How Dare He? Really?

A former sports talk show host, formerly a National Football league linebacker, would periodically state "if you're scared, get a dog." Revised for politics, it might be "if you're offended, get a dog."

Kristen Welker, who inexplicably is paid a salary by NBC News, asked President Biden at his news conference Wednesday "what do you say to those who were offended by your speech (on voting rights)"?

At the conclusion of his reply, Biden noted "That wasn’t an accusation; I was just stating a fact.  What has changed?  What happened?  What happened?  Why is there not a single Republican — not one?  That’s not the Republican Party."

Yes, actually it is. Nonetheless, arguing otherwise is a hard sell to the mainstream media (hence to the public), which believes that Biden's characterization does not define the Republican Party and that Donald Trump is an aberration, out-of-step with well-meaning GOP officials and voters.

Kristen Welker asks Biden "What do you say to those who were offended by your [voting rights] speech?" pic.twitter.com/tR232hxYEF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 19, 2022

Not content with merely one stupid question, Welker followed up with "is the country more unified than when you first took office?"

The President's response was uninspiring and a little rambling. He should have replaced it with a story he told later in the presser, in which GOP governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, considering a run for US Senate, said that he had spoken to Republican senators and

“They were all, for the most…” — quote — “They were all, for the most part, content with the speed at which they weren’t doing anything.  It was very clear that we just had to hold the line for two years.  Okay, so I’m just going to be a roadblock for the next two years?  That’s not what I do,” Sununu said.

He went on to say, “It bothered me that they were okay with that.”  And then he goes on to say, “I said, okay, so we’re not going to get stuff done if we win the White House back” — “if we win the White House back.”  “Why didn’t [we] do [anything] in 2017 and 2018?”

Sununu's conversation indicated that Republicans have no interest in governing or, as voters would understand, doing anything for the American people.

Alternatively, Biden could have pointed to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel's admission, "one hundred percent of our focus is on stopping the new Administration." The remark was made eight months ago but the Kentuckian still is the leader of Senate Republicans and the nation's most powerful and second most influential Republican. And on Tuesday, shortly after President Biden had concluded his event

According to transcript searches, I don't think these comments from McConnell have been covered a single time today on CNN or MSNBC. https://t.co/3s18TO4U15

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 20, 2022

What could be more unifying than distinguishing between "Americans" and African-Americans?

That startling distinction was made explicit only after Biden's appearance. However, the President could have turned Welker's first question around and asked her if she was offended by his voting rights speech. 

But the President, similarly to most Democrats, still hasn't figured out that a prime objective of the mainstream media- including NBC/MSNBC- is to convince Americans that the left is out-of-touch with their values.  In humblebrag, Biden could have admitted an inability to comfort with sweet words individuals who want a President, the government, and the country to fail.  In a nod to a past President, he should have added "I'm not hurting them or giving them hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it's hell."

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The Publicity Hound And Her Apologists

Though justifiably bold in criticizing three female senators, Will Bunch could have offered them an award for naivete.

So I guess they don't "object" much to Sinema blocking voting rights for Americans, or somehow this is lower on their radar screen https://t.co/oVC7Nu7KW8

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) January 17, 2022

This foolish letter was signed by Senators Susan Collins (R-ME.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). It is short, so you won't  have to go to the link:

The Times has published four separate pieces analyzing the style and dress of our colleague Senator Kyrsten Sinema. We cannot imagine The Times printing similar pieces on the fashion choices of any of our male colleagues.

As Senator Sinema recently said about the commentary on her fashion: “I wear what I want because I like it. It’s not a news story, and it’s no one’s business.” We couldn’t agree more.

Senator Sinema is a serious, hardworking member of the Senate who contributes a great deal to the policy deliberations before us. Your repeated focus on how she dresses, rather than what she says and does, is demeaning, sexist and inappropriate.

Senator Sinema has deliberately and intentionally made it the business of others by ostentatiously drawing attention to her fashion sense, as she has ostentatiously drawn attention to herself in other ways. Who can forget, as Slate's Christina Cauterucci noted last April, when the smug, "drama-seeking celebrity"

spent her Sunday sipping sangria in a pink newsboy cap and a ring that says “Fuck Off.” The Arizona Democrat got someone to take a photo of her, ring proudly displayed in the foreground. Then, she posted the image to her Instagram stories.

Sinema’s outfit, which also included oversized fuchsia glasses and gigantic earrings containing a charm of what appears to be a skull and butterfly, is right in line with her sartorial M.O. The former Congresswoman and first-term senator has long been the flashiest dresser in the Capitol, and during the pandemic, her wardrobe has gotten even weirder.* She’s worn several highlighter-hued wigs on the Senate floor to hide her grown-out dye job as she stayed home from the salon. (According to her spokesperson, the wigs were a reminder to constituents to practice COVID-19 precautions.) In February, she wore a pink sweater emblazoned with the phrase “Dangerous Creature,” a nod to a line from one of romance novelist Lisa Kleypas’ books: “A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.”

And if those are simply a matter of (atrocious) style, but not so when Sinema voted against including a minimum wage mandate in a pandemic relief bill by making "aspectacle of it, popping her hip and giving an exaggerated thumbs-down to the vote counters."

 

Now she (along with Joe Manchin and 50 GOP senators) adamantly opposes any rule changes which will make voting rights legislation possible. However, that didn't deter her from posting this after the death of John Lewis:

 

 

That's how she rolls. Born in 1976, she's probably disappointed she missed out on the "hey, look at me" generation. But she may make up for lost time because she's contemplating a run for the presidency. If she does, she would start with a boatload of cash, a cum laude in hypocrisy, and a summa cum laude degree in self-promotion.  

 

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East To Russia

Former Republican who followed on-line extreme right-wing groups and "how these groups were organizing, preparing for, threatening and intending to engage in violence" warns:

Trump tells PA GOP why he is placing an emphasis on Supervisor of Elections races in 22: “We have to be a lot sharper the next time when it comes to counting the vote .. Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate. They have to get a lot tougher and smarter.” pic.twitter.com/WdzStuLxFH

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 15, 2022

I would not have believed the following quote were it not from a prominent historian

"I consider it completely unimportant who in the Party will vote, or how.
But what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.”
Joseph Stalin, 1923
(as quoted in “Oxford Essential Quotations, 2017) pic.twitter.com/XeRjGlhsb4

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 13, 2022

"What is extraordinarily important is this- who will count the vote" is awfully close to "Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate." Even "to get a lot tougher and smarter" bears a relationship to "and how." 

There is a little controversy over whether Stalin actually uttered these words. But they have been attributed to him, and it's quite plausible that Trump would have learned of them.

Donald Trump reportedly kept "My New Order," a compilation of speeches of Adolph Hitler, by his bed.  If the former President is a student of those of the German president, it would be unsurprising were he to become somewhat of a student of the Russian premier's speeches.  It's a natural progression, regression, or lateral move.

The exact tactics Trump plans to employ are yet to be discerned. His inspiration is less of a mystery.

 

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Destructive

It's only mid-January and we already have a finalist, by way of Arizona, for hypocrite of the year:

Dear @SenatorSinema: The best way to honor Uncle John is to help stop the suppressive #voting legislation that many states are passing.

Ideally, this would be a bipartisan effort, but we can’t severely damage democracy to maintain a kind of “false peace.”

Get into #GoodTrouble. https://t.co/Y50OyyRL1n

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) January 14, 2022

 

Ideally, this would be a bipartisan effort, but we can’t severely damage democracy to maintain a kind of “false peace.”

Kyrsten Sinema made a show of honoring the memory of John Lewis in this photo posted shortly after the congressman died. She now is actively trying to kill legislation- which she claims to support- by opposing all efforts to modify Senate rules to allow passage with 50/51 votes. One of the two bills, which have passed the House of Representatives, is literally called the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. 

The peace which Sinema superficially appears to be pursuing is a false one. In his commentary (video below). Lawrence O'Donnell noted

When Kyrsten Sinema ran for the United States Senate, she did not say that she would bring all of her legislative and policy goals in the United States Senate to the Republican leader of the Senate and try to get Republican approval of her agenda. That's not what she told Arizona voters but that is her position now. Republicans have to approve everything Kyrsten Sinema wants to do or she won't even try to do it.

Unless she is remarkably naive, Sinema is pursuing an unobtainable peace. When the Arizona Democrat met via Zoom with black civil rights leaders on Wednesday

She said she understood where they were coming from, and supports the voting rights bills, but believes that a filibuster carveout would be bad for the country, and that Republicans could well use it to hold a simple-majority vote to undo whatever voting legislation Democrats passed.

The sun rises in the east, sets in the west, and if Republicans retake the Senate in November, the filibuster will be dead as soon as Mitch McConnell takes the gavel as Speaker.  As Norman Ornstein notes

Some Democrats are reluctant to change the filibuster because they worry what Republicans would do under the new rules if they regained the majority. “We have more to lose than gain by ending the filibuster,” Sinema argued in her Post piece. Manchin, also writing in The Post, said: “If the filibuster is eliminated or budget reconciliation becomes the norm, a new and dangerous precedent will be set to pass sweeping, partisan legislation that changes the direction of our nation every time there is a change in political control. The consequences will be profound — our nation may never see stable governing again.”

The implication is that if Democrats grit their teeth and keep the filibuster as is, Republicans will exercise the same restraint when they recapture the majority. But recent history offers no evidence that the GOP would be constrained by tradition. During the Obama presidency, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), then chairman of the Judiciary Committee, insisted on keeping in place the “blue slip” tradition, which lets senators decide the fate of lower-court judges nominated from their states. But early in the Trump presidency, when a Democrat used the tradition to block a nominee from his state, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s new chairman, abandoned it.

Then there is the Supreme Court. McConnell quickly changed the filibuster rule to enable majority action on Trump’s Supreme Court nominees. Then, after refusing to hold a hearing on Barack Obama’s nominee 11 months before the 2016 presidential election, saying tradition demanded that the victor of the election choose a new justice, he abandoned that norm and held a vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett eight days before the 2020 election.

Sinema's argument: Republicans unfairly block voting rights legislation which would help the country and, by God, I will help them do it. Her motive may be one or many. Powerful interests, especially the pharmaceutical industry, which lavish campaign contributions can take of her if she leaves (voluntarily or involuntarily) the Senate. Speculation has arisen that she wants to run, whether as a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, for President in 2024. And she clearly is someone who craves the spotlight.

Kyrsten Sinema may have to mount a candidacy for President in 2024 or beyond so that the effort becomes part of the first paragraph of her obituary. Otherwise, assuming she does not change course on voting rights, it will be dominated (as it should in either case) by the damage she has decided to bestow upon American democracy.   

 

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Just The Facts, Ma'am

Speaking at the USA Capitol on January 6 about an insurrection mounted to overthrow results of the election in which he was elected President, Joe Biden stated

While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principle of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes.

Well, whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law, and not the rule of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them to find shared solutions where possible. Because when we have a shared belief in democracy, then anything is possible – anything.

They no longer want to be the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes represents extreme generosity toward the party of Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Steve Bannon. A few days later, emphasizing the right to vote currently anathema to the Republican Party, Biden applauded "the courageous officials — Democrats, Republicans — who did their duty and upheld the law by certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election." This was the response of former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii:

Hillary’s calling tens of millions of Americans deplorables was divisive & disgusting. But Biden has gone further, calling those who disagree with his actions & policies domestic enemies, traitors, and racists. Biden promised to unite us, but he is doing all he can do divide us. pic.twitter.com/1XKS9rfZQT

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) January 13, 2022

 

In Gabbard's defense, the President did note "last year alone, 19 states not proposed but enacted 34 laws attacking voting rights.  There were nearly 400 additional bills Republican members of state legislatures tried to pass" He did point out out "the Vice President and I have supported voting rights bills since day one of this administration.  But each and every time, Senate Republicans have blocked the way.  Republicans oppose even debating the issue." And he did recall  "what the defeated former president said to the highest-ranking election official — a Republican — in this state?  He said, quote, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.”

 This is the unfettered truth, spoken while he tried to ferret out their better angels. recalling

In 2006, the Voting Rights Act passed 390 to 33 in the House of Representatives and 98 to 0 in the Senate with votes from 16 current sitting Republicans in this United States Senate.  Sixteen of them voted to extend it....

And I make it with an appeal to my Republican colleagues, to those Republicans who believe in the rule of law: Restore the bipartisan tradition of voting rights.

The people who restored it, who abided by it in the past were Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush.  They all supported the Voting Rights Act.

Don’t let the Republican Party morph into something else.  Restore the institution of the Senate the way it was designed to be.

The people who restored it, who abided by it in the past were Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush.  They all supported the Voting Rights Act. That's hardly the stuff of hyper-partisanship, and Joe Biden didn't call these- or any Republicans- "traitors" or "racists."  He did call them enemies of democracy, but only because they are. 

If there is anything the President said which was inaccurate, Tulsi Gabbard should inform us. She won't, because she can't.

 

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The Show

Alert the FBI. Someone has kidnapped the invariably progressive and realistic Robert Reich and is tweeting from his account.

Susan Collins joined John Lewis in Selma for the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Lisa Murkowski is the only Republican who voted to bring the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to a vote last fall. And Mitt Romney voted to convict Trump in the first impeachment trial.

Worth a try.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) January 11, 2022

President Biden is still afraid of the reaction from the "defeated president" if he dare to utter the name "Donald Trump." But he continually called Republicans when in Georgia he remarked

The Vice President and I have supported voting rights bills since day one of this administration.  But each and every time, Senate Republicans have blocked the way.  Republicans oppose even debating the issue.  You hear me?...

Not a single Republican has displayed the courage to stand up to a defeated president to protect America’s right to vote.  Not one.  Not one....

The filibuster is not used by Republicans to bring the Senate together but to pull it further apart.

Maybe there is nothing to lose by trying to court Republicans, although it's unlikely to bear fruit. Susan Collins' photo-op in Selma for the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and Mitt Romney's vote to convict Donald Trump in one of two impeachment trials should give no encouragement.

Susan Collins marched in Selma to demonstrate her "disappointment" because she's always "concerned," though rarely enough to deviate from the Trump Party line.  And Mitt Romney marched in a Black Lives Matter protest so he can be seen at a time when anyone who is anyone was on the black lives matter train (now, not so much).  There is little to show for that concern while Romney remains dead set against reforming the filibuster.

"You will recognize them by their fruits," Jesus Christ reportedly warned.  Mitt Romney and, especially, Susan Collins put on an act. They're there for the photo-ops and the quotes of little substance. (Lisa Murkowski is more low-key.) But they are, like 48 of their GOP colleagues, aware that their party will gain a majority, and power in Congress and the White House, only if individuals are discouraged from voting. 

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A Good Try

In a closing argument as a defense attorney, John Adams once argued "Facts are stubborn things. They cannot be altered by our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions.”

Fact #1: There is nothing which more thoroughly assumes today's Republican Party than its campaign against voter fraud.

In the cagily termed "audit" it conducted of the 2020 presidential vote in Maricopa, County, a group of Arizona Republicans

A group of Arizona Republicans engaged a private cybersecurity firm, whose "CEO is a known election conspiracy theorist," to conduct an "audit" of the 2000 presidential vote in Maricopa County, which produces by far the greatest number of Democratic votes in the state. Nonetheless

Despite the obvious partisanship of the audit, they found 99 more votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump — a negligible difference which nonetheless nullifies any claims that Trump should have won the county. Yet Trump has falsely reiterated that they found evidence of fraud and many Republicans in other states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are pushing for similar audits.

Democrats and even many Republicans have spoken out against these partisan audits. Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters continue to push for them and perpetuate the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, according to a CNN poll, six out of 10 Republicans said that believing that Trump would win the 2020 election was a significant part of what being Republican meant to them.

Earlier this year, Senate Republicans blocked consideration of the pro-democracy Freedom to Vote Act because- well, it was freedom to vote.  Then, at the insistence, and assistance, of West Virginia's center-right Democratic senator Joe Manchin, the bill was weakened and transformed into the For the People Act, which was successfully filibustered by the GOP.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed the House, with support from zero (0) Republicans, a truly impressive wall of opposition to a bill named after one of their recently deceased and allegedly revered colleagues. Even Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted against it because, well, they are Republicans. On Wednesday, November 3, that bill drowned in GOP filibuster.

A group of Arizona Republicans in April had engaged a private cybersecurity firm, whose "CEO is a known election conspiracytheorist," to conduct an "audit" of the 2000 presidential vote in Maricopa County, which produces by far the greatest number of Democratic votes in the state. Nonetheless

Despite the obvious partisanship of the audit, they found 99 more votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump — a negligible difference which nonetheless nullifies any claims that Trump should have won the county. Yet Trump has falsely reiterated that they found evidence of fraud and many Republicans in other states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are pushing for similar audits.

Democrats and even many Republicans have spoken out against these partisan audits. Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters continue to push for them and perpetuate the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, according to a CNN poll, six out of 10 Republicans said that believing that Trump would win the 2020 election was a significant part of what being Republican meant to them.

Most Republican-controlled states since the election of 2020 have enacted laws to make voting more difficult, and others are trying, though there is virtually no voter fraud.  Roughly eight years ago

24 journalism students at twelve universities reviewed some 2,000 public records and identified just six cases of voter impersonation between 2000 and 2012. • Under Republican President George W. Bush, the U.S. Justice Department searched for voter fraud. But in the first three years of the program, just 26 people were convicted or pled guilty to illegal registration or voting. Out of 197,056,035 votes cast in the two federal elections held during that period, the rate of voter fraud was a miniscule 0.00000132 percent.

 A few years later, the Carnegie-Knight News21 initiative

reviewed cases in Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Kansas, where politicians have expressed concern about voter fraud, and found hundreds of allegations but few prosecutions between 2012 and 2016.

Attorneys-general in those states successfully prosecuted 38 cases, though other cases may have been litigated at the county level. At least one-third of those cases involved nonvoters, such as elections officials or volunteers. None of the cases prosecuted was for voter impersonation.

Reputed audits done in several states following GOP whining about the 2020 presidential election revealed similar results.

Voter impersonation fraud, the target of suppressive election laws and subject of GOP ire, is virtually non-existent. But the Republican Party is obsessed with proving to the American public that it does exist. And so it shouldn't be surprising that, as fact #2

The 17-year-old son of Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) tried to cast a ballot in Tuesday’s gubernatorial election twice despite being too young to vote, Fairfax County officials said in a statement released Friday.

The statement, which identified the teen as Youngkin’s 17-year-old son, emphasized that he did not end up voting and stated that he did not violate any state election laws. The Washington Post is not publishing the teen’s first name because he is a juvenile and has not been charged with a crime.

The teen walked into the voting precinct inside the Great Falls Library on Tuesday, presenting his driver’s license to election officials when asked for a proof of identity, according to Jennifer Chanty, the precinct captain there.

Chanty said in an interview with The Post that she realized who the teen was when she looked at his ID. Upon seeing his age, she said she informed him that he must be at least 18 to be eligible to vote in Virginia. Under Virginia’s election laws, the only time 17-year-olds can vote is in a primary election if they’ll be 18 by the time of the general election.

She said she offered to register him to vote for the next election, but the teen declined and walked out.

About 20 minutes later, the teen returned, insisting that he be allowed to vote, saying that a friend who was also 17 had been allowed to cast a ballot, Chanty said.

“I told him, ‘I don’t know what occurred with your friend, but you are not registered to vote today. You’re welcome to register, but you will not be voting today,’ ” Chanty, a Democrat, recalled saying. A copy of Chanty’s notes she took at the time showed she recorded the encounters as occurring in the morning.

There is virtually no voter fraud in the USA Despite the constant, ongoing efforts of prosecutors, Republican think tanks, Republican pundits and donor class, and the rest of the GOP machinery to prove to the American people voter fraud is rampant, it barely exists. Yet, of all the young people in the state of Virginia, the son of a Republican standing for governor is found to have tried to vote illegally.

This might well have been a Project Veritas operation, if it were a little less clumsy. If young Mr. Youngkin had succeeded, the GOP would flooded conventional and social media with the news (proof!) that Democrats win elections because of massive voter fraud. And because he was caught in the act, the office of the incoming governor gets to blame it on Youngkin's "political opponents." Whomever in the GOP orbit was behind it, the ploy should not have been unexpected, a clever idea poorly executed.

There are coincidences, and there are coincidences. This is neither.

 

 

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Missing The Moment

In a speech at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, Pa. three months ago, President Biden declared “Help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote. Have you no shame?”

Well, of course, Republicans do not. And though the righteous indignation may have been real, the determination to do much about it is absent.

Senate Majority Leader Schumer has announced that he will set a procedural vote for the Freedom to Vote Act as early as tomorrow, Wednesday, October 20. However, even with the support of Senators Manchin and Sinema, it will die because of filibuster while Minority Leader McConnell has said no Republicans will vote for it.

The week after Biden's stirring endorsement of the right to vote, Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, the prominent civil rights leader who founded and has led the Poor People's campaign, urged the President  “Go to Texas, and meet with a diverse group of people on the ground to put a face on this issue. Then go to Arizona. Go to West Virginia,” he said. “There ought to be a speech from the well of Congress.”

Certainly, eliminating the "sacred right to vote" is not Joe Biden's preference, but neither is it his priority, nor is eliminating the filibuster, which is preventing Congress from curbing voter suppression.  Peter Nicholas of The Atlantic writes

When I mentioned the alarm coming from activists, the White House official told me that the Biden administration is “pushing full force” to pass voting protections. “It’s fair for activists to continue to push,” the official said. “Every constituency has their issue. If you ask immigration folks, they’ll tell you their issue is a life-or-death issue too.” (Democracy’s preservation would seem more than a pet issue.) In one crucial respect, Biden has been holding back: He has yet to give a full-throated statement that Senate Democrats need to end the filibuster.

The right to vote is not immigration. It's not police reform or child-care subsidies, and it's not building roads and other hard infrastructure. It's the foundation of democracy, without which nothing more will be gained and most of which has been procured will be lost with the imposition of one-party Republican rule.

Action on the Build Back Better agenda, coronaviruses, and supply chain disruptions, which has characterized this presidency, is necessary but not sufficient. Walter Shaub understands:

I’m going to be obsessing over this deeply offensive statement and retweeting it all week to ensure as many people as possible see it. The right to vote is the right that protects all other rights. Indifference to the effort to suppress the votes of any Americans is disgusting. https://t.co/ZiQFSXcSbU

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) October 19, 2021

 

Matthew Yglesias comments on SARS-CoV-19 and Hayes Brown on voter suppression. Can you guess the two things the messages have in common? (One is very obvious.).

Yes except for his vocal anti-vaccine posturing, DeSantis has been pro-vaccination.

Had he stuck to pro-vaccination rather than done the vocal anti-vaccine posturing, lives could have been saved.

How many? More than zero. Hope it was worth it to him. https://t.co/96hLIl7okn

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 1, 2021

Brown explains

Until we get rid of that or find a way to really shame these Republican senators who are so against the idea of expanding voting rights into voting for such a bill, then I don't see how you can out-organize the other two parts. You can't out-organize gerrymandering; you can't out-organize someone who can say "nope, we just tipped the results of the vote.

There’s no way to out-organize an assault on voting rights. “The Democrats are looking at this too narrowly,” says @HayesBrown. Time to remove the filibuster or “find a way to really shame” the opposition.😖 #Velshi pic.twitter.com/azpTiXW9tU

— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) August 1, 2021

They're both right. Yglesias recognizes that DeSantis would have saved lives if he had stayed the course on vaccination. And Brown realizes that eliminating the filibuster is crucial to protecting the right to vote. Simply ginning up the Democratic vote to try to compensate for voter suppression (which may have saved Joe Biden's presidential bid) is insufficient.

But they both make the same, understandable and common, error of Democrats/liberals and centrists.

Brown states "... or find a way to really shame these Republican senators...." Similarly, Yglesias remarks "hope it was worth it to him."

Does Yglesias really hope it is "worth it" to DeSantis? Of course not. He wants the Florida governor to feel bad about it.

That's not going to happen- or at least it won't happen unless the anti-vaccination posture backfires politically on DeSantis.  He will not feel guilt or shame and those GOP senators will not be shamed into expanding voting rights.

Once and probably future Virginia governor about his opponent:

Glenn Youngkin sees no issue attending an “election integrity” rally that even some Republicans are calling a “conspiracy-palooza.”

By attending this event, he is helping conspiracy theorists attack our democracy. He has no shame.

— Terry McAuliffe (@TerryMcAuliffe) August 1, 2021

Shame and guilt or feeling bad is not how they roll.  Republican members of Congress enthusiastically followed Donald Trump throughout the latter's presidency. They saw him in Helsinki siding with a former KGB agent against our nation's intelligence services, try to pressure a foreign government to dig up dirt on an American politician, work hand-in-hand with a deadly coronavirus, and encourage insurrectionists intending to murder the Vice-President and possibly themselves.

It was all fine with them, the end game the establishment of one-party rule and evisceration of democracy. Democrats or liberals can plead "you should be ashamed" or "I hope you're happy with yourselves" and they will not change. It's who they are.

 

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Leverage

Alexander Sammons in The American Prospect explains that progressive groups have been startlingly willing not to pressure President Joe Biden on their priorities, and have been rewarded with very few wins. However

In rare moments and on fairly niche issues, progressive groups have called out Biden publicly, and it’s worked. When news leaked that the president had chosen to go back on a campaign promise and would not raise the refugee limit from its Trump-era lows of 15,000 people per year, there was broad outcry from progressive and humanitarian groups. Biden quickly reversed course.

When "progressive groups have called out Biden publicly.... it has worked."  One of those issues- the most important one- on which the left has failed to twist the President's arm is voting rights, which Biden was asked about in his recent town hall meeting with CNN's Don Lemon. New York Times columnist Charles Blow noted the President stated

“What I don’t want to do is get wrapped up, right now, in the argument of whether or not this is all about the filibuster or — look, the American public, you can’t stop them from voting. You tried last time. More people voted last time than at any time in American history, in the middle of the worst pandemic in American history. More people did.”

This is patently false. You absolutely can stop people from voting. We have seen this over and over again throughout American history. And, these laws won’t harm all Americans. They’ll harm minorities in America. They are aimed at liberal cities where the populations are often heavily Black and Latino.

Biden is basically saying here what Black America has heard forever: No matter how high they make the hill, your only choice is to climb it. I applaud your ascension. My God, aren’t your legs strong.

As Blow noted also, President Biden has been emphasizing other elements of his agenda far more than voting rights, notwithstanding that "Black people gave all to save Joe Biden’s candidacy, but Joe Biden refused to give all to protect their right to vote. Reciprocity is not compulsory."

After three states- Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada- held their primary or caucus, Biden was gasping for air, nearly dead in the water. But as was oft-repeated, we had not heard from African-Americans. Then Jim Clyburn unqualifiedly endorsed the former vice president and with more blacks than whites voting in the South Carolina primary, Biden creamed Bernie Sanders and was off to the races.

"Black people gave all to save Joe Biden's candidacy" is a short and sweet recap of Democratic primary season and the winner cannot be so dense as not to realize it.  Yet, there are ways to respond to the President going all out to get a bipartisan infrastructure bill and giving little more than lip service to voter rights.

Most effective probably would be the Congressional Black Caucus explaining that the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and HR 1 are their highest- not high, but highest- legislative priorities. The CBC could imply a little political blackmail, noting that the GOP is favored to win back the House (also, the Senate) and that if it does, it will move to impeach the President. And oh, by the way- if that happens, the first black vice president will be waiting in the wings and black members of the House may be conflicted. A little intimidation from immigration rights activists persuaded Joe Biden earlier this year. Clarence Thomas knows how that works.

Implying they would not have the President's back if Articles of Impeachment were introduced in the next Congress might seem like an idle threat. Alternatively, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus merely can remind Biden "we made you, we can break you."   Of the larger black community: they did, and they can.

 

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Would Be Game Over

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?" Rebecca Onion has written

During the televised Army-McCarthy hearings in June 1954 Army counsel Joseph Welch famously asked that question of Sen. Joseph McCarthy after McCarthy brought up the details of a young lawyer’s past membership in a left-wing professional association accused of communism. We tend to recall the query as a narrative coup de grâce coming out of nowhere. But the “no sense of decency” line worked because most of McCarthy’s party, at that point, was finally done with him. The Army-McCarthy hearings were a product of President Eisenhower’s decision to try to curb McCarthy’s power. Bringing McCarthy down required the leveraging of moderate Republican distaste for McCarthy’s personality and methods, the novelty of the televised hearings, and a little bit of sexual panic.... 

The end of McCarthy, which we remember as so satisfyingly final, did not actually mean the end of McCarthyism. Anti-Communist crusading began before McCarthy took it up, and it persisted in various forms, perpetrated by politicians of both parties, long after he was censured in December 1954 and died in 1957. And if you look at some of McCarthy’s other populist political tools—his twisting of the truth, his hatred for “elitist” intellectualism, his insider-outsider “true American” rhetoric—it becomes clear that we’ve still got plenty of McCarthyism with us today.

Onion wrote those words, and that passage, in Slate in July, 2018. Almost exactly three years ago to the day, it is clearer still that we still have plenty of McCarthyism with us, after the Joe McCarthy+ of today has been beaten, thrown out of office, exposed as a full-time criminal grifter, and still controls his Party.

So when Joe Biden gave his voting rights speech yesterday at perhaps the safest spot in nearly the most Democratic city in the USA, National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, he knocked the Republican Party by name a few times. However, he was unable or unwilling to name names, ostentatiously avoiding the words "Donald Trump" or "President Trump" or "Trump."

He did, however, promise “We’ll be asking my Republican friends in Congress, in the states and cities and counties, to stand up, for God’s sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote. Have you no shame?”

"No, in fact, they don’t. And he knows it," writes Charlie Pierce, who is right about the first and, evidence suggests, wrong about the second.  After all these years, Democrats still don't completely understand that Republicans, hard at work in states across the USA denying the right to vote and undermining democracy, do not work in the context of shame or guilt.  It's not in their DNA, figuratively. Asking them for shame is akin to asking Calvinist Protestants about the Assumption of Mary or Roman Catholics about Limited atonement. It doesn't compute.

Seemingly unaware, Joe Biden asserts he will "be asking my Republican friends in Congress" and across the country to stand up for "the sacred right to vote."  He demands they do it "for God's sake," which comes across to those "friends" only as a pitiful plea from a faux tough guy. He begs in the name of the Almighty for cooperation from a Party which (like he) recognizes only one god, but in its case a Queens millionaire.

Nor would Joe Biden utter the four-syllable word "filibuster," this a tactic which chokes off legislation which would ensure that sacred right to vote. He meanwhile remains committed to infrastructure reform, calculating that no one can be opposed to infrastructure and that Democrats in competitive states could use a win. However

You can’t declare that we’re facing the worst threat to democracy since the civil war, then go back to working your heart out for infrastructure instead of democracy. Please, somebody — 𝒂𝒏𝒚𝒃𝒐𝒅𝒚 — tell the president it’s 2021 and not 1991.

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 14, 2021

To President Biden, it's 1991 (or 1954).  If he gets infrastructure legislation, there will be plaudits from the left and the center, traditional and non-traditional media, politicians and pundits alike. But if the Democratic Party fails to reform the filibuster and gain passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the We the People Act, Joe Biden and the country win the battle and lose the war.

 

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Better Than Nothing

It's not that Liz Cheney isn't courageous. She is, as much as CNN is giving her credit for, and that's not easy.

Cheney is not attacking only the GOP's reigning god, Donald "Chosen One" Trump. She also is standing up against a party establishment, the entrenched powerful, which, as Democrats who once opposed Nancy Pelosi's leadership in the House learned, is rarely successful.

Still, Cheney's challenge is mostly sound and fury, with little chance of sucess. Matthew Dowd, Independent, former Republican strategist, and founder of "Country Over Party," appeared on MSNBC's "The Reid Out" on Wednesday. He has this one nailed, and not only because he realizes that the Wyoming congresswoman and her allies 

have to ask themselves the question, am I facilitating and enabling a party that`s going to push this by staying in it? And that`s my issue with Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney and others, because what happens if the House is taken over by the Republican in 2022, or the Senate is taken over by the Republican in 2022? The reason why it will be taken over is because Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney stayed in the Republican Party. So they will facilitate this happening.

After host Joy-Ann Reid referred to the "first big lie as having been birtherism," Dowd remarked

Well, to me, it actually -- I trace it back further than the birtherism. I think that if we really look at this and trace it back to where this sort of started, where this virus began and where it really started taking off, it was in the mid `90s. And in the mid `90s with Newt Gingrich started to make cultural argument, and because the Republicans were then beginning to face the prospect that the diversity of America was blossoming and that people of color, women were starting to push themselves into power and at the table. They didn`t like that.

could not agree more with my friend @matthewjdowd https://t.co/aHXAzuENSQ

— Jennifer 'pro-voting' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) May 13, 2021

Conservative Republicans are not offended because some people are "black and brown." They're not offended even because of the subculture characterizing many members of the black and Latino communities.  They're angry because of "the prospect that the diversity of America was blossoming" and ethnic groups conspicuously favoring Democrats "were starting to push themselves into power and at the table." For the most part, they don't dislike them. They simply don't want them to vote.

That's the major Republican mission now. The GOP "autopsy" following the party's loss in 2012 recognized that the nation's demographic profile was changing dramatically, and strongly implied that the Party would have to branch out from their core of old white males. Then failed businessman and successful actor Donald Trump came around to complain "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists some I assume are good people," he won, and their descent down the rathole of voter suppression accelerated.

Now the Republican Party is engaged in a massive, nationwide effort to block Americans from voting. As of March 11, Republican state legislators across 43 states had introduced more than 250+ bills to curb voting. Yet, a mere nine days before she'd be thrown out as chairperson of the House Republican conference, Cheney denounced HR 1, the For the People Act, as "unconstitutional federal takeover," claiming the Democratic effort to protect voting rights

steals power from the people, violates Americans’ First Amendment Rights, and is designed to protect Democrat politicians. The legislation would force hard-earned taxpayer money to fund political campaigns and enable the federal government to control all aspects of our elections.

It’s clear that we need common sense election reform, but this unconstitutional federal takeover would only create more uncertainty for the system.

Liz Cheney has decided that a guy who incites a riot to storm the Capitol and seek the execution of the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House should not lead the GOP or the nation. That places her in a minority in her Party. "Her stand likely won't matter much," Esquire's Jack Holmes writes, "and it certainly does not redeem her or her family name. But her defenstration is, at the very least, a telling mile-marker on this path into the darkness." 

 

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The Name Of The Game Is Control

Althought Tucker Carlson often is slammed as a "racist," his commentaries are less often informed by racial bias that partisanship.

Carlson is funamentally hyper-partisan; not compared to Sean Hannity or even Laura Ingraham, yet far more than allowed by the image of one dedicated to standing up for the beleagured white majority. On April 8, he remarked

.... where the government shows preference to people who have shown absolute contempt for our customs, our laws, our system itself and they're being treated better than American citizens. Now I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term "replacement"; if you sugggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that's what's happening actually. Let's just say it- that's true.

With few exceptions, the only people using the term "replacement" are the people who are complaining that people are using the term "replacement." Unfortunately, he continues

If this was happening in your home, if you were in the sixth grade, for example, and if without telling you, your kid- your parents adopted a bunch of new siblings and gave them brand new bikes and let them stay up later and helped them with their homework and gave them twice the allowance they gave you, you would say to your siblings "I think we're being replaced by, by kids that our parents love more. And it would be kind of hard to argue against you because look at the evidence.

I don't know what preceded or followed this rant. However, the supporters of immigration rights are not advocating that immigrants be granted increased rights, privileges, or new bikes but a path to citizenship, which would render them eligible for the same- not increased- benefits as others. Some recommend mere legalization (against which I've vociferously argued). At the extreme, in a few jurisdictions (such as California), privileges already conferred upon citizens and legal immigrants are being conferred upon illegal immigrants.

But now Tucker finally gets to the real issue when he maintains

So this matters on a bunch of different levels but on the most basic level it's a voting rights question. In a democracy, one person equals one vote.

Well, no, it doesn't, in part because this is a republic, not a democracy. In 2018, Democrats failed to gain control of the lower legislative chambers in three states while winning a majority of votes statewide. One of those states  was North Carolina, in which Republicans won 10 of 13 seats in the US House despite losing the statewide vote. 

Over in the other federal chamber, North Dakota has 770,000 residents and two Senators while South Dakota has 897,000 residents and two Senators. They are granted four senators, reliably Republican and conservative, for 1,667,000 individuals. California has nearly 40 million residents and two Senators, fairly reliably Democratic. Thus, there is one Senator for every 416,750 individuals in the Dakotas and one for every 19,806,750 individuals in California. If it's one man, one vote in the Dakotas, it's 47 men, one vote in California.

And then there is the race for the presidency, in which the Democratic nominee won the popular vote in 2000 and 2016 but lost in the Electoral College, leaving the nation with two individuals who turned out to be disastrous presidents.

Still, Carlson continues with

If you change the population, you dilute the political pwer of the people that live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter. So I don't understand, what you don't understand, is everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it and ooh, the white replace theory- no, no, no. This is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate. Why shouldn't I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American guaranteed at birth is one man, one vote and they're diluting that.  No, they're not allowed to do that. Why are we putting up with this?

Now people are imported goods who don't come to this country to escape tyranny or extreme poverty and hunger but because "they (presumably Democrats) import a new voter" continuosly.   Carlson won't tell his audience that these imports can vote only once they go through the arduous process of becoming a citizen, a full-fledged American because it would disabuse it of the ignorance he depends upon.

Voting rights is an issue, the main (if not only) issue uniting the party pols with the party faithful. Ingrained in GOP voters is the myth that once an immigrant, legal or illegal, enters the country, he or she gets to vote. Do not pass go; just vote. Thus, most of those voters want immigrants to stay put in their native countries while most of the party's officeholders and office seekers are fine with immigrants coming as long as they don't gain citizenship, thus the right to vote. 

Many Republicans believe, as Tucker is claiming, that every immigrant who votes further disenfranchises him and others like him. But they are not being disenfranchised. They are competing with other Americans and, in some instances, actually cooperating with them in electing a Republican to office. 

The electorate always is changing. Carlson rails against a "brand new electorate," though every individual of every ethnic group becomes a new part of the electorate once he or she turns 18 and registers to vote (which should be made far easier).

The Republican Party could compete for these voters but for the most part chooses not to do so. Competition is the key, just as the left should compete in the marketplace of ideas rather than trying to shut down Carlson or other right-wing voices.  If you wish, however it might annoy persuadable voters, call Tucker Carlson "anti-semitic, racist, and toxic" or a "white supremacist" with "a hood or swastika."  Surely, his appeal is not to brotherhood or a generosity of spirit.  Nonetheless, his aim is not to bring back the Ku Klux Klan but to shrink the electorate for eletoral gain. It is less for racial hegemony than for Republican hegemony.

 

Fox News is paying millions to help a straight up white supremacist spread his radicalizing vitriol. The only thing missing is a hood or swastika. But the words and hysterical delivery are just as potent. This is a hate group operating openly on a national level. https://t.co/ySfaqxEOOD

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 9, 2021

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Still At It

It happened as recently as the debate in Cleveland Tuesday night, when President Trump instructed "Proud Boys, stand by and stand by. It occurred as far back as a year and a half ago when President Trump warned

I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad....

The effort at intimidation has grown considerably since

The Real Polls are starting to look GREAT! We will be having an even bigger victory than that of 2016. The Radical Left Anarchists, Agitators, Looters, and just plain Lunatics, will not be happy, but they will behave!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 8, 2020

Those may be only words. However, they're apparently being put into action as an hour before the debate we learned

In a recent video for the Trump campaign, Donald Trump Jr. becomes a modern-day Uncle Sam, urging Americans to sign up for a new kind of war.

“We need every able-bodied man and woman to join Army For Trump’s election security operation,” he says.

The younger Trump’s video, posted on the Team Trump Facebook and Twitter pages on Sept. 21, follows the Trump campaign’s strategy to rile up Republican voters against the perceived threat of voter fraud. The president’s son claims that the “radical left” plans to cast “millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election.”

The solution: assemble the troops.

The election is not being held today, tomorrow, or the day after. But Donald Trump is obsessed with polls in part because he fails to understand that they are a mere snapshot. So he in the past frequently boasted by Twitter and at rallies of high poll numbers, whether credible or not. And he can see by recent surveys that if the election were held today and voters were not discouraged from casting a vote, he would lose the popular vote and- probably by landslide- the electoral college.

Team Trump, however, knows there is still a chance of victory by suppressing the vote. Demand that potential Democratic voters "behave."  Threaten to sic bikers, police, and the military upon opponents. Rant and rave at a debate, thus reinforcing doubts about the political process. And recruit an Army for Trump to roam polling places in selected urban districts on election day.

I believe in divine justice but we shouldn’t have to wait. Hopefully, Donald Trump will easily survive Covid-19, lose the election, and be prosecuted.  However, GOP voter suppression will make it more difficult to defeat the President than it will be for him to recover from a coronavirus.

 

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