US Politics

Fight to voteUS voting rightsHow Democrats could actually pass their new voting rights billDespite the huge obstacle that the filibuster poses, this new bill is significant – Democrats aren’t willing to let voting reform go The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam LevineThu 16 Sep 2021 10.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 16 Sep 2021 13.16 EDTSign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterHappy Thursday,My inbox quickly filled up with statements of support on Tuesday morning after Democrats unveiled the latest iteration of a federal bill that would drastically expand voting rights.The bill, the Freedom to Vote Act, has been described as a “compromise”, hashed out over the summer by a group of Senate Democrats after Republicans filibustered an earlier version of it. But while the bill does get rid of some key things from the initial version, it still is pretty expansive. It would require states to offer at least 15 days of early voting, along with same-day registration, as well as automatic and online registration. It would enshrine new protections for local election officials and poll workers amid growing concerns about intimidation and partisan interference in their work. And it sets new criteria that states have to follow when they draw electoral districts to curb the practice of severely manipulating districts for partisan gain.We’ve been here before. It’s no secret that the bill is probably dead on arrival in the US Senate as long as the filibuster, the rule that requires 60 votes to advance legislation, remains in place. A handful of Democrats, led by Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have vocally supported keeping the measure in place.As I read through the cascade of statements praising the new bill, I was struck by how many of them coupled their enthusiasm with calls to eliminate the filibuster. It was a grim recognition of the quagmire Democrats have confronted since taking control of Congress in January: voting reform is impossible while the filibuster is in place.So where do things go from here?Despite the huge obstacle that the filibuster still poses, I do think this new bill is significant. First, it shows that Democrats aren’t willing to let voting reform go; by coming back so quickly with a new bill, they’re signaling that they are prepared to force a fight over the filibuster.Second, Democrats are showing Republicans that they are willing to make concessions in their signature piece of legislation. They dropped a provision from the earlier version that would have required officials to send absentee ballot applications to all registered voters. They also got rid of a provision that would have required every state to set up independent commissions to draw districts. The new legislation also allows states to require identification to vote while also setting up a process for people who lack ID to vote. These will all up the ante on Republicans to negotiate in good faith.Third, it’s significant that Manchin played an active role in crafting the bill and is now the one shopping it around to get Republican support. That support seems unlikely (“It is a solution in search of a problem, and we will not be supporting that,” Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said on Tuesday). If Manchin is unable to personally persuade Republicans to sign on, despite the concessions from Democrats, it will only increase pressure on him to revise his stance on the filibuster.Joe Biden also has indicated a new willingness to pressure reluctant Democrats on their filibuster position.‘All options are on the table’Manchin said this week “the filibuster is permanent”. But there are a number of things Democrats could do short of getting rid of the rule entirely. They could carve out voting rights legislation from the filibuster, or lower the threshold needed to advance legislation down from 60 votes. They could also require anyone who wants to filibuster legislation to actually speak continuously on the Senate floor to delay legislation, an idea Biden has endorsed.Whatever Democrats ultimately do, one thing is clear: it needs to happen quickly (Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has vowed to hold a vote on the measure as soon as next week). States are already beginning the once-a-decade process of redrawing district lines, making it all the more urgent to get the anti-gerrymandering provisions of the bill in place.“We are giving him the opportunity to do that with a bill that he supports and that he modified,” Schumer said of Manchin on Tuesday. “If that doesn’t happen, we will cross that bridge when we come to it. As I’ve said, all options are on the table.”Reader questionsThank you to everyone who wrote in last week with questions. You can continue to write to me each week at [email protected] or DM me on twitter at @srl and I’ll try and answer as many as I can.Q: I’m originally from France, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not in support of any voting restrictions, however, we’ve always had to show our IDs in order to be able to vote in France, and it’s never really been a problem (I don’t think). So I’m wondering why ID requirements are such a big deal in the US to vote.Unlike many European countries, the US doesn’t automatically issue a free identification card to its citizens. There are some experts I’ve spoken with who believe that if the US did automatically issue free ID cards, a voter ID requirement would be more tolerable. (You can read more on this idea in this recent piece in the Atlantic.)Academic research on voter ID has shown mixed things on the effect it has on overall turnout. Nonetheless, courts in Texas and North Carolina have found in recent years that lawmakers have specifically enacted voter ID requirements intending to discriminate against minority voters.In many cases, the key part of a voter ID measure is not whether ID is required, but what kinds of IDs are acceptable and how easy it is for someone to prove their identity and vote if they don’t have an acceptable ID. In Texas, for example, lawmakers infamously allowed people to vote using a state gun permit, but not a student ID. In North Carolina, lawmakers excluded IDs they knew Black people were more likely to possess from those acceptable to vote.One last point: states often justify ID measures by saying they will offer free ID to anyone who cannot afford one. But that’s somewhat misleading. Even if there is no dollar amount attached to an ID, there’s a time cost for people to gather the documents they need to prove their identity and take the time to go to the DMV to do that.Q: I’m an ignorant Brit with a simple question: how come fair and equally accessible voting isn’t guaranteed in the US constitution?A lot of people are really surprised to learn there’s no guaranteed right to vote in the constitution. The Founding Fathers initially limited voting to a small group of people.Later amendments to the constitution protect access to voting by outlining the reasons why government can’t block people from the ballot box. The 15th amendment, for example, says that government can’t block someone from voting “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. As concerns over voter discrimination rise, some scholars believe there should be a renewed push to add an affirmative right to vote to the constitution.TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansUS SenatefeaturesReuse this content More

US politics US vaccine mandates induce bad case of rightwing hysteria – that could worsen Joe Biden has been called ‘fascist’ and ‘tyrannical’ for his Covid prevention measures but the public appears to be on his sideDavid Smith in Washington@ More

US politics‘Study Newsom’s playbook’: what Democrats – and Republicans – can learn from California’s recallGovernor’s strategy could help Democrats in some states but also offers them a warning Maanvi Singh@ More

Gavin NewsomWhat does Gavin Newsom’s recall victory mean for California?The governor easily defeated the attempt to remove him from office as voters indicated they didn’t want a dramatic change of course Dani Anguiano@ More

California‘Stay tuned’: Elder hints at rematch against Newsom as he concedes California recallRepublican talk radio host tells supporters to ‘stay tuned’ after governor handily defeats historic recall effort Maanvi Singh in Oakland and agencies@ More

OpinionUS politicsRepublicans overplayed their hand in California – and Democrats are laughingLloyd GreenLarry Elder just discovered that his brand appeals to a tiny fraction of voters. Republican governors in Texas and Florida may learn similar lessons Wed 15 Sep 2021 09.39 EDTFirst published on Wed 15 Sep 2021 09.31 EDTOn Tuesday, Gavin Newsom, California’s embattled governor, convincingly beat back a Republican-driven recall effort. Once projected to be a nail-biter, the contest degenerated into a nearly 30-point blowout. Indeed, Newsom may have even outpaced Joe Biden’s 2020 margin in California.Larry Elder: defeated California recall challenger takes a page from Trump’s big lie playbookRead moreTen months later, Donald Trump’s name was no longer on the ballot, but his spirit still lingered. Before the polls had closed, the former president was carrying on about the recall being rigged. Meanwhile, Larry Elder, Newsom’s leading Republican opponent and a rightwing radio host, had tentatively planned a post-election legal challenge.In the end, the threat of Elder in the governor’s mansion galvanized Democrats. To put things in context, Elder, who is black, has argued for reparations for slave owners. Let that sink in.On 18 July, on the Candace Owens Show, Elder opined: “Their legal property was taken away from them after the civil war, so you could make an argument that the people that are owed reparations are not only just Black people but also the people whose ‘property’ was taken away after the end of the civil war.”Also, Elder separately confided his support for “appointing judges and regulators who respect the constitutional right to life”, and announced that “the ideal minimum wage is $0”. Not surprisingly, little more than a third of California’s voters held a favorable opinion of Elder.As framed by John J Pitney, the Roy P Crocker professor of politics at California’s Claremont McKenna College, “in a heavily Democratic state Newsom was probably going to survive anyway”. But Elder “helped him turn surviving into a triumph”, Pitney told the Guardian. Elder was a gift to the governor.To be sure, it wasn’t just about Elder. More than 60% of Californians hold an unfavorable view of the Republican party, seven in 10 support mask mandates for students, and more than three-fifths categorized vaccination as a public health responsibility rather than a personal choice. The ethos of what could be called “live free and die” had a limited number of takers.Meanwhile, talk of a foregone electoral outcome led Republicans and conservatives to stay home. Apparently, the 45th president and his minions forgot about how that same gambit cost them both of Georgia’s Senate seats in last January’s runoff elections. Sometimes, history repeats itself.Fortunately for the Democrats, the liabilities that Elder and the Republicans displayed will not vanish in the coming weeks. Rabid Republican resistance to Covid vaccination, Florida’s needless deaths, and Texas’s draconian abortion law are not going away. They are now baked into the Republican party’s creed and DNA.In that same vein, the pledge by Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, to make rape magically disappear, and the embrace of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, of Covid conspiracy theorists, will not be forgotten anytime soon.By the numbers, self-described moderate Californians opposed the recall by better than a three-two margin. Opposition to the recall ran broad and deep. To be sure, what happens in California doesn’t usually stay in California. All this may yet make a difference in Virginia’s upcoming governor’s race.There, Democrat Terry McAuliffe holds a small but steady lead over Republican Glenn Youngkin, a former equity management executive. According to a recent Monmouth poll, Covid is the leading issue in the state followed by public schools.Earlier this summer, Youngkin was captured on video telling supporters that he had to remain quiet about abortion lest it cost him the support of independents and suburbanites, but once in office he could “go on offense”. Youngkin has also opposed vaccine mandates and labeled the jabs a matter of personal choice.Once upon a time, Virginia was home to Robert E Lee, the commander of the Confederate army and Trump’s favorite general. These days, no Republican holds statewide office there. The Commonwealth last voted Republican in a presidential election in 2004.Democrats can momentarily exhale. Gloating, however, is strongly discouraged. Their relative weakness among Latino and Asian American voters persists.In California, Biden bested Trump by more than 50 points among each of those two demographics. Yet less than a year later, opposition to the recall among Latinos and Asian Americans was just 16 points and 24 points, respectively.Late Tuesday night, Elder conceded the election, saying: “Let’s be gracious in defeat,” but adding: “We may have lost the battle, but we are going to win the war.” One thing is certain: the embers of America’s cold civil war continue to burn red hot. California’s recall was one more scrum.TopicsUS politicsOpinionGavin NewsomCaliforniaRepublicansDemocratscommentReuse this content More

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill on Sept. 7, 2021, that reduces opportunities for people to vote, allows partisan poll watchers more access and creates steeper penalties for violating voting laws.

The Republican governor argued that the legislation would “solidify trust and confidence in the outcome of our elections by making it easier to vote and harder to cheat.” Democratic opponents of the measure, however, said Republican legislators presented no evidence of widespread voter fraud during debate on the bill.

Civil rights organizations immediately filed suit, calling the law unconstitutional because it is intended to restrict voting among minorities, who overwhelmingly support Democratic political candidates.

Across the country, Republicans have turned to gerrymandering and voter suppression legislation such as closing polling stations in minority and low-income precincts, mandating discriminatory voter ID laws and purging millions from voter rolls. In addition, GOP politicians and right-wing commentators have demanded that educators quit teaching the facts of America’s racist history.

For several decades, the GOP has depended on racism to keep white people in power and nonwhites on the outside.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shows off a signed voting restrictions law criticized for disproportionately limiting the rights of nonwhite people.
AP Photo/LM Otero

Lee Atwater and the strategy of racism

In 1981, longtime GOP strategist Lee Atwater plainly declared that the Republican Party’s key strategy was racism. Atwater described how the GOP began to define itself as a white supremacist party in response to the civil rights movement. The Nation magazine later published the full audio recording of the interview.

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N—–, n—–, n—–.’”, Atwater said, using the actual racial slur.

“By 1968, you can’t say ‘n—–’ – that hurts, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights,’ and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract,” he continued.

“Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is, Blacks get hurt worse than whites,” Atwater explained. “‘We want to cut this’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘N—–, n—–.’”

An excerpt from Lee Atwater’s 1981 interview explaining racist Republican tactics.

The GOP moves from overt racist words to coded words

For much of the country’s history, the Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln and racial equality, and the Democratic Party was the party of Jim Crow laws and white supremacy. The two parties switched positions during the civil rights movement when the Democrats abandoned their support for segregation and Republicans sought to appeal to segregationists.

In the early 1960s, U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a Republican, challenged the GOP’s more liberal politicians to redefine the Republican Party as what newspaper editor William Loeb called “the white man’s party.” Republican New York Gov. Nelson B. Rockefeller responded that if the GOP embraced Goldwater, an opponent of civil rights legislation, as its presidential candidate in 1964, then it would advance a “program based on racism and sectionalism.”

Goldwater won the GOP’s nomination but lost the presidential election in a landslide to the Democratic incumbent, Lyndon Johnson. But even without winning the Oval Office, Goldwater and other like-minded conservative Republicans won the hearts and minds of pro-segregation Democrats, who were angry with Johnson for signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The GOP, as Atwater pointed out, learned to use coded words to court these disillusioned Democrats who became Republicans in what would become known as the “great white switch” or Southern strategy.

Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign included a speech supporting states’ rights near a place where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1963.
AP Photo/Jack Thornell

States’ rights, welfare queens and Willie Horton

Republican Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election in part by using references to states’ rights and “law and order,” rather than by making blatant appeals to white supremacy or racism. Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, noted that Nixon “emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the Blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognized this while not appearing to.”

In 1980, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan, also a Republican, gave a presidential campaign speech at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1963.
Reagan declared his own support for states’ rights. Gabrielle Bruney wrote in Esquire that “by touting himself as a states’ rights candidate near the site of one of the nation’s most famous hate crimes, Reagan offered voters a racism that was both obvious and unspoken.”

As president, Reagan used coded rhetoric to connect race to crime, welfare and government spending. For instance, Bryce Covert wrote in The New Republic, Reagan frequently used distortion in his references to a single con artist named Linda Taylor, the so-called “welfare queen,” to argue that welfare was corrupt and Black people were too lazy to work.

Atwater worked as a consultant for Reagan and then as campaign manager for Vice President George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988. Atwater approved a television ad blaming Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts, for a furlough program in the state that released a Black first-degree murderer, Willie Horton, who then raped a white woman. Atwater famously claimed, “By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.” Bush won the election.

In his election and reelection campaigns, Donald Trump used racist messages to attract support.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Onward to Donald Trump

The GOP’s hold on the South became complete in 2016 when Donald Trump won all the former Confederate states except Virginia.

Trump became one of the GOP’s top contenders for the 2012 presidential nomination after questioning without evidence whether Black president Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. When Obama released his birth certificate, Trump’s candidacy fell apart.

When Trump ran for president in 2016, he used racially divisive rhetoric, calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S. and suggesting a judge should recuse himself from a case solely because of the judge’s Mexican heritage.

His campaign used the slogan “Make America Great Again,” which had been widely criticized for being a dog whistle to white people who felt that minorities were encroaching on their country. Then, as president, he pandered to white supremacists by refusing to criticize them and by using coded words. He told Americans that there are “fine people on both sides” after a confrontation between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 12, 2017.

When Trump ran for reelection in 2020, he renewed his birther claim by insinuating that Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, who is Black and Asian, “doesn’t meet the requirements” to run for vice president. When Trump lost the election, he challenged the accuracy of voting in precincts that were heavily minority.

Now Republicans in Texas and around the nation are back to openly expressing their racism with no need for dog whistling or other forms of abstraction.

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