Democracy's Ills

How does that quote go again: "These are the times that try men's souls"? There is a frustrating duopoly at play; in our elections, in civil discourse, in our constitution, and certainly in our strained sense of democracy. We have come to learn, again, that our constitution is flawed and limiting. We, or most of us, say we support democracy, but we can't avoid the question as to why democracy and free elections have led us to the abyss. We speak of equality, think of ourselves, naively, as a classless society, and insist on such time-tested homilies as equal representation, or no taxation without representation (yeah, that's a good one). We have created or inherited a political system that we once urged, or sometimes forced, upon the world but which is now badly failing us.

On the one hand we continue to espouse boilerplate straight from civics class: freedom of expression, free markets makes for free people, a free press is the bedrock of a free society, all this freedom wrapped in a proud belief that minimum government yields maximum democracy --but it's all painfully juxtaposed against the urgently felt need to take back the public arena from the oligarchs, the corrupt, and religious fanatics. We, most of us, value freedom of speech; some of us still venerate the oh-so-learned Supreme Court for protecting our rights, but how many of us really believe Citizens United was a good decision? Or that denying the hyper-wealthy--or corporations--the right to buy elections, politicians, and the media is an affront to their free speech? 

On the other hand, do we know, or care to know, how much voter ignorance and apathy have contributed to our condition? I didn't vote for the jackasses that say we need to cut social security and food stamps from the poor because that's a good way to balance the budget. But millions did.

We may lament that people vote for selfish or irrational reasons, but we must remind ourselves that in the formative years of our republic, universal suffrage was seen as a horrible idea by the aristocracy and most of the founding fathers. The argument always given was that commoners, the illiterate, women, the melanin-enriched, the unpropertied, all of them would make poor voting choices. Specifically, they would vote themselves goods and services that were economically unsustainable, and would destabilize government. They usually left unstated their fear that the power and privileges of the upper class would be threatened by true democracy. 

So it might seem ironic that the most powerful and privileged in society, and among the best educated, are now the ones pushing and protecting policies, practices and legislation that are selfish, reckless, and demonstrably unsustainable. The middle class largely supports the same stabilizing policies of the past, including responsible taxation, support for the self-funding and efficient social security system, regulations that return us to the decades of stable banking we once enjoyed, and more.

And yet just enough people vote for politicians who have made it clear they don't want Americans to have better health care, have no intention of reining in Wall Street, will forever feed the military-industrial gravy train, and consistently vote for the interests of the wealthy and against the poor and working class. 

The real tragedy of American democracy is not just that so many politicians, mostly Republicans, actively support a Dixified nation with a small ruling class at the bidding of corporations. It is that many others, mostly Democrats, claim to support working class folks, but end up going along with the money train; it is they who will settle for scraps and claim progress; it is they who will support legislation so weak, toothless, and watered down as to be useless. They, not all, but too many of them, want you to believe they are fighting for middle America. 

What is depressing about this is though there are many politicians who want to and try to do the right thing, there always seems to be enough politicians, either outright reactionaries or compromised "moderates" who either bitterly oppose anyone who tries to do anything that most Americans actually support, or quietly insist-mostly at election time--that they are for you, but cannot or will not actually promote legislation that is, in fact, popular. Who do they think votes them into office? Why don't they get behind legislation that their base supports? You would think that far-right Republicans would abandon bills that even their Republican base is cool to, just as Democrats should be more enthusiastic about, say, a minimum wage increase. How politically popular does something have to be before Democrats will come out of hiding and publicly support it? It's as if they would rather dodge the attacks from Republicans and right-wing media, and chase Wall Street dollars, than respond to the voters who actually put them into office. It is little wonder that so many of America's poor and working class are disaffected and don't bother to vote. 

But hey, congrats to Harry Reid on filibuster reform; you too Diane Feinstein. It took you a while, but you finally decided that after years of record obstructionism that you should step in and actually do something about it. Too bad it took you five years to notice what Republicans were doing to the economy, the political process, and your party's president.

Reactionaries Still Win

There has been a recent spate of triumphalism from Democrats that is more than a little disconcerting. It sounds too much like 2009: Republicans are hurting, they have offended far too many women, gays, and immigrants. Demographics are inexorably turning against the mostly white, anti-science, anti-everything, etc.

While I think that is mostly true, it's worth remembering that similar analyses were widespread after Obama won in 2008. And then the 2010 mid-terms got in the way and we got hit with a gaggle of the most ideologically-strident reactionaries to occupy the House in generations.

Liberals have a point, to be sure. Just a few years ago, Republicans seemed to be on the cusp of a permanent majority in Congress. Then came a voter backlash against Republicans in 2006, 2008, and in 2012, which seemed to send a message to Republicans that the politics of hate, fear, and exclusion had run its course.

And yet Republicans seem to be doing pretty well at exercising power, certainly when you consider their low approval ratings in most polls. They may be out of sync with voter preferences on many policies,  but there is more to winning elections than actually appealing to the voters, as common-sensical as that may seem to most Democrats. I have always argued that Republicans do unusually well in elections, winning seats and influence all out of proportion to what data on voter registration and party identification would suggest.

That trend seems as strong as ever. It may surprise some to see how many ostensibly blue states are dominated by Republican governors and state legislatures. As for governors, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico come to mind. People who gloat, or despair, over the Republican Party's poor showing in recent national elections, to Obama primarily, forget how well the party has done in the House of Representatives as well as in state elections.

One can argue that many Republican victories have more to do with money, gerrymandering, and voter apathy than it does with true popularity and fair elections, (except in the US Senate, which is constitutionally guaranteed to give a huge advantage to small, rural states have over large states, no gerrymandering required). But to focus on these realities will always be interpreted by the false equivalency crowd  as sour grapes.

Academicians and Democratic policy wonks may understand what is at stake, and do their best to draw attention to our deeply undemocratic system of government,  But in the end, and for whatever reason, Republicans continue to win numerous elections. The fact that they increasingly resort to various ploys, such as voter suppression or clever gerrymandering, is of little concern to them.  Republicans never give up and incessantly plan for the next election and how they can win. And if it looks as if they are constantly scheming for a legislative or legal advantage, it is because they are. Republican politicians learned long ago that winning elections is something quite different from good governance or effective policy. Authoritarian personalities in particular place little emphasis on fairness. All that crap about voter fairness and the will of the people is for principled losers and civics teachers.

As for unequal representation in the Senate, the pictures below provide a glimpse of the disparity.  The Republican Party is surely in trouble, but various built-in advantages, along with a fickle and confused electorate, make it likely that America's right wing will find a way to retain power.

This group of senators, 62 of them, represents about a fourth of America

 

 So does this group of 6

source: NY Times.

Who's this Jerry Mander guy?

Republicans have gone through through a lot of hand wringing after last November's election losses. Many operatives were criticized for not doing better. After all, the money just poured into Republican campaign coffers; "we paid for this election fair and square." But party faithful cannot complain too much, not when you consider how deeply unpopular and reviled Republicans in Congress are. It is a wonder they won as many seats as they did. Let's just say Republicans did well, though for the wrong reasons.

Republicans were never in the running for the White House, not really. Despite hopes, and indeed, firm convictions they would prevail, Republicans paid the price for nominating a deeply flawed candidate.

And though they lost a few seats in the Senate, Republican pols and voters remain dramatically over-represented. The reason why there are so many Republicans in the Senate-whether they actually control it or not, is simple enough; the reason has been with us since the very beginning of the republic. The US Senate is not designed to reflect proportionate representation. As every civics class ought to teach, only the US House of Representatives sends members in accordance with each state's population; big states have more representatives in the House than do small ones. It's only fair, you see.

The Senate, on the other hand, was designed at the outset to counter the potential for big-state tyranny. So each state sends two senators regardless of size. Sounds kind of, sort of, reasonable, maybe. Except that what we now have is small-state tyranny. One result is that a state such as Alaska, with population of about 750,000, or Wyoming, with population of about 570,000, have equal voting power with California, with over 38 million, or New York, with over 19 million. And wouldn't you know it, AK, WY, and several other small, rural states reliably send Republicans to the Senate.  Of course, there are small blue states that benefit as well, including Vermont, Delaware, and Hawaii. But taken together, Republicans win senate seats with fewer votes, sometimes far fewer, especially in the rural, ranching and farming states. The fact that millions more Americans actually vote for Democratic candidates than they do for Republicans, and have less to show for it, reflects systemic electoral misrepresentation that skews the Senate towards Republicans, rural farmland, and Dixie.

This disproportionate representation, you may say, is regrettable, but worth it because it helps offset the proportional representation in the House, which obviously favors large states. And besides, proportional representation is written in stone, or at least the US Constitution. So yeah, there's that.

Now we see, pace the Constitution, that Republicans are overrepresented in the US House as well. Color me not surprised.

Here's how Bill Berkowitz, writing in Alternet, puts it:

Tens of millions poured into a stealth redistricting project before the 2012 elections kept dozens of GOP Districts safe from Democratic challengers.

If somewhere in the recesses of your mind you were wondering how, despite President Barack Obama’s re-election victory and the Democratic Party’s gains in the Senate, Republicans continue to control the House of Representatives, think redistricting.

Redistricting is the process that adjusts the lines of a state’s electoral districts, theoretically based on population shifts, following the decennial census. Gerrymandering is often part and parcel of redistricting. According to the Rose Institute of State and Local Governments at Claremont McKenna College, Gerrymandering is done “to influence elections to favor a particular party, candidate, ethnic group.”

Over the past few years, as the Republican Party has gained control over more state legislatures than Democrats. And, it has turned redistricting into a finely-honed, well-financed project. That has virtually insured their control over the House. “While the Voting Rights Act strongly protects against racial gerrymanders, manipulating the lines to favor a political party is common,” the Rose Institute’s Redistricting in America website points out.

Dana Milbank writing on Jan. 4, also acknowledged the important role of gerrymandering:

The final results from the November election were completed Friday, and they show that Democratic candidates for the House outpolled Republicans nationwide by nearly 1.4 million votes and more than a full percentage point — a greater margin than the preliminary figures showed in November. And that’s just the beginning of it: A new analysis finds that even if Democratic congressional candidates won the popular vote by seven percentage points nationwide, they still would not have gained control of the House.

The analysis, by Ian Millhiser at the liberal Center for American Progress using data compiled by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, finds that even if Democrats were to win the popular vote by a whopping nine percentage points — a political advantage that can’t possibly be maintained year after year — they would have a tenuous eight-seat majority.

In a very real sense, the Republican House majority is impervious to the will of the electorate. Thanks in part to deft redistricting based on the 2010 Census, House Republicans may be protected from the vicissitudes of the voters for the next decade. For Obama and the Democrats, this is an ominous development: The House Republican majority is durable, and it isn’t necessarily sensitive to political pressure and public opinion.

According to the Jan. 4 final tally by Cook’s David Wasserman after all states certified their votes, Democratic House candidates won 59,645,387 votes in November to the Republicans’ 58,283,036, a difference of 1,362,351. On a percentage basis, Democrats won, 49.15 percent to 48.03 percent. 

This in itself is an extraordinary result: Only three or four other times in the past century has a party lost the popular vote but won control of the House. But computer-aided gerrymandering is helping to make such undemocratic results the norm — to the decided advantage of Republicans, who controlled state governments in 21 states after the 2010 Census, almost double the 11 for Democrats.

Gerrymandering has been with us from the republic's beginnings, and it certainly isn't just Republicans who jockey for advantage.  But the most recent redistricting results are ominous. The country is divided more than it has been in generations; Republican indifference to voter preferences, along with some clever insulation from the voters themselves, come at a time of breathtaking extremism in that party's politics.

"He who controls redistricting can control Congress." Karl Rove

Reactionaries Did Themselves In

So now that the elections are finally over, the recriminations have begun. I said earlier that if Romney lost, the Republican party would blame Romney and not its policies. Party big shots and their shills in the media would say they lost because Romney was a flawed candidate, or that he ran a weak campaign. And now we see that process has begun. But master operative Karl Rove is also taking a lot of heat for Republican losses that, amazingly, most of them did not see coming. Rove has been bitterly denounced for his failure to do lots of things, but basically, as far as the super rich guys were concerned, his failure to deliver on a campaign they were treating as bought and paid for.

Of course, Rove has a bit of defense; Romney really was a weak candidate. Rove provided various logistical services for a veritable swarm of candidates, and of course he provided boatloads of money for candidates who were only too happy to have the help. He didn't tell the various down ticket Republicans that they should put their foot in their mouths by offending gays, blacks, Hispanics, and women. Whatever was going through the minds of loathsome candidates like Joe Walsh of Illinois, Allen West of Florida, Todd Akin of Missouri, or Richard Mourdock of Indiana, came from their hearts, so to speak. They all ran on anger, divisiveness, and contempt for people not like themselves; they all lost.

What is not happening, for most Republicans, is a recognition that their policies are not supported by most Americans and their attitude, including, most certainly, Mitt Romney's, mightily pissed off way too many highly motivated voters. Their reactionary world view kept them from appreciating just how much damage they were doing to themselves and to the Republican brand. For many years Republicans at all levels have allowed themselves to retreat from a mainstream view of the world, of liberalism, Democrats, and especially President Obama. Instead, a parallel, deeply reactionary (and therefore not a traditionally-nuanced conservatism) alternative has grown to dominate the party.

At the center of that alternative universe is conservative media, dominated by the Fox News we have come to love, as well as Rush Limbaugh, but also a host of others, many of them owned or affiliated with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, as is Fox. The Republican party has for years helped develop and increasingly relied upon an ideologically-driven alternative media. It is a model, besides being irresistibly profitable for the executives who run it, that has gamed rank-and-file viewers while providing a comforting and convenient outlet for right wing voices. Doing so created apparent legitimacy to noxious and offensive individuals and ideas as well as an ideological bubble that served to inoculate conservative voters from uncomfortable facts or non-confirmatory narratives. It also induced Republican politicians, not always the most nuanced thinkers to begin with, to deeply overestimate their party's appeal and misjudge how offensive they were perceived by all but the diminishing numbers of true believers.
 

What Romney Won't Run On: Mass Governor

On October 9 I posted the first of what are to be several articles on what Romney won't run on. At the time I said:

We have seen a curious pattern with Mitt Romney's campaign style over the months. Earlier in the year, Romney pointedly told us how qualified he is to be president and how proud he was of his accomplishments. And what have been his examples? 

Well, Bain, of course, except when people started to look into what private equity actually entails; more on that another day. Romney is positively bipolar regarding his single biggest achievement as Governor of Massachusetts, a state-wide health plan informally called Romneycare. More on that later, too.

And what about that stint as Governor of Massachusetts? Besides Romneycare. That was real executive experience, was it not? Look, he says, at his solid record of competence, and in a state dominated by Democrats. That's got to be a big plus.

Have you stopped to think about how little Mitt Romney actually talks about his record as Governor? Or to be more precise, how little you know about his four years at the helm. Romney is not shy to proclaim he created jobs, or he balanced the budget,but like so much else on his campaign stops, his declamations regarding his time in Massachusetts have a robotic, incomplete, Powerpoint feel to them. The man mindlessly recites focus group-approved bromides. In so doing, he often impatiently dictates to the listener, as if staying on message and getting your pet phrases into peoples' heads ––to do what? Show you have disciplined campaign?–– is more important that letting people actually get to know who you are. It is a campaign that is incredibly sanitized, so much so that Romney as a person cannot help but look stiff, unnatural, and aloof. Ask the man substantive questions and think carefully about how little is in his answers.

So how do the people of Massachusetts feel about their former governor? Are they behind his presidential effort? Voters there know him pretty well, and they remember his record. Jason Schwartz from Boston Magazine recently posted a lengthy piece on that state's recollections of Romney. Let's just say when Mitt tells his story, he's leaving a lot out. And before anyone starts foaming about how Massachusetts is full of socialists who hate freedom, it was they, not teabaggers from down south, or Utah, who decided that Romney had a message and actually voted him into office.

Schwartz reminds us that Romney was governor just six years ago. "Today he’s so unpopular here he’s barely bothering to campaign in the state. There are reasons for that—and they could spell doom for his presidential campaign."  Schwartz continues:

When he does talk about his time here as governor, it’s usually to pump up his bipartisan bona fides or brag about how he balanced the budget without raising taxes. (Strictly speaking, this is true, though helpfully devoid of context: All Massachusetts governors are constitutionally required to balance the budget, and while Romney technically may not have raised taxes, he did hike fees on a variety of government services.) What he does not discuss are the hugely successful bills he passed, like universal healthcare and an assault-weapons ban. Obviously, he also does not mention just how unpopular he was when he left office.

Schwartz understates Mitt's fee-raising spree. Romney was determined to not raise taxes but he had no qualms about hiking fees, often dramatically, on a wide range of services, licenses, permits, and the like.

So please, America, pay attention. There’s been too little talk about Romney’s time as governor of Massachusetts, and now that you’re deciding whether to make him our next president, it’s worth understanding just how and why he alienated the voters who know him best. Because the big problems that have been plaguing Romney on the campaign trail—that he’s personally inaccessible, that he’s had trouble unifying his party, that he’s become known as a flip-flopper—all have their roots in Massachusetts.

Schwartz goes on to relate the many people in Massachusetts who were taken aback by Romney's aloof unwillingness to communicate with mayors and other state officials. His activity seemed invariably orchestrated for political effect (not unique to Romney, of course). The problem was not the occasional grandstanding; it was the indifference and unwillingness to talk. 

Nor did Romney appear to connect any better with voters, despite what seemed like an auspicious start to his term...Romney created a bubble for himself, very similar to the one he’s employed while running for president. Out on the trail, he often seems robotic when trying to relate to people, and almost never answers impromptu questions from the press. When he does go off-script, the results are often poor...Given Romney’s obvious national aspirations while governor, it’s somewhat curious that he didn’t practice off-the-cuff exchanges more often. Apparently he believed that life outside the bubble was just as perilous for him then as it’s proving to be now.

Schwartz notes, as have others, that Romney has pretty much written off winning Massachusetts. He had lost interest in the state even while still governor. After a strong start in 2003-4, Romney "basically checked out of Massachusetts. He planned 78 town visits in 2005, and just 25 in the first 10 months of 2006 (the final two months of his 2006 schedules were missing from the records in the state archives). That year he spent all or part of 219 days outside the state, building his national profile."

Elected to run his state but loses interest halfway through? Who else does that remind you of?

There's so much more in the article. By all means, read it in its entirety.

Vote Suppression

Perhaps you have seen the news of a young political operative in Virginia named Colin Small who was caught dumping completed voter registration forms in a dumpster. You can see his picture, and the story, here. He looks like a surly, sullen little prick, doesn't he? But who knows? Maybe he was just having a bad day. After all, when you work for Republicans and are caught in a criminal act, and then find your mug plastered on national media, you wouldn't feel like smiling either.

Virginia's Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli will not investigate Small's attempted destruction of voter registration forms because the State Board of Elections doesn't recommend one. Virginia Registrar Brandi Lilly says, “There’s no way to tell by party when people fill out these forms, what party they’re affiliated with, so I don’t think there’s any political motivation.”

Ferchristssake, Brandi, give your brain a chance. How can you know there was no political motivation if you don't bother to even investigate? Note we are not talking prosecution; that is difficult decision and prosecutors will often decide to not file charges because a provable case is just not there. Fine, but you are not even going to investigate? I can think of many reasons why a politically motivated and partisan operative, which Small is, would dump the forms. He may have identified the registrants as black, or they appeared to be students, or they were young women. And if that doesn't make sense to you, you haven't been paying attention to Republican voter suppression in Virginia and elsewhere.

I can understand the Republican party doesn't want any more of this kind of news. All the same, the word now is that the local sheriff's office has indeed arrested Small and is considering prosecution. I'm guessing that sheriff is going to hear from Republicans much higher up than Colin Small, and they won't be asking if he is registered to vote.

I have a big problem with all of this, aside from the likelihood, despite Ms. Lilly's inane observation, that Small's action is not isolated. And that is the casual way the media is playing this. That may change of course, as events unfold. But I am not counting on it. Recall, in contrast, the orgy that concern trolls had over ACORN, especially after Republicans, including those in Congress, beat them over the head with it. Republicans wanted ACORN to be a story. Never mind that ACORN followed the letter of the law and reported the registration irregularities, as required. That is a shameful story I should revisit sometime.

Here's a picture of Small's Linkedin.com page. He looks a little happier in this one. 

Blame Romney?

The Republican Party has been good at setting narratives, some uplifting, some not. The last four years have been deeply negative because that is where the Party is headed, but also because they don't hold the presidency. Hence the unceasing narrative, successfully planted in the minds of many, that Barack Obama is not one of us; he's foreign, ineligible, out of touch, neo-colonial, Marxist, Muslim. The drumbeat never ends because Republicans understand their base and how it is motivated by fear and uncertainty, and they understand better than Dems that winning elections is about telling emotional stories.

The current presidential race has all of the standard Republican boilerplate, but we have  seen many Republicans stray off message in recent years, to put it mildly. One has to wonder why deeply conservative candidates believe attacking women, social security, medicare, Hispanics, teachers, a struggling working class, and more, could be a winning campaign strategy. Attacking everyone who is not like you is not a recommended approach to expanding the voter base. 

And now Mitt Romney, goaded by teabaggers everywhere, has taken the face of 21st century Republicanism much further to the right. It is hard to believe this is the same party that brought us fiery fighter Teddy Roosevelt, calm and fair Dwight Eisenhower,  and bland but sensible Gerald Ford. Even Dick Nixon looks positively moderate by comparison. Romney had an opportunity to bring sense to his party and denounce the worst and most radical elements, but for probably personal reasons, he has chosen to pander to them instead.

And now he appears trapped by their ideology. Weeks before the general election, it is obvious that Romney, and many other downticket candidates, not only have espoused unpopular and destructive policies, which are obvious to many of us, but that he has run a poor campaign, which is obvious to almost everyone. And it has come at a time in the election cycle when far more people are paying attention. To be sure, many Republicans warned long ago that Romney was not their guy. And now that it is too late, it has become obvious to many party bigwigs that Romney was a weak choice.

However, it is precisely Romney's weaknesses that are giving Republicans a new narrative to invent. The angle being developed is that if Obama is reelected, it will be Romney's fault; he is, after all, a weak campaigner. It is only Sept 30, and a Romney defeat is still far from certain, so manufacturing excuses in advance does not look like a winning strategy.

And yet we can see a subtle whisper campaign starting to build. The Republicans, they tell us, could have, should have, won the presidency, if only they had had a candidate who knew how to campaign. Republicans are now assuring themselves they have the right policies, the right prescriptions, the right everything; it's just that Romney put up a weak campaign. Who knew?

And Obama? Because he is all those terrible things Republicans say he is, there is no way he should be winning this thing. It is, you see, just more proof that Romney was a weak candidate. If you buy into right-wing critiques of Obama, then voters should have flocked to Romney. This was the expectation, even from Romney himself. Few are willing to admit they massively misconstrued the electorate.

If Romney loses, especially if he continues to offend voters, he will be crucified by his party. He was never especially popular anyway. He won the nomination because he was able to pander to the right, and because the other Republican candidates were even weaker and more risible than he. The election is weeks away and Republicans have to convince voters that it is not the Republican brand that is to blame, just that one guy at the top of the ticket. And if he does in fact lose, it is only because he was a crappy campaigner.

What other reasons could there be?

Amend 2012

It was two years ago this week when five corporatists on the US Supreme Court made the ludicrous argument that corporations are people and that not allowing them to spend unlimited money on political campaigns would be denying them their right, as people, to free speech. Thanks to their ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC, not only do rich people have more free speech, corporations do now as well. And since we do not hinder free speech, we cannot hinder the free flow of money into politics. Corporations can now buy elections and politicians more blatantly than ever before. Since money is fungible, that guarantees foreign corporations will be in on it as well. It's free speech, you see. It's right there in that constitution teabaggers keep waving around.

Corporate America dominates government, politicians, the voting process, and the media that covers it. Citizens United has helped turn us into a banana republic that allows an oligarchy to subvert our entire political economy. The impact of that ruling will surely be magnified greatly in 2012, a presidential election year. 

Robert Reich reviews the issue and invites us to learn more and get involved in the only way we can to reduce the ridiculous and corrupting influence of corporate money in elections. He joins with amend2012.org and others to push for a constitutional amendment that states what should have been obvious; corporations are not people. They do not get to buy elections.

Think about Citizens United the next time Republicans claim they favor strict constructionism. Think about that case's tortured logic that effectively guarantees that corporations will buy elections the next time conservatives complain about activist judges.

Republican Platform

So how many of these early warning signs do you recognize? Twenty-first century America sounds a lot like 1920s Italy. And if its similarity to Republican talking points doesn't unnerve you, you may be part of the problem. Read more on pre-fascist America
from Naomi Wolf, here, here, or watch her video here.

How Republicans Suppress Voting

Ernest Canning, guest blogging at Brad Friedman's The Brad Blog, writes: 

Voter suppression has long been a staple of American politics, but the tsunami of new restrictions on the polling place now being rammed through by newly-elected Republican majorities in state after state is unprecedented, certainly since the era of Jim Crow was supposed to have been ended by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Canning goes on the explain the felt need for Republicans to suppress votes, not the least of which is the growing unpopularity of that party's policies, its efforts to deliver for its Wall Street benefactors are becoming more blatant, and national demographics are moving away from Republicans, even as they themselves are moving ever further to the right.

Voter suppression is becoming increasingly institutionalized. A good analysis of how it works can be seen at the video below. It is the full-length version of Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections.

Voter suppression does not need to be pervasive to be decisive.

Worthy of Contempt

There is a fair number of ideas, attitudes, or policies that I truly despise and consider worthy of contempt. Three prime examples that come to mind are wage theft, tax avoidance, and voter suppression. Obviously they are not on the same immoral level as, say, genocide, but they are all too common, tolerated, and even defended by our politicians, parties, and corporate leaders. And they are mostly ignored by a feckless media.

I have posted on wage theft before, and will do so again. I will address tax avoidance as well, in part because it is becoming increasingly prevalent. 

Voter suppression; where to start? How about the fact that over time and throughout the world it has been overwhelmingly a political weapon of conservatives, the overclass, the wealthy, monarchists, and other authoritarian-types. In the United States, voter suppression has been consistently utilized, sometimes with decisive results, by the same groups who bleat endlessly about the constitution, their love of democracy, and the sanctity of the rule of law.

Voter suppression isn't voter fraud. The latter is extremely rare though claims of voter fraud have become an increasingly common charge or scare tactic promoted by those who want to make the voting process more difficult, onerous, and discouraging than it already is.

And as it turns out, that means Republicans. This conclusion is unavoidable for one reason distilled into two words: massive evidence. Think about the various state efforts to tighten voting requirements, to require more personal identification, or limit voting hours and precincts.  How about "voter caging"? Republicans are behind them all.

Now I am not saying only Republicans will resort to dirty tricks, or use questionable methods to discredit an opponent. I am reminded of LBJ's rise to the US Senate where his operatives, under his direction, most likely did some creative ballot stuffing. And that was not just a hard-ball tactic; it was clearly illegal.

Voter suppression isn't even always illegal. And what is contemptible to one may be realistic tactics to another. So there is a gray area as to what is smart and tough, and what is unethical or crosses the legal line.

My real point is that regardless of how one feels about election season ethics, it has been conservatives, including Southern Dixiecrats of the past, and now almost always Republicans, who most consistently work to prevent high voter turnout and to restrict eligibility. This reflects sentiments entirely consistent with American conservatism. It was conservatives who opposed the right of women to vote, who implemented unconstitutional poll taxes, and for whom giving voting rights to former slaves was anathema. 

There has been much academic ink written on this phenomenon. The reasons why Republicans are more likely to indulge in voter suppression are well-documented and based on sound theoretical foundations. For those who would like to see how voter suppression relates to personality, especially an authoritarian personality, see the work of Professor Bob Altemeyer, especially his classic, The Authoritarians.

ThinkProgress recently posted From Poll Taxes to Voter ID Laws: A Short History of Conservative Voter Suppression. 

 Conservatives have said voter id laws are necessary to combat mass voter fraud. Yet according to the Brennan Center for Justice, Americans are more likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than commit voter fraud. And the Bush administration’s five-year national “war on voter fraud” resulted in only 86 convictions of illegal voting out of more than 196 million votes cast. Instead conservatives are employing an old tactic: using the specter of false voting to restrict the voting rights of minorities and the poor...

There is more at the link above. And while you are at, see the excellent investigative reporting by Greg Palast from last fall, where he explores the motives of Arizona's show-me-your-papers legislation espoused by Republicans; you know, the ones that bray endlessly on personal freedom and how they will get government off your back.

The backdrop, as Palast explains, is that Republicans were insisting there was serious voter fraud:

In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters ... directed by one Jan Brewer.

Brewer, then Secretary of State, had organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected.

That statistic caught my attention. Voting or registering to vote if you're not a citizen is a felony, a big-time jail-time crime. And arresting such criminal voters is easy: after all, they give their names and addresses.

  

So I asked Brewer's office, had she busted a single one of these thousands of allegedly illegal voters? Did she turn over even one name to the feds for prosecution?

No, not one.

 Good job, Greg. That is how investigative reporting is done.

Privatizing Elections: A Republican Wet Dream

Last week I reported that House Republicans intended to end the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, the Watergate-era law that created a role for public financing of elections. This latest effort to give the wealthy ever more control over our democratic institutions passed an important hurdle on Wednesday by a 239-160 vote margin. As with virtually all substantive legislation, the vote fell sharply on party lines.

Republican leaders never fail to give reason for loathing. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor claimed the bill was a "no-brainer." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, introduced the bill into the Senate, claiming, “In a time of exploding deficits and record debt, the last thing the American people want right now is to provide what amounts to welfare for politicians.”

These, of course, are the same people who continue to vote for various corporate subsidies, allow corporations to avoid taxes through sweetheart legislation, happily line their pockets with corporate donations, oversee the monstrous and lucrative defense contracts that put billions of taxpayers' dollars into corporate coffers, and voted to extend tax cuts to America's richest.

What the budget deficit does is allow Republicans to chip away at any number of programs, however valuable, in the guise of attacking the deficit. The actual budgetary impact of many of the programs they insist must end is quite modest; $20 million here, $50 million there. Seems like a lot until you realize the total amount doesn't pay for a single B-1 bomber.

Republican presidential candidates know they personally will have no trouble raising huge sums of cash for future elections because they do corporate America's bidding. Progressive politicians who try to rein in the march to oligarchy will have a much tougher time raising money. And that disproportionate impact is why Republicans would love to end public financing. Obama's great fund-raising success in 2008, which did not rely on public funds, will be tough to repeat, and thanks to Citizens United, will likely be overshadowed as corporations and the super-wealthy reassert and extend their traditional dominance.

The bill still has to pass the Senate, which seems unlikely, and then be signed into law by the President, which is even more unlikely. I would feel better about this were it not for the Democrats' proven ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 

See BusinessWeek for more details.

Republicans Push for More Corporate Dominance

The march towards oligarchy continues. Republicans, in the guise of spending cuts, have announced they want to abolish campaign matching funds. As David Espo at MSNBC writes:

WASHINGTON — The House will vote next week on legislation to end the system of financing presidential candidates and national party conventions with federal matching funds, Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced Thursday. He put the estimated savings at $520 million over a decade if the legislation passes Congress and is signed into law.

Cantor, R-Va., said the vote would be a response to a pre-election project in which Republicans invited the public to vote on proposals for reductions in federal spending.

"While some have argued that providing even more taxpayer funding for this program might entice more candidates to participate, eliminating the program altogether would save taxpayers $520 million over 10 years and would require candidates and political parties to rely on private donations rather than tax dollars," read a description on Cantor's website.

That last sentence is the kicker: Cantor and his fellow Republicans, rolling in cash ever since the Supremes, at least five of them, handed them Citizens United a year ago, now want to more thoroughly privatize elections than ever before by outlawing even the modest role played by legislation passed in response to multiple election-related abuses by the Nixon Administration.

That legislation was specifically designed to prevent undue reliance on special interest groups, or more specifically the richest and best-connected interest groups. If it is repealed, a big if at this point, there will be even less separating corporate America from dominance, legal dominance, mind you, of the electoral process and government itself.

All this to "save" $520 million over 10 years. We spend that much on Afghanistan in a matter of days.

Dogs And Teabaggers Sense Fear

Here is a video I meant to put up earlier. Bill Maher and Michael Moore capture much of the essence of teabagger mentality, and for that matter, much of what studies on authoritarian personalities have demonstrated long before anyone heard of teabaggers, Palin, or Glenn Beck.

Maher makes the point that many Americans are like dogs. That will get the right wing's assortment of serial resenters frothing, but he makes a cringe-worthy and accurate assertion that so many Americans are like dogs because they don't really understand what is being said; they look for voice inflection, style, symbolism, and attitude.

Ok, so dogs don't get symbolism, but Maher is right to emphasize fear as a motivator for dogs and teabaggers alike. Millions let their gut feelings be their guide, which is why, as Maher notes, so many seem impervious to rational discourse. On numerous issues wonkish progressives hold dear, teabaggers do not simply disagree with progressives, and offer a reasoned counter argument; they do not understand the issue in the first place. 

But listen carefully to Moore. He stresses a point you have heard me say before: Dems lost seats in November because the 18-24 crowd didn't bother to vote, while their parent and grandparents did. Moore says 70% of the 18-24 demographic voted for Obama, which sounds about right. However, while 23 million of them voted in '08, only 9 million did so in 2010. Yet Republicans only garnered 5 million more votes in 2010.

Do the math: it's all about voter turnout.

 ________

Some Good News, But Mostly Bad

I am not happy about Tuesday's election results, with a few major exceptions, but I am going to hold off on diving into the mess, especially since so many others will do so in the next few days. I'll let the dust settle a bit, and see where we can go from here. 

However, I do want to share with you some commentary from Robert Parry. I have a similar take: I am reminded of, and strangely comforted by, the studies that show that so many American voters do not know what they are talking about and voting on. There is a swath of ignorance in this country that is both astonishing and depressing.  And more on that later as well.  

As Robert Parry has put it:

"This Republican strategy that Reagan popularized in the early 1980s has – over the past three decades – returned the United States to a second Gilded Age of extreme wealth at the top, a shrinking middle class, growing desperation among the working classes, rampant stock speculation, and a bubble-and-bust economy.

Yet amazingly, millions of Americans went to the polls on Tuesday and voted for this approach. In Rust Belt states – such as Ohio and Pennsylvania – which have substantial interest in manufacturing jobs related to the auto industry, voters punished Democrats who saved General Motors and Chrysler, and favored Republicans who would have blocked the bailout.

Voters also sent the conflicting message that they wanted the federal government to focus on 'jobs, jobs, jobs' but also cut the deficit. They then empowered Republicans whose major idea for job creation is to slash taxes for the richest top two percent of Americans, an approach that has been ineffective in job creation but is expected to add about $700 billion in red ink over the next decade."

We political scientists have a technical term to describe this behavior: "fucking idiots."

On the other hand, I was extremely pleased that Colleen Hanabusa emerged victorious in her effort to take back Hawaii's first congressional district. In a race that the media frequently called "hotly contested," or somesuch, Colleen won 53% of the vote (to Djou's 47%). Still, only 55.7% of registered voters went to the trouble to vote.

Another plus was that Democrat Neil Abercrombie easily defeated Republican Duke Aiona in the race for Governor. And when you include the clear victories by Senator Dan Inouye and Representative Mazie Hirono, it was a Democratic sweep for Hawaii's congressional delegation.

Colleen's victory celebration was packed and festive. I am honored to have been able to contribute in some small way.

"Ask Yourself Which America You Want"

I am headed out the door for a last round of phone banking for Colleen Hanabusa. Russell Simmons provides an appropriate backdrop for what is at stake.

"Don't Vote and We'll Get the Alice in Wonderland Congress From Hell."

GOTV

Get the Goddamn Vote Out

Tea Bags Steeped in Ignorance

Nice video.  Now do what you can to GOTV!

Get Out and Vote

You say you may not vote this time around? That's just what the shits in this video want to hear. Your choice should be obvious.

Republicans Will Win, If You Let Them

According to a recent AP-GfK poll, Americans may not hold Democrats in high regard, but their view of Republicans is even worse. Only 38% approve of Democrats in Congress, but that is better than the 31% the Republicans can muster. And 59% expressed dissatisfaction with the Dems, but the figure for Republicans is 64%. President Obama may not be polling all that well, but, you guessed it, Republicans get even lower marks.

The reason why Republican candidates may gain seats, and we have been hearing this for a while, is that their base, especially the Teabaggers, is more fired up, and thus more likely to vote. Perhaps, though I have learned to be wary of the memes the mainstream media throws out. And I am detecting a slight shift away from this script, in part because Dems seem to be coming out of their stupor and are connecting a few dots.

We'll see, though it is beyond me how any Democratic voter cannot feel motivated, especially after watching someone like Sharron Angle or Christine O'Donnell speak. Never mind how some Dems have disappointed you. Look at the alternative. And you say you are going to sit this one out because Obama and Company have not addressed all your concerns? Give your brain a chance.

The supreme irony is that if progressives and moderates sit out this election, the people the public regards most unfavorably, Congressional Republicans, will be the ones that win. And it will all be because Teabaggers and other right-wingers bothered to vote, and the rest of us did not.