in his speeches are indications of status que bunk.
Professor/Dr. Neil Garland-We Deserve Better Than Average Presidents
I don’t believe Jesse Jackson ran in 1992. I know he ran in 1984 and 1988. The only African-American I recall making a bid for the presidency was Doug Wilder and I’m not sure that he ever officially announced or made it to any caucuses or primaries.
“E.J. might have added another parallel: Bill Clinton’s trump card in the 1992 nominating contest was his overwhelming support among African-Americans.”
One problem with that analogy is that “overwhelming black support” is a “trump card” only if one is a white candidate………..otherwise, if the candidate is African-American, he runs the risk of being seen as just another Jesse Jackson-like candidate, having an African-American base with support from upscale, educated whites and the young…
If I recall, Bill Clinton didn’t “win” the African-American primary vote in 1992……….he just got more of it than any of the other white candidates…….the “winner” of the A-A vote was, of course, Reverend Jackson….
I’ll be interested in seeing how Obama’s voter demographics change (or don’t change)as he is perceived as getting more and more of the A-A vote…