Trump's Plan

Donald Trump is warning people who plan to vote Democratic. But he also is warning all of us when he tweets

All levels of government and Law Enforcement are watching carefully for VOTER FRAUD, including during EARLY VOTING. Cheat at your own peril. Violators will be subject to maximum penalties, both civil and criminal!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2018

Eleven hours later, Paul Krugman responded  "If Democrats don't at least take the House, God help us. But even if they do, we'll be facing a nightmarish political scene. Republicans will claim that the election was stolen, and deny the majority's legitimacy."

Later Sunday morning

Journalist Carl Bernstein said Sunday that President Trump has discussed ways to challenge the results of the midterm elections if the GOP's grasp on power slips.

During an appearance on CNN, Bernstein said his sources relayed this information to him on Friday, warning that Trump has talked about a disruption campaign if the results are close but have the Democrats taking control of the House or Senate.

"I talked to people ... in touch with the White House on Friday who believe that, if the congressional midterms are very close and the Democrats were to win by five or seven seats, that Trump is already talking about how to throw legal challenges into the courts, sow confusion, declare a victory actually, and say that the election's been illegitimate," Bernstein said after being asked if Trump's challenge to fraudulent voters was a form of voter suppression.

"That is really under discussion in the White House," he added.

Really, this is the least President Trump can do to support his party's state-by-state efforts to suppress the vote of individuals likely to pull the Democratic lever(s) though, as Krugman  recognizes, it will go beyond mere claims of fraud.

In Ohio, voters are disenfranchised if after not voting in two consecutive elections, they fail to return a notice warning them they will be purged from the rolls.

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott has virtually eliminated the right to vote of felons who have served their sentence.  

Mindful that many residents of Native American Indian tribe reservations have only a P.O. box, North Dakota has implemented a law requiring voters to present identification with a current street address. 

Georgia Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp has purged voter rolls of nearly three-quarters of a million people, and absentee ballots are being rejected on the flimsiest of grounds, including a trivial difference between the voter registration form and government documents- or the signature on the absentee ballot.   

Dodge City, Kansas, most of whose residents are Latino, has moved its one polling site outside of town, more than a mile from the nearest bus stop.

These are on top of voting restrictions in numerous states, nearly all of them Republican-controlled, implemented before 2018. (Note inclusion of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. That didn't work out so well for Hillary Clinton.)

In an obscene display of bothsiderism, the mainstream media dutifully reported GOP claims of "mob rule" when Eric Holder said "when they go low, we kick them."   But he was speaking especially of voter suppression and gerrymandering, both reducing the impact of minority voters. Donald Trump has now told us what he and his minions have in mind if the GOP doesn't retain control of both chambers.  Democrats need to be ready, kick back, and not aim for the shin.

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A Man With A Plan

In late June, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski noted they "have known Mr. Trump for more than a decade and have some fond memories of our reltationship together. But that hasn't stopped us from criticizing his abhorrent behavior or worrying about his fitness," which they evidently believe borders on mental illness.

"I think — I think he’s crazy. I mean, I don’t say that lightly and as a kind of a goofy guy,” said Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) to Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), who clearly chooses not to disagree, in a conversation they thought private

Many psychiatrists argue that Donald Trump suffers from a sort of  mental illness.  John McCain recognizes Trump "can be impulsive in his speech and conduct," which is about as far as any senator can go in questioning a president's personal behavior.

Similarly, Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal Constitution argues the President "is not a man who picks his battles carefully or strategically. To him, conflict is not a necessary evil or a means to an end, it is his natural state of existence."  Benjamin Hart in New York magazine explained this perspective:

Almost eight months into his decidedly abnormal presidency, there remains a persistent and surprisingly widespread impulse among political journalists to transmogrify Trump into a traditional president, one who makes decisions based on long-term strategy, one not governed by pure id — a president who has something in common with men who came before him. (Perhaps there’s something comforting in that?)...

Waiting for him to transform into some semblance of a normal human being, much less a president governed by anything beyond impulse, will be a long wait indeed.

Donald Trump certainly is very impulsive and he may suffer from a mental and/or psychological disorder. But with all of that, there is a strategic element and a method to his madness. As Chris Hayes pointed out Tuesday evening, "the President has his own conceept of truth. To him the question isn't whether he's right. It's whether  many people are saying it." Hayes referred to Trump's interview in late January with ABC News' David Muir and an interaction earlier Tuesday when

President Trump was confronted by Mike Sacks of Scripps News Service, who reminded Trump that he has "repeatedly said that we are the highest tax nation in the world when that's been seen as objectively false, with the credibility you need to pass tax reform."  Then

Mr Trump responded by interrupting and claiming he was merely using it as shorthand and it might be more accurate to say the US is the most taxed nation among developed countries.

He said: “Some people say it differently, and they will say we are the highest developed nation taxed in the world.” 

“A lot of people know exactly what I am talking about, and in many cases they think I am right when I say the highest. As far as I am concerned, we are really essentially the highest. But if you’d like to add the ‘developed nation,’ you can say that, too. But a lot of people agree that the way I am saying is exactly correct.”

A lot of people know exactly what I am talking about... they think I am right... a lot of people agree with me.

The President's assumption is decidely and demonstrably false but the "everybody is saying it" tactic is a tried-and-true formula for Trump. Five days after he was inaugurated, he was interviewed by ABC's Muir. Muir told the President that Speaker Ryan had said "I have seen no evidence" that 3-5 million people had voted illegally and  that Senator Graham had observed "it's the most inappropriate thing for a president to say without proof."   However, it became clear that Trump was unconcerned with accuracy when he responded

Let me just tell you, you know what's important, millions of people agree with me when I say that if you would’ve looked on one of the other networks and all of the people that were calling in they're saying, "We agree with Mr. Trump. We agree." They're very smart people.

The people that voted for me- lots of  people are saying they saw things happen.





Millions of people agree with me... lots of people are saying they saw things happen.

Logic suggests there is a reason, somewhere, that Donald Trump thinks if he keeps repeating something, and adds that many people believe it, other voters will conclude that they also should.  This strategy did not appear to him out of  thin air for

Donald Trump reportedly owned a copy of Adolf Hitler’s speeches and kept them in his bedside cabinet.

A 1990 Vanity Fair article about billionaire businessman stated that Mr Trump’s then wife Ivana, said her husband owned a copy of “My New Order” – a printed collection of the Nazi leader’s speeches.

Marie Brenner, the article’s author, wrote: “Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches, 'My New Order', which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. 

Call him remarkably, even unbelievably, impulsive and mentally ill or emotionally twisted. Whatever he is, however, he has a strategy and one which has kept him extremely popular with a sizeable minority of American voters.




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Republicans Know How To Win

Through tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's phone calls, declassifed in 2013, we learned of Lyndon Johnson's chicanery, Richard Nixon's utter disregard for his country, and Hubert Humphrey's extraordinary integrity.  More significantly- at this moment- the 2013 article from BBC News throws some light onto the upcoming presidential election. David Taylor wrote

It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.

He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.

At a July meeting in Nixon's New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault.

In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.

Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.

So on the eve of his planned announcement of a halt to the bombing, Johnson learned the South Vietnamese were pulling out.

He was also told why. The FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and a transcripts of Anna Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the ambassador to "just hang on through election."

(President Johnson found out but divulged the information only to Democratic nominee Humphrey because the information had been gleaned solely from the FBI wiretap of the South Vietnamese ambassador. Humphrey, having been told he would win the election, withheld the information because it would disrupt the country. Nixon won by less than 1% and as President expanded the war.)

Fast-forward 12 years to the events of 1980, which investigator Robert Parry wrote about five days ago under the headline "The Modern History of 'Rigged' US Elections."  He explained

President Jimmy Carter was seeking reelection and trying to negotiate release of 52 American hostages then held in revolutionary Iran. Ronald Reagan’s campaign feared that Carter might pull off an “October Surprise” by bringing home the hostages just before the election. So, this historical mystery has been: Did Reagan’s team take action to block Carter’s October Surprise?

The testimonial and documentary evidence that Reagan’s team did engage in a secret operation to prevent Carter’s October Surprise is now almost as overwhelming as the proof of the 1968 affair regarding Nixon’s Paris peace talk maneuver.

That evidence indicates that Reagan’s campaign director William Casey organized a clandestine effort to prevent the hostages’ release before Election Day, after apparently consulting with Nixon and Kissinger and aided by former CIA Director George H.W. Bush, who was Reagan’s vice presidential running mate.

By early November 1980, the public’s obsession with Iran’s humiliation of the United States and Carter’s inability to free the hostages helped turn a narrow race into a Reagan landslide. When the hostages were finally let go immediately after Reagan’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981, his supporters cited the timing to claim that the Iranians had finally relented out of fear of Reagan.

Bolstered by his image as a tough guy, Reagan enacted much of his right-wing agenda, including passing massive tax cuts benefiting the wealthy, weakening unions and creating the circumstances for the rapid erosion of the Great American Middle Class.

Behind the scenes, the Reagan administration signed off on secret arms shipments to Iran, mostly through Israel, what a variety of witnesses described as the payoff for Iran’s cooperation in getting Reagan elected and then giving him the extra benefit of timing the hostage release to immediately follow his inauguration.

We know that Trump operative and career dirty trickster Roger Stone contended on August 8, 2016 that he has "actually communicated" with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has leaked DNC e-mails which the intelligence community has strongly suggested were hacked by force(s) associated witht the Russian government.  But even five days ago Parry himself did not make the connection that, according to Michael Crowley, Senator Harry

Reid himself has led the charge since late August, when he sent Comey an open letter imploring the FBI to investigate what he called “evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.” That letter cited a Trump campaign adviser who traveled to Moscow in July and who, according to Reid, “met with high-ranking sanctioned individuals” there. That was almost surely a reference to Carter Page, an investment banker who has worked in Moscow and whom Trump has publicly named as a foreign adviser. Page has denied meeting with sanctioned Kremlin officials in Moscow, where he delivered economic remarks at a think tank. The Trump campaign says Carter plays a minimal advisory role.

History, it is claimed, repeats itself. Still, neither Taylor, Parry, or Politico's Crowley even mentioned the Brooks Brothers' riot which stopped vote counting in Miami-Dade County, Florida in 2000 nor in 2004 vote switching, pre-punched ballots, voter suppression, and hacking of the touchscreen voting machines in Ohio by controllers of the SmarTech computers.

Donald Trump whines about the election being "rigged" and diverts attention from GOP voter suppression. But through the decades, the Republican Party has practiced in close elections a a subtler, more sophisticated, and more realistic effort to subvert the election process than he imagines.

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Rigging Not Easy, Even For GOP

Josh Levitt of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles found that of approximately one billion ballots cast in federal, state, and local elections from 2000 to 2014, there were 31 instances of possible voter impersonation fraud.   And he believes

some of the 31 will end up debunked: a problem with matching people from one big computer list to another, or a data entry error, or confusion between two different people with the same name, or someone signing in on the wrong line of a pollbook.

But facts are for losers and some Democrats. Politico's Kyle Cheney reports

Interviews with more than two dozen members of the Republican National Committee reveal abiding fears of Democratic voting fraud and widespread belief that at least part of the process or outcome is rigged....

Not all of the RNC members who spoke with POLITICO believe the election is rigged. Some contend Trump is wrong about the scale of the conspiracy he describes and others believe he should be targeting his ire at the media, which, they believe, are indeed conspiring against him.

But rather than knock down Trump’s claims, most lauded his focus on ballot integrity and pointed to instances of what they say is fraudulent voter registration as proof that he may be onto something.

With numerous anecdotes embedding themselves into the paranoic virus infecting Republican brains

Only a handful of RNC members expressed confidence in their own states’ ability to police voter fraud or noted that overwhelming evidence suggests such fraud is rare and inconsequential.

If there is any rigging going on, it's not likely it's the Democratic Party. Think Progress' Josh Israel notes

In all, 29 states have GOP-controlled elections processes, representing 302 electoral votes. 17 states and the District of Columbia have a Democratic-controlled process, representing just 173 electors. The remaining 4 states, with a total of 63 electoral votes, have bipartisan boards.

In some states, the GOP throws its weight around. Three months ago, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down a North Carolina law which, The Washington Post explained at the time, included "requiring residents to show identification before they can cast a ballot, the law also eliminated same-day voter registration, eliminated seven days of early voting and put an end to out-of-precinct voting." The judges

found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. "This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)," the judges wrote.

So the legislators made it so that the only acceptable forms of voter identification were the ones disproportionately used by white people. "With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans," the judges wrote. "The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess."

In particular, the court found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. "This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)," the judges wrote.

So the legislators made it so that the only acceptable forms of voter identification were the ones disproportionately used by white people. "With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans," the judges wrote. "The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess."

Voter identification requirements are particularly popular among GOP politicians and the base but

The data also showed that black voters were more likely to make use of early voting — particularly the first seven days out of North Carolina's 17-day voting period. So lawmakers eliminated these seven days of voting. "After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days," the court found.

Most strikingly, the judges point to a "smoking gun" in North Carolina's justification for the law, proving discriminatory intent. The state argued in court that "counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black" and "disproportionately Democratic," and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result.

The federal court sitting in Richmond, Va. clearly observed

the primary purpose of North Carolina's wasn't to stop voter fraud, but rather to disenfranchise minority voters. The judges found that the provisions "target African Americans with almost surgical precision."

“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places- SAD," Donald Trump has tweeted.  However, the only sad thing is that Trump sees a broken system (image above from Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2012, that below from Nationald Election Defense Coaliton) and blames the victims, rather than the victimizers- which is one of the things his campaign is about.  

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Rigging

Volunteer to be a Trump Election Observer. Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election! 

So reads the Donald J. Trump for President website. On October 1 in Manheim, Pennsylvania he put meat on those bones when he told an adoring crowd in Manheim, Pennsylvania

You’ve got to go out. You’ve got to go out. And you’ve got to get your friends. And you’ve got to get everyone you know. And you got to watch your polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania. Certain areas. I hear too many bad stories, and we can’t lose an election because of you know what I’m talking about.

Certain areas?  Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani made clear on CNN's "State of the Union" that he wasn't talking about Fulton County, Pennsylvania. Rather

There are -- there are -- there are a few places, and not many in the swing states, there are a few places where they have been notorious for stealing votes, Pennsylvania, Chicago. There have been places where a lot of cheating has gone on over the years.

I know that from my own knowledge of bussing people in from Camden. When I ran for mayor of New York City the first time, some people voted eight and 10 times. And the second time, I had -- I had firefighters and police officers outside checking on the buses, so we take down the number of the bus. The bus had voted 10 times. And then we wouldn't let the bus vote again. 





Sure he did. If any of this resulted in charges, let alone convictions, Giuliani didn't mention it, and soemone would have noticed. Of course, if they're allowing buses to vote in New York City- let alone 10 times- the city has far greater problems than Giuliani's voter fraud hallucinations. But maybe the media wouldn't report the prosecution of such culprits because, as Giuliani remarked

You can find just as many wacko nuts on her side that write us horrible and awful things. So, when he talks about a rigged election, he's not talking about the fact that it's going to be rigged at the polls. What he's talking about is that 80 percent to 85 percent of the media is against him, that when you look at "The New York Times," when you pick it up every morning, on the top of the paper, there are three stories that are anti-Trump, some of them totally baseless, some of some silly.

The fact that it's going to be rigged at the polls. It seems that Giuliani is all in with the Trump theory of rigged eleections, rigged debates, rigged media, and rigged voting, with vigilante poll watchers the remedy.  "It's pitchforks and  torches time," warns another of Trump's surrogates, Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.  Just don't call the likes of Clarke and Giuliani "deplorable."

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Chuck Political Correctness And Challenge Trump

There are several questions which need to be posed to Hillary Clinton.

She ought to be asked why she opposes the Trans Pacific Partnership, which she had periodically praised, once as "the gold standard." However, she already has stated, plausibly though arguably, that she reversed course once its details had been negotiated.

Mrs. Clinton should be queried about her campaign's interest in an endorsement- or some sort of vote of confidence- from the likes of George Schultz, James ("F_ _ _ the Jews") Baker, Condoleezza Mushroom Cloud Rice, and Henry Kissinger. However, she could write off support from any of those individuals as recognition that the brazenly unqualified Trump should not get his hands on the "nuclear codes."

It is stunning, or should be, that the Democratic candidate never has been asked when she dropped her support of President Bill Clinton's "safe, legal, and rare" approach to abortion in favor of a safe and legal approach.  Presumably, though, her support for the earlier test has been undermined by GOP efforts in numerous states to force a woman to jump through hoops to control her own body.

There are, though, two criticial questions now begging be asked of Donald Trump, who Friday claimed at a rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania

The only way we can lose, in my opinion — I really mean this, Pennsylvania is if cheating goes on and we have to call up law enforcement and we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everyone watching because if we get cheated out of this election, if we get cheated out of a win in Pennsylvania, which is such a vital state especially when I know what is happening here. She can’t beat what’s happening here. The only way they can beat it in my opinion, and I mean this 100 percent, if in certain sections of the state they cheat.

Grump appears to be laying the groundwork for denying the legitimacy of the election, and presidency, of Hillary Clinton if she is elected in November.  The GOP never has fully accepted the legitimacy of President Barack Hussein Obama and signs indicate, that there would be less acceptance among Republicans of Mrs. Clinton's approval by the electorate.

Yet there is another critical question which Trump has practically begged be asked:  What are these "certain sections" of which he speaks?

It's not as if we don't know, especially as Grump specified Pennsylvania, in which Democrats have won state and federal elections only by piling up huge majorities in Philadelphia with its large black population.  Voter suppression (map from the Brennan Center) continues in numerous states while many Republican voters believe, facts be damned, that some individuals cast numerous votes in the same election. (CNN's Michael Smerconish Saturday morning said that if pressed, Trump will cite the hpyed-up November, 2008 New Black Panthers incident, in which ominous-looking black males in uniform hung out at a polling place in a precinct in West Philadelphia in which fewer than 90 of 1500 registered voters were Republicans.)

It's no coincidence that it was in Pennsylvania where a prominent Republican state legislator in June, 2012 boasted "Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it's done. First pro-life legislation-a abortion facility regulations- in 22 years,done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done."

Ask Donald Grump what "certain sections" he was referring to. Ask, too, Paul Ryan, comfortable with supporting for President of the USA someone he considers racist, if he believes Democrats may rig the results in Pennsylvania.  Or the media can sidestep the issue of race, save Trump the discomfort of challenging him on his remarks, and thereby save him by an unintended exercise of political correctness.




 

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Lee Atwater Lives

The presidential election of 2000 may be considered the apex of voting fraud.   It was encouraged by the government of the State of Florida, presided over by the brother of the presidential candidate who failed to gain a plurality of votes nationwide or even of that state, and endorsed by the US Supreme Court, five of whose members voted to make George W. Bush President.

But it lives on, disguised (barely) as voter suppression. It almost has become second nature to Republicans, it seems, when it is practiced even when they are almost sure to win, as in the race between Mitch McConnell and Allison Lundergran-Grimes.  Salon's Luke Brinker finds

Mailed in envelopes that blare “ELECTION VIOLATION NOTICE” and state “You are at risk of acting on fraudulent information,” the Kentucky Republican Party issued a letter that accuses Grimes of “blatant lies” about McConnell’s advocacy for a local coal plant and his support from “anti-coal activists like Michael Bloomberg.” The letter also takes Grimes to task for her support among “anti-coal and anti-gun” Hollywood celebrities and accuses her of hypocrisy in her call for an increased minimum wage because a restaurant owned by her family pays employees less than the minimum.

“This document serves as a notification to you, as a resident of Kentucky and a registered voter in the aforementioned Commonwealth, of fraudulent information that is being deliberately spread to voters in your area,” the mailer reads.

“This information is provided as a public service,” the letter concludes.

We may be plunging to new lows when the worst description of this- by a Democratic operative, no less- is "questionable and possibly illegal voter suppression tactics." Fourteen years after a presidential election was stolen, little has changed.

Subtlety is not highly valued in some quarters.  Recently, Don Natinsky, a candidate for Dallas County (Texas) judge, contended "I don’t see the connection between spending food stamps on food and voting.”

He doesn't see the connection now, after it has been revealed that a year ago at the Coppell Republican Club

“We don’t want to motivate her voters,” Natinsky said of Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson in the appearance. “What we want them to think is: ‘There’s no reason. She doesn’t have an opponent. I don’t need to go to the polls. I’ll go spend my food stamp money at the grocery store, or whatever, you know, on Election Day.’”

No Connection Natinsky knew better than to own up to the comment, which might represent some, minor improvement in race relations or at least in diplomacy, just as Lee Atwater projected.  While working in the White House of President Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6), Atwater (in)famously laid out (video of audio, below, from The Nation) GOP's long range, grand strategy when he explained

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”











The previous year, Saint Reagan (though not yet canonized) had become the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were assassinated in 1964. That made the Republican heartthrob the first presidential candidate to declare "I believe in states' rights" to the delight of the Neshoba County crowd, which knew whom he was talking about, whom the audience did not usually refer to as "black" or "Negro," though the letter "n" was the first letter used.

Lee Atwater was on to something. Reagan-style hostility to minorities just wouldn't work today. Now, it needs to be something akin to the New Georgia Project, registering hundreds of thousands of individuals in a state with a hotly contested gubernatorial and US Senate election, learning that the Georgia Secretary of State has chosen not to process some 50,000 applications.  Or in Iowa, where the Republican National Committee is on Facebook warning (image below, from Facebook via Think Progress) "In a few months, Iowan will release the list of individuals who voted in this election" with, as Think Progress notes, "an aerial view of a neighborhood with check marks indicating 'These People Voted GOP.'"

When the political party has been advocating for decades policies designed to drive the middle class into extinction, and now faces a demographic time bomb, it can modify its approach to issues or appeal to the groups growing in number. Or, as the Repub Party has chosen, it can dance with the devil.



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If Perception Were Reality, It Wouldn't Be Perception

On  Real Time Friday night, Bill Maher carried the torch (video, below) for the right to vote.   He began by arguing that individuals such as Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich are "worst racists" than Paula Deen and practice "real racism." He went on to refer to a piece by 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Eric Posner in which the Judge noted that Chief Justice Roberts in his majority opinion struck down Section IV of the Voting Rights Act on the basis of "the principle of equal sovereignty." Posner described that as "a principle of constitutional law of which I had never heard (because) there is no such principle."

Noting that Posner stated "the opinion rests on air," Maher remaarked "In other words, Justice Roberts just pulled [it] out of his ass."    Conservative commentator Horace Cooper responded in part

There is no just Voting Rights Act enforcement law that doesn’t single out places like Chicago and Philadelphia for voter fraud.   By the way, the people that are losing their rights in Philadelphia and Chicago tend to be overwhelmingly Black, and Democrat. It’s not about race, it’s about it not serving the political needs of the administration to go after those ‘Blue state’ jurisdictions. It’s much better to go after the ‘Red states.

The Chief Justice has nothing on Horace Cooper for pulling things out of his ass.   Whether extensive voting fraud exists is arguable, and a complicated proposition.  But Cooper- as with most Republicans- refers to voter fraud, typically in big cities with large minority populations. That simply does not exist.   In 2007 The New York Times reported

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.

In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting.

But Republicans are less interested in whether significant voter fraud exists than in maintaining the fiction among the voting public that it does.  It is a central tenet of free market, conservative thought:  if it sells, it's legitimate.  This was illustrated last week by a quarrel between Red State proprietor Eric Erickson and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman about the Acela Express.  Digby summarizes the exchange:


The rest of America is nervous about where their next meal and paycheck are coming from, how they are going to afford to bail their kids out of crumbling schools, and the price of a gallon of milk and loaf of bread that keep going up though Ben Bernanke tells them there is no inflation. 
Paul Krugman drops some Bureau of Labor Statistics data to show that the price of milk and bread haven't actually gone up at all. And asks:

So, how does Erickson know that the prices of bread and milk are soaring? Has he been carefully keeping track? Or is it just fake populism, an attempt to sound like Everyman while actually just whining? 
UPDATE (9:43 a.m.): Erickson emails POLITICO:

Paul uses a chart to try to disprove the reality that Americans with small kids actually experience at the grocery store. His problem is he thinks I'm attacking the Democrats and wants to defend them, when the criticism is broader and bipartisan. And if he hung around moms and dads with kids more often he'd hear a lot more real world complaining about bread, milk, and other grocery item prices going up while paychecks are staying the same. Not everything is academic or chartable and sometimes the accuracy of the chart isn't as real to people as the perception they have that their grocery store bills are getting more expensive though their shopping habits haven't changed. 

And later adds... 

Seriously, Paul's point is correct, but it is an issue of perception of people versus the reality of his chart.  He can certainly go tell people milk prices haven't gone up, but good luck getting them to believe him. 
UPDATE (12:59 p.m.): Krugman responds on his blog: "Ok, this is awesome":... 

Erickson’s response is, hey, it isn’t true, but people feel that it’s true... Notice, by the way, the implication that I don’t appreciate the problems real people (who don’t eat quiche or ride the Acela) are facing; actually, I do, but those problems are lack of jobs and stagnant wages, not rising prices. And if you want to solve problems, getting the nature of those problems right matters. 

But then, only elitists want to solve problems; true men of the people just vent, and what matters is perception, not truth.


In the world of the right's communication machine, perception trumps truth and there is no penalty for a blogger who makes up things about inflation, a pundit who misleads people about voter fraud, or a Supreme Court Justice who creates a constitutional principle out of thin air.

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Great Taste, Less Filling

Last night, President Obama in his State of the Union message (transcript here) felt our pain, hit the right notes and all the sweet spots (insert cliche here) for liberals/progressives. He

- recommended "getting rid of tax loopholes for the well-off the well connected"

- argued "now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the space race" and thus "we need to make those investments";

- urged "for the sake of our children and our future we must do more to combat climate change";

- proposed a "'fix-It-First' program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs" such as "modern ports to make our goods; modern pipelines to withstand a storm; modern schools worthy of our children;"

- cited "a bill in Congress that would give every responsible homeowner in America the chance to save $3,000 a year by refinancing at today's rates;"

- proposed "working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America;"

- urged "Congress to change the Higher Education Act so that affordability and value are included in determining which colleges receive certain types of federal aid;"

- maintained "real reform means establishing a responsible pattern to earned citizenship;"

- urged the House to pas the Violence Against Women Act and Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act;

- advocated raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour and to tie it the cost of living;

- asserted the importance of "world-class care" for veterans, including "mental health care for our wounded warriors;"

- promoted equal treatment and benefits for "all service members (whether) gay or straight;"

-pushed "common-sense reform" of firearm laws;

The President also announced that "our" war in Afghanistan would be over by the end of 2014, though unless he has a magic wand, war will continue for Afghans, the Taliban, and some American contractors, who have been dying at a greater rate than our nation's soldiers.There was something for virtually all liberals, and a couple of additional things for neo-liberals, as when he advocated "connecting more people to the global economy" and still more free trade, notwithstanding the loss of American jobs and increase in world poverty promoted by globalization and otherwise lamented by the President.

Still, there was something for any individual supportive of women's rights, higher education assistance, comprehensive immigration reform, housing assistance, gay rights, gun safety, scientific research, and/or lifting the wages of the most poorly paid Americans.  Ensuring equal and expanded opportunity to vote, however: not so much.

Admittedly, the President Obama did add

When any American -- no matter where they live or what their party -- are denied that right because they can't wait for five or six or seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are betraying our ideals. So...

So, tonight I'm announcing a nonpartisan commission to improve the voting experience in America. And it definitely needs improvement. I'm asking two long-time experts in the field -- who, by the way, recently served as the top attorneys for my campaign and for Governor Romney's campaign -- to lead it. We can fix this. And we will. The American people demand it, and so does our democracy.

The President deserved all the applause his words received because they drew attention to an increasing problem, even if "the voting experience" sounds a lot like providing a free cup of Starbucks cappuccino to everyone waiting more than an hour in line.  (In fairness, though, that would be a costly and generous undertaking.)   Ryan J. Reilly found

Bob Bauer, former general counsel for the Obama campaign, and Ben Ginsberg, former top election lawyer for Romney's 2012 operation, will lead the commission, a senior administration official confirmed. This isn't the first time the duo has worked together: They previously negotiated the terms of the televised debates between their respective candidates.

Ginsberg is best known for his central role in the 2000 election, when he represented former President George W. Bush. Since then, he's been a key GOP recount attorney, representing former Republican Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman in the aftermath of his race against Democratic now-Sen. Al Franken in 2008.

Bauer, Obama's former White House counsel, successfully fought to force the state of Ohio to restore early voting for all registered voters last year when he worked for Obama campaign.

Improvement of the "voting experience" presumably would not preclude the GOP's favorite means of suppression, voter ID laws. ("Poll tax" is just so 1950's.)  These were recommended by a private commission formed in response to presidential election irregularities in 2005, and co-chaired by James A. Baker III, instrumental in the ultimately successful effort by the Bush team to keep all votes from being counted in Florida.  The photo voter ID proposal still is cited by Repubs as if its genesis were legitimate.

After his initial report, Reilly wrote "The White House said Tuesday night that the new Presidential Commission on Election Administration would focus on "common-sense, non-partisan solutions" and "develop recommendations for state and local election officials to reduce waiting times at the polls."  Such recommendations would not only aim "to reduce waiting times at the polls" but- wait for it- "improve all citizens' voting experience."  (That would be not only the choice of cappuccino or espresso but, perhaps, a jelly or glazed doughnut -your choice!).

Somewhat less cynically, Brad Friedman comments

So the man who worked with Baker to develop the strategy to keep votes from being counted at all in Florida in 2000, and who illegally advised a political action campaign on how to attack the man the campaign he was working for was running against in 2004, and who first fought to keep votes from being counted in Minnesota (before flip-flopping and demanding they all be counted once his candidate, Coleman, appeared to be losing) in 2008, and then went on to represent Romney in 2012 when his fellow GOPers were passing laws to keep legal voters from being able to cast their votes at all --- is now slated to head up Obama's new commission on voting reforms. That oughta work out great!





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Responding To Death By Demography

Patrick J. Buchanan sounded the alarm when in late July he wrote

Race, age and ethnicity are at the heart of the problem. And they portend not only the party’s death in California, but perhaps its destiny in the rest of America.

Consider. Almost 90 percent of all Republican voters in presidential elections are white. Almost 90 percent are Christians. But whites fell to 74 percent of the electorate in 2008 and were only 64 percent of the population. Christians are down to 75 percent of the population from 85 in 1990. The falloff continues and is greatest among the young.

Consider ethnicity. Hispanics were 15 percent of the U.S. population in 2008 and 7.4 percent of the electorate. Both percentages will inexorably rise...

Of the seven mega-states, California, New York and Illinois appear lost to the GOP. Pennsylvania has not gone Republican since 1988. Ohio and Florida, both crucial, are now swing states. Whites have become a minority in Texas. When Texas goes, America goes.

This year could be the last hurrah...

If your racial and ethnic voter base is aging, shrinking and dying, your moral code is being rejected, and the tax-consuming class has been allowed to grow to equal or to dwarf the taxpaying class, the Grand Old Party has a problem.

Buchanan followed that with "but so does the country."   Without the ethnic or class animus, CNN's Fareed Zakaria recognizes

a demographic problem for the Republicans. They are alienating too many large groups to be viable - at least in the long run. A recent Pew poll shows Obama with an 18-point advantage over Mitt Romney with women because of the recent discussions about contraception and abortion.  Polls show Latinos supporting President Obama 6-to-1 over Mitt Romney. African Americans poll something like 9-to-1 in Obama’s favor.

Seemingly panicked, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) summarized "The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term."

What's a party to do?     It could have (warning: awful cliche ahead) "doubled down," but that would have risked the opprobrium of the media, generally sympathetic to the plight of ethnic minorities, especially immigrants.   The GOP might have increased its appeal to minorities, but would risk its overwhelming support among men and with married women with children. The Party might have chosen to ignore the issue and hoped it went away, but with Obama ordering Dream Act Lite (and himself being black), it wasn't going to disappear.

No, the problem needed to be addressed.   And so it has.  In state after state, as noted by Timothy Noah, voter suppression efforts are underway, whether by targeting non-profit groups which conduct voter registration drives, shortening polling hours, automated phone calls discouraging registered voters from going to the polls, or requiring voter identification.

The latter, of course, has proven to be the suppression tactic of choice of Pennsylvania's GOP.    A Republican Commonwealth Court judge last month denied a preliminary injunction against the state, even after it stipulated that there have been no investigations or prosecution of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania, it is unaware of any incidents of such fraud anywhere in the U.S.A., and it would offer no evidence that any in-person voter fraud would be prevented by the new photo ID law.

The law is ineffective in combating a problem which doesn't exist, with ten cases (eleven, including Mitt Romney) of in-person voter fraud in the U.S.A. since 2000.    But in the Keystone State, as elsewhere, GOP officials have had to confront the demographic time bomb.  And if they're unable or unwilling to modify their tone or wish the issue away, and if going after the rights of blacks, women, immigrants, students, or the disabled is just too risky, there is only one option available.   And they've taken it.



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The Tenth Amendment Is Not A Suicide Pact


Rick Santorum is right, you know.

More on that later.     For now, let's congratulate the Department of Justice, which on December 23 officially notified the Deputy Attorney General of the State of South Carolina that the Justice Department was denying approval of South Carolina's new voter photo ID law. South Carolina is one of only five states required, because of their history of racial discrimination, by Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to obtain "pre-clearance" from the DOJ or a three-judge panel in Washington for voting requirements.

In a 2009 case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One vs. Eric Holder, Chief Justice Roberts, delivering the opinion of the Court, wrote "the preclearance requirement represents an intrusion into areas of state and local responsibility that is otherwise unfamiliar to our federal system.      While the South Carolina law appears headed back to the High Court, Jeffrey Toobin summarizes the critical role played by the Voting Rights Act, regardless of state of residence:

The Justice Department action in South Carolina underlines the continuing necessity for the Voting Rights Act, nearly four decades after it was first passed. The South Carolina law is part of a wave of new rules, passed in the wake of the 2010 Republican landslide purportedly to stop vote fraud, that limit the right to the franchise.


As many independent studies have found, “voter fraud” is a cure in search of a disease. There is no significant voter-fraud problem in the United States. Rather, these laws are transparent attempts by Republican majorities to stifle and suppress the number of minorities and poor people (mostly Democrats) who go to the polls. Thanks to the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department has the tools to stop this travesty—at least in states like South Carolina, which are still subject to “pre-clearance.”


Whether states imposing new requirements (and Holder has implied that the Department will challenge new laws in states not covered by the 1965 law) are doing so because they believe their legislators believe the NBA is unjustifiably dominated by blacks (inaccurate and accurate, respectively) or because they recognize that racial minorities mostly cast their votes for Democrats (accurate, and more likely the motivation) should not be controlling.       Either way, the laws should not be tolerated, inasmuch as they are intended to have a particular, and adverse, effect on black citizens.        


Notably, individuals will be allowed to vote in caucuses throughout Iowa tonight without having to show identification, pursuant to rules established by the state Democratic Party. Brad Friedman observes "since only Republicans are on the IA Republican Caucus ballot, unlike general elections, the GOP has no interest in disenfranchising their own voters."      He states the obvious:  "Polling place photo ID laws, passed in states where Republicans took control in the wave election of 2010, are instituted for one purpose and one purpose only: to suppress the votes of voters such as the elderly, minorities and students, all of whom have a dastardly tendency to vote for Democratic candidates rather than Republicans."
         
Perpetrators of racial discrimination ought not to be able to hide behind the cloak of "states rights."      But neither should the adversaries in the matter of same-sex marriage.      Rick Santorum has at least one thing right, having recently told MSNBC's Chuck Todd, according to Think Progress,  "I think marriage has to be one thing for everybody.    We can't have 50 different marriage laws in this country."


Instead, of course, we have the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman (Section 3)  and authorizes states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in another state (Section 2).       Lawsuits have been filed challenging DOMA as violative of  the full faith and credit clause in Article IV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution and the Holder Justice Department has announced its refusal to defend Section 3 of the law in court.     


Meanwhile, efforts are underway in the U.S. Congress to repeal DOMA.       The momentum toward granting the right of same-sex marriage throughout the country may be brought to climax or, as Santorum wishes, a constitutional amendment barring the unconventional practice may be enacted (though that appears highly unlikely).      Either way, however, this issue, as well as preserving the right to vote free of restrictions imposed by Republican partisans, calls for aggressive, definitive, federal action, whatever the annoyance to states rights purists.    






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Voter Suppression, Indirectly

In March, 2007 Washington Post Writers' Group columnist Marie Cocco lamented the electoral tactics of the GOP, highlighted by the dismissal of federal prosecutors for partisan political reasons. Eight U.S. prosecutors, including David Iglesias were sacked because they reportedly "would not time indictments and investigations favorably for the Republican Party at election time."

Cocco noted that the right's portrait of a vast Democratic conspiracy spearheaded by ACORN to rig elections far and wide

The Justice Department’s own statistics show that of 87 ballot-fraud convictions obtained since the department launched its “voter integrity” initiative in 2002, 17 were for noncitizen voting and another six were for multiple voting. Most of the cases involved vote-buying schemes hatched by local politicians in Kentucky, West Virginia and elsewhere.

The charges against ACORN, of course, were a classic in Republican fear-mongering. Far before that organization was forced to disband, the U.K.'s Brad Friedman commented in October, 2008

Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ("fraudulent", "incomplete", et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming "Acorn is committing fraud" know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.

Even though the ginned-up scandal against ACORN had not yet materialized, Cocco observed

the vote-fraud folklore serves its purpose. It enables Republicans to push through state requirements for photos and other forms of voter identification, rules that depress turnout and impact elderly and minority voters—that is, Democrats—most seriously. This is the real fraud.

And so it is. Rush Limbaugh yesterday commented about

the new Arizona immigration law: It is all about voting. If papers (ahem) are required to vote, the Democrats are finished. It's their only hope. I mean, look, they're the radicals. They are siding against the American people. This regime is siding against the American people. The only hope they have is for fraud and illegals voting, and you can't really get away with that if everybody has to have a photo ID and legal proof (i.e., papers) that they are citizens.

Ironically, Limbaugh, in his own hyper-partisan and fact-free manner, seems to recognize the underlying issue in the new anti-immigrant (or, euphemistically, anti-illegal immigrant) legislation (promoted largely by the state's GOP): preventing the Wrong Kind of People from voting. Greg Palast explains how then-Secretary of State (now Governor) Jan Brewer in 2005 used

a 2004 law, known as "Prop 200," which required proof of citizenship to register. It is important to see the Republicans' latest legislative horror show, sanctioning cops to stop residents and prove citizenship, as just one more step in the party's desperate plan to impede Mexican-Americans from marching to the ballot box....

State Senator Russell Pearce, the Republican sponsor of the latest ID law, gave away his real intent, blocking the vote, when he said, "There is a massive effort under way to register illegal aliens in this country."

How many? Pearce's PR flak told me, five million. All Democrats, too. Again, I asked Pearce's office to give me their the names and addresses from their phony registration forms. I'd happily make a citizens arrest of each one, on camera. Pearce didn't have five million names. He didn't have five. He didn't have one.

The horde of five million voters who swam the Rio Grande just to vote for Obama was calculated on a Republican website extrapolating from the number of Mexicans in a border town who refused jury service because they were not citizens. Not one, in fact, had registered to vote: they had registered to drive. They had obtained licenses as required by the law.

It is a (probably sad) fact about modern American politics: whites generally vote Republican; non-white ethnic minorities, Democratic. Oh, there are a lot of other variables, but racial (if including Hispanics as a separate race) status has become a better predictor than most of one's vote. And holding down the votes of minorities, including Mexican-Americans, is an effective way of getting Republicans elected. And if fearful Chicanos choose to move to California, New Mexico, or Mexico, all the better. Or as Palast concluded

that's the point, isn't it? Not to stop non-citizens from entering Arizona -- after all, who else would care for the country club lawn? -- but to harass folks of the wrong color: Democratic blue.