John wrote about the conservative effort to gut the Voting Rights Act yesterday, but I’d like to look at the timeline a little more closely, because there’s a strange and inexplicable twist right there at the end:
First, we amended the US Constitution:
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The problem with voting is, when state or local actors disenfranchise certain voters with laws that discriminate, it is very difficult for those targeted voters to organize and then vote to remove those state and local actors from office and thus change the discriminatory laws, because they can’t VOTE.
Hence, “preclearance” or federal review of changes to certain state voting laws, before the targeted voters are disenfranchised:
The Voting Rights Act (VRA) bans racial discrimination in voting practices by the federal government as well as by state and local governments.
Passed in 1965 after a century of deliberate and violent denial of the vote to African-Americans in the South and Latinos in the Southwest – as well as many years of entrenched electoral systems that shut out citizens with limited fluency in English – the VRA is often held up as the most effective civil rights law ever enacted. It is widely regarded as enabling the enfranchisement of millions of minority voters and diversifying the electorate and legislative bodies at all levels of American government.
Today, we renew a bill that helped bring a community on the margins into the life of American democracy. My administration will vigorously enforce the provisions of this law, and we will defend it in court. (Applause.) This legislation is named in honor of three heroes of American history who devoted their lives to the struggle of civil rights: Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King. (Applause.) And in honor of their memory and their contributions to the cause of freedom, I am proud to sign the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006. (Applause.)
Republicans in Congress and former President Bush didn’t want their names associated with gutting historic civil rights legislation like the Voting Rights Act, so they reaffirmed the Act publicly, while planning the court battle.
U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada condemned Republican efforts to use federal courts to kill a vital provision of the Voting Rights Act. Despite a bi-partisan effort in Congress and a bi-partisan White House ceremony where President Bush signed the bill into law, the American Enterprise Institute along with Congressional Republicans are filing law suits to kill the Voting Rights Act.
They are seeking to strike down Section 5 which freezes new election procedures in certain states until they have either received an administrative review by the United States Attorney General, or after a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
“Republican efforts to kill this vital section of the Voting Rights Act are both appalling and hypocritical,” said Reid. “Democratic and Republican leaders worked to pass this bill, now forces in the Republican Party want to continue the argument against democracy and look for new ways to reduce the number of minorities who vote.
Allow me to translate: most elected Republicans and former President Bush were too chickenshit to gut the Voting Rights Act in Congress or veto the reauthorization of the Act, so they put on a public show while planning to take the teeth out of it in federal courts. If “forces in the Republican Party” are successful in court, the Republican Party proper won’t be held publicly or politically accountable for destroying historic civil rights legislation, so this elaborate charade may work out pretty well for them. No Party of Lincoln fingerprints on it.
chrome agnomen
if you are denied the right to vote, it’s because jeebus didn’t intend you to vote.
Roger Moore
So the Republicans want a handful of activist judges to overturn a law passed by a bipartisan majority in Congress. What a shock that the party of projection is doing it again.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Who is this Lincoln person of which you speak?
/GOPer
Seriously, when was the last time you heard a Republican invoke Lincoln’s name in support of anything, other than repeal of habeus corpus rights? They have no public heros left dating to any period prior to Ronald Reagan. Ford is best forgotten, Nixon left a bad smell behind, and Eisenhower was a fucking communist by the standards of today’s GOP.
Zifnab
Oh please, that charade won’t last more than a few minutes. The GOP Presidential nominees will all applaud any strike-down of the Voting Rights Act so loud and hard their hands will fall off. The right-wing media and blogosphere will cheer so loud it’ll be deafening. And the 5-4 decision by Reagan+ Era SCOTUS justices versus Obama/Clinton/Pre-Crazy-GOP Era SCOTUS justices will make it plain as day which party favors which result.
Even lay voters won’t be able to miss that fireworks show.
Bush-Era GOPers were well aware of the value of subtlety and nuance. But Tea Party Era GOP aren’t happy unless their politicos are having opinions tattooed on foreheads.
No fingerprints, my ass.
kay
@Roger Moore:
FIVE TIMES it passed Congress.
Judicial restraint!
chrome agnomen
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
well, there are always the old testament heroes.
BGinCHI
I want to Godwin this thread so bad I almost can’t stand it.
kay
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
All they ever talk about is Reagan and Carter.
My (younger) sister was making me laugh in 2008, because she was saying, “do Republicans realize how old one has to be remember Jimmy Carter’s actual term?”
Roger Moore
@kay:
And there’s an amendment to the Constitution that explicitly gives Congress the power to enforce voting rights. Actually, more than one, since the 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments also give Congress the power to protect voting rights.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
This is exactly why the Repups don’t give a crap about the demographic wave about ready to hit their shores.
They’ve had 30 years of stacking the judicial bench to strategically prepare for it. 30 years of taking over state and local gubmints where the tactical exercise of voter suppression will take place.
scav
@chrome agnomen:
@BGinCHI:
aka, Every time a democrat† is not allowed to vote, God Wins?
† or, one of “those”
eric
If God had wanted african americans to vote, He would not have made them slaves in the first place. QED.
Some Loser
@eric:
I like the way you think, friend.
cckids
Slightly OT, but I am just finishing Mary Walton’s book, “A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot”. Learning a lot, but the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever heard was that by the time they were trying to get the amendment past the Senate, the main opposition to the cause were Northern Senators, some of whose states already had given women the vote, saying that it was “unfair” to Southern states, because if black women were given the right to vote, added to black men, then the whites would be outnumbered. And that wasn’t “fair”.
This fight has been going on FOREVER. More power to all who are personally out there fighting it, like you, Kay. Just trying to stay informed about it makes my soul tired.
kay
@Roger Moore:
It’ll be really outrageous if they throw it out. Democrats put together this extensive record of testimony and fact-finding in 2006 prior to reauthorization.
Their feelings are hurt. We’re supposed to risk disenfranchising voters because conservatives in certain states and areas have hurt feelings and THEY ARE NOT RACISTS!
patroclus
This is a prime example of the lying, smearing Republicans shifting even further to the right. It used to be that they would attempt to mask their bigotry and profess support for the VRA (Dole and some others actually favored it) even if they really didn’t support it. Now, they’ve taken off the veil and are revealing their true selves – they do not wish African-Americans or Hispanics to vote in large numbers, so they overtly favor dismantling the VRA.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@kay:
Yes, and given that Carter is now ancient history, I’d say it is time we started rubbing their noses in it, just how out of the mainstream they are with respect to the rest of American history. Liberals should point at Mt. Rushmore and say: “3 out of those 4 presidents (TJ, AL, TR) were very, very Liberal and the 4th (GW) was a borderline case. Why do you hate the America that they labored to build? Why do you want to tear down their work and destroy it”
BGinCHI
This really makes my Republicans For Voldemort bumper sticker resonate.
(Ps. Voldemort doesn’t set off the WP spell-checker…cool)
Sophia
As a practical matter, I’d like to see pre-clearance expanded to include urban districts that frequently have troubles on Election Day. Voters shouldn’t have to suffer because of incompetence any more than willful suppression.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
It’s become clear that far from being afraid of being “smeared” by being called racists, today’s Republicans would not only greet the accusation with joy, but use it in their campaign.
kay
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
It’s almost spooky how talk of President Bush was completely absent in the GOP debates.
A two-termer. Never mentioned. Disappeared.
LGRooney
Taking a page from D-women actions in the war on women by the GOP, can’t we find some Ds to promote the idea that the VRA is unfair in that it targets a few (
Confederatesouthern) states and it should be made fair by expanding it to all 50 states and US voting territories (sincetraitorsrebelsteahdists have begun to forage beyond their traditional range)?Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: You’re still pretending that today’s Republicans can be reasoned with.
You cannot reason with someone when they’re in the throes of religious belief, and I think it’s long past time to acknowledge that America’s conservative movement is not a political one, it’s a religious one. And by that I don’t mean that they’re all involved in the mockery they’ve made out of Christianity, what I mean is that conservatism itself is a religion. Saints and everything.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity:
To the extent that somebody is that far gone, I’m not interested in reasoning with them. What I want to do is to publically shame them, and most particularly to do this in front of other people, people who still can be reasoned with. Pretending that the person you are speaking to is still a rational, reasonable person, even when they aren’t (and you know that they aren’t), is a useful rhetorical technique to use when you want to appeal to the sentiments of the actual intended audience, the still somewhat reasonable bystanders. President Obama uses this technique all the time and it is a very valuable one that we should keep handy in our rhetorical toolkit.
PeakVT
The Constitution could use some modernization.
Egg Berry
Can someone just burn the AEI to the ground and salt the earth where it stood? Is that too Moore Awardy?
makewi
So right. It’s important that the South should bear the stain of their racist past FOREVER. The people born today in the south, while having nothing to do with slavery or the Jim Crow past must continue to pay the price for what came before them. No matter what.
You know, because it makes a useful political weapon for Democrats.
Basilisc
I mentioned this in yesterday’s thread, but it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle: The key point about the voting rights act is that Republicans saw it as the vehicle for cementing their control over the south. Hence the “bipartisan support” it enjoyed in the 70s and 80s. The idea, and it was very successful, was that it would create majority-black districts that would become safe seats for African American Democrats, thereby swinging marginal seats to the Republicans and permanently associating Democrats (in the eyes of southern whites) with southern blacks.
It had more or less accomplished this goal by the 90s, at which point Republicans lost interest. By 2006 the goal had changed from ghettoizing blacks in majority-minority districts, to disenfranchising blacks, so the VRA had outlived its usefulness.
artem1s
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I think the GOPers will love quoting this Abraham Lincoln!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34x6m-ahGIo
no wimpy proclamation to end slavery, he REALLY did it to fight vampires!
chrome agnomen
@Egg Berry:
make sure it’s during business hours.
Egg Berry
@makewi:
As soon as their racism is a thing of THE PAST, then they can move beyond it. IOW, take those goddamn traitor flags off your bumper stickers and we can talk.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@makewi:
After a couple hundred years of brutal slavery, forcing a breathtakingly brutal war to stop that, then a hundred years of brutal apartheid, ending, somewhat only about 30 years ago. and just this year passing Jim Crow light bills to further suppress minority voting in the south with official ID cards to correct an alleged problem with voting fraud that doesn’t exist.
ABSOLUTELY GODDAMN RIGHT. FOREVER. and a few days after that.
edit – they should consider themselves lucky we don’t make them travel to DC to kiss PBO’s ass and beg forgiveness for being the stoopid motherfuckers they are.
makewi
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
That’s one of the best things about you guys, you’ll just keep reinventing what racism is in order to have this cudgel to play with.
Like making voters show ID is racist. I always thought so every time I had to do it in NY and Hawaii – both super red states.
Also, your math sucks.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Egg Berry:
You’ll notice that to the troll in question, taking pains to make sure that all eligible persons have the opportunity to exercise their constitutional right to actually, you know, vote is denigrated as a useful political weapon.
That’s a nice tell, right there. After you’ve read the first page, there is no need to peruse the rest of the book; you already know how the story is going to end.
kay
@makewi:
Nonsense. There are two Section Five issues right now, one in South Carolina and one in Texas. The DOJ needs the provision to review state law that may disenfranchise certain voters.
We amended the constitution, and then passed a law, which was reaffirmed FIVE TIMES by an elected majority.
I don’t know how much more federal legitimacy you need.
The conservative response to that OVERWHELMING ratification by ELECTED leaders is to hire some pricey lawyers and try an end run, yammering something about “states’ rights” and their hurt feelings.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
2 + 2 still equals MORON when it comes to our southern shit kickers and adherence to voting RIGHTS. but you are correct, more like 300 hundred years of brutal slavery. and yer welcome.
Jess
Great post, Kay! Thanks for connecting the dots for us. Another dot to connect; the War on Drugs that disproportionally targets minorities and turns them into felons ineligible to vote (as well as boosting the prison industry).
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
And I do recognize the fact there are some fine liberal white folk in Dixie, some of them my childhood friends and relatives. But there ain’t all that many when the counting is done.
Egg Berry
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): I would like to settle down with this comment and raise a family of commentlets.
makewi
@kay:
At some point the idea that the Federal government needs to keep affirming southern legislature having to do with the vote should be examined fully. There is nothing wrong with seeing if it still needs to be in place today, close to 50 years after it’s passage.
But as I’ve said. Giving up this weapon is a tough sell for you guys. It’s one of your faves, your “go to” really.
Warmongerer
@makewi:
New York only requires you to show identification if you’re a first time voter and accepts anything from driver’s licenses and passports to utility bills and paystubs.
If you’re going to lie, try lying about something that can’t be debunked with a single Google search.
makewi
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
Big talk from a man who had NOTHING to do with ending slavery. Asshole.
kay
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
It’s not just the south. The VRA has ballot language requirements.
I once looked at a map, and there were precincts in Chicago that required preclearance, because local actors had discriminated against people who spoke some eastern european language, I don’t remember which one. Anyway, it’s for language barriers too.
makewi
@Warmongerer:
I always had to show ID. Douche.
But it’s fine, because NY is a fine white liberal state.
rikryah
keep on this, kay.
thank you so much for keeping on point.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@kay:
I know. And oddly enough Arizona and all of Texas are included in the harshest category of federal scrutiny for voter suppression in the VRA. We flower childn in NM were spared, being enchanted and all.
Egg Berry
@makewi:
fixed that for ya.
kay
@makewi:
They took hours and hours and hours of testimony during the congressional hearings in 2006.
Odd, isn’t it, that conservatives didn’t raise this pressing issue then?
Oh, well. Maybe they grew concerned immediately after that signing ceremony they attended where they invited civil rights leaders, waaaay back in ’06.
CarolDuhart2
We need to repeal those too.
Vote by Mail. No id needed after registration. No polling place shenanagans. NOW.
toujoursdan
I live in Brooklyn, NY and I don’t show an ID.
toujoursdan
Also, too
Vote 411. Search by State = NY
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@makewi:
Now Scarlett, gawd will git you with talk like this.
Even if a some true.
Warmongerer
@makewi:
Just going to double-down on the dumbass I see.
New York state doesn’t require you to bring ID every time you vote. It only requires you to bring ID if it’s your first time voting *and* you registered by mail. That’s it. No amount of lying on your part will change the law.
Steve
NY doesn’t make you show ID. That’s straight bullshit.
By the way, I forget who that was, but I really wouldn’t be claiming Thomas Jefferson as a liberal. On basically every argument over the scope of federal power, he was on the opposite side from where we would be.
WereBear (itouch)
@kay: And yet, there’s talk of runnng Jeb Bush. I don’t thjnk they could run a burning bush at this point.
kay
@makewi:
No Republican was going to be accountable for gutting the VRA, so they voted for it, held a celebration in their own honor, hugging civil rights leaders and such, and then hired the lawyers and lobbyists to gut it.
I watched it happen.
They keep losing in court, even wingnut judges can’t stomach this, so my hope is you’re all spending a bushel of money on lawyers, and you get nothing.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Stealing, immediately, and without attribution.
Ken
I’d be interested in hearing the arguments for standing in the case. This court has rejected a number of cases on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not show they were harmed and thus had no standing. How is the AEI harmed by the law? And are Congressional Republicans – people who were actually elected under the current scheme – really trying to argue that it has harmed them?
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
The republican party is waging war on democracy, here on the home front. That makes me really mad.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): They’re Confederates.
It’s what they do.
Roger Moore
@kay:
I just don’t see what plausible Constitutional argument anyone could come up with for rejecting the VRA. Congress’s right to protect voting rights is black letter law. I just can’t see how you can strike down the entire law. I can imagine an argument that the pre-clearance part of the VRA is unfair because it targets specific areas, and maybe even a majority vote to overturn that part of the law. But I can’t see how you can possibly argue that the law as a whole is unconstitutional.
Felinious Wench
@kay:
It’s a snipe hunt too.
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/policy_brief_on_the_truth_about_voter_fraud/
Voter fraud is not a legitimate issue. Red herring. This is about disenfranchisement, period.
Roger Moore
@makewi:
Whether it is still necessary is a political question best answered by Congress, not a Constitutional question that should be answered by the courts. And it was answered in 2006, when Congress voted by overwhelming, bipartisan majorities in both houses to continue the law, including the preclearance requirement. If anyone thinks it’s no longer necessary, they’re free to bring it up in the appropriate venue, i.e. Congress, and vote their conscience.
Another Halocene Human
@makewi: I live in the South, motherfucker, where voter suppression is an ugly reality. Why don’t you shut the fuck up?
Also, too, what an earlier poster said about expanding pre-clearance. Yes, other states need to be reviewed as well. Let’s not forget the “Gerrymander” was a Mass. pol.
Another Halocene Human
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): It’s not the shitkickers pushing these laws–it’s greedy politicians who know they stay in power when more people stay home (and less people know what they’re up to).
Why do you think Floriduh’s state capitol is still in Tally, far from the population centers of the state?
Oh, and an added bonus is keeping state senator’s mistresses away from their wives.
Another Halocene Human
@Jess: Yup. That is exactly the game. And they have attacked felon’s voting rights and the restoration of voting rights in every state they can.
The War on Drugs is nothing more than a war on young, black men. Why is there an epidemic of arrests of minority youths for non-criminal possession of pot in NYC, for example?
And we had a troll yesterday trying to pretend that unconscious bias is a myth (hence affirmative action is racist).
makewi
@kay:
I love it. All conservatives are one person, so an action taken by one is an action taken by all.
Smells like bs kay.
makewi
@Roger Moore:
Sure, I bet you have a real problem with using the courts to get what you haven’t been able to do legislatively.
Like with the court decisions regarding gay marriage in California. I bet you bitched up a storm over that.
Another Halocene Human
@makewi: Shorter makewi: US Constitution, state constitution, I get them confused, okay????
Chris
@Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity:
The best analogy’s probably to totalitarian ideologies, in terms of being a political religion that also happens to encompass every other sphere of human activity (science, economics, faith, the personal lives of citizens). And the same “we cannot fail, we can only BE failed” faith-based approach.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@Another Halocene Human:
Of course they want to stay in power, and disenfranching the poor by suppressing their participation falls mainly on the poor black population in the south, that vote for democrats. Most poor whites will still vote for these wealthier white assholes because they are white, like them, even though it is profoundly not in their own economic interest. So it is primarily still racism that is behind these efforts, in one form or another, whatever the other reasons might be, and why the VRA must remain in effect.
makewi
@Another Halocene Human:
Sure. You’re fine with it on the state level, you just draw the line at the federal. I believe you.
kay
@makewi:
You’re defending it. You defend all of it.
What a ridiculous objection, makewi:
“The VRA hurts our feelings!”
Who gives a shit.
Another Halocene Human
@makewi: Hahahaha.
Monkey Business
I will make a compromise with the residents of states under the Voting Rights Act.
Democrats will support the repeal of the Act, provided all of the states of the former Confederacy as well as those covered by the VRA provide the modern monetary equivalent of 40 acres and a mule to every descendant of former slaves. Moreover, they must ban the production and sale of any and all Confederate memorabilia within their borders, and make the possession or display of such items in a non-historical manner a hate crime. The school boards of every state must agree to refer to the American conflict from 1861-1865 as The Civil War, and not as The War Between The States; moreover, they must also acknowledge that it was fought because the Southern states refused to give up slavery.
After that, I want the non-black, non-hispanic Governors of every former Confederate or VRA state to kiss Jesse Jackson’s bare ass, live on CNN. After that, they will go to the White House and pay tribute to President Obama, bringing him the finest gifts of their states. Anyone does anything remotely racist, and the deal’s off.
That’s the deal.
Another Halocene Human
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): I’m not denying the racism at all. I’ve seen it in person from the senate and house galleries, observing the action on the floor. However, I think it’s unfair to blame the usually apolitical shitkickers (although some of them from the county DID try to vote in a city election over rights for gay people–I guess hating Teh Gheys brings everyone together) when the real enemies of the people here are the monied interests–the landowners, mostly.
Wealth–in the form of land/real property–is very unevenly distributed and the landowners write the laws to suit themselves. There are some capitalists too, and they, too, with the help of millions spent on lobbyists, get laws written to suit themselves. Setting rural whites against rural blacks is just another strategy in their arsenal (one with 500 year old roots), but, ultimately, they would use any weapon they had to pick everyone’s pocket.
The South is still the plantation as long as so much of its population lives in poverty–kept there by the boot of big money-controlled state power.
Sure, they have gotten a lot of poor people to vote their way. Convince a man he is petty bourgeois and not another wage slave, and he’ll do the plutocrat’s bidding for life. Witness the abject failure of the attempt to bring about tax reform in Alabama–because Georgia Pacific did not will it. And so it did not come to pass.
makewi
@kay:
I defend the idea that it is OK to revisit the federal approval of states voting laws. I defend the idea that having to show some form of ID when voting is a reasonable rule. Not really sure what else you think I’m defending.
Another Halocene Human
I’ve also been an election observer. Who rolled up with “Jeb!” stickers, etc? Wealthy old frowny-faced white people.
I’ve had plenty of shitkickers tell me reactionary, authoritarian things, such as telling jokes about bums being “allergic to work” (ha ha?), but the more perniciously racist comments have come from men who a) weren’t born here and b) had some property/income to defend. They were the greater fools the Republican party has depended upon for decades.
In fact–and I don’t want to state this is the last word on shitkickers, as this is very regional–I know a number of rednecks who have mixed-race grandkids. Racist dogwhistles work on the college-educated, petty bourgeois South, not so much on the true crackers, rednecks, etc. Assuming they’re not total backwoods crazies. I have heard stories of family trees resembling telephone poles in Dixie County* and, well, I would assume there’s a fear/hatred of outsiders going on there.
Well, I will walk that back a bit, as I’ve also heard tradespeople cuss about illegals tooking ther jawrbs. Some tradespeople see the big picture (hello, project labor agreements–no wonder the GOP wants to ban them, or how about enforcing existing laws), but others have drunk the Lou Dobbs Flavr-Aid.
Bottom line, the previous generation of rednecks didn’t set their kids up doing iternant farm work because it isn’t done any more. (Black people used to do this too–St. Pete Times used to have a columnist who was a fruit picker in his youth.) But that spanked-too-much-as-a-child authoritarian mindset makes it hard for them to see outside the box of their personal stake in it. “Well, I survived it.” Well, sure, but there’s a reason your kids aren’t out there doing the same… duh.
*Dixie County had a ten commandments at the courthouse controversy last year… Bradford County, of course, had the lighted cross on the water tower that, when investigated, nobody owned or was paying for, strange, that.
Tone In DC
Kay, great post. Thanks.
Seems like Veritas is back with a new pseudonym, trolling the blog.
Another Halocene Human
@makewi: Some form of ID (such as a voter registration card) is a far cry from the ID requirements in the current laws being passed under Republican governors.
Try harder, you’re slipping.
Another Halocene Human
@Tone In DC: I thought Maudlin Kept With was an old troll?
Tone In DC
@Another Halocene Human:
LULz.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@Another Halocene Human:
When I said ‘shitkickers’ I was referring to those poor white folk that insist on voting for the aristocratic republicans, or whatever party name they ID themselves with, against their own economic self interest. If those poor whites don’t bother to vote, they are irrelevant to the process. It is not all racial, a lot of it is pure ideology and rejection of the liberal mindset and values, but for the purposes of the VRA, I don’t see much that has changed from when it was enacted. The powers that be, white powers, and their voters, are still trying to disenfranchise their black neighbors. So they have not learned their lesson yet, and imo, never will.
The VRA stifled a key part of the GOP Southern Strategy, to gerrymander and ‘ghettoize’ the black dem vote out of any power nationally, as they siphoned up the white racist democrats into their GOP. They would do so again, in a heart beat, to maximize a permanent hold on the House of Reps, if for no other reason. The reasons for this are varied, as you say, but utterly irrelevant to the intent and end result. Other than involving race and racism. There is no way around that call, imho.
Chris
@Another Halocene Human:
Interesting point. Upon reflection, I think I agree.
I know various people, friends and family both, of the Southern White Republican, obsessed-with-identity-politics variety, and now that you mention it, they’re all middle to upper middle class suburbanites. OTOH – I don’t have poor or working-class white friends from the South but I have several from the North, and while some of them are racist, or have racial hangups, none of them build an entire ideology based on race or identity. (Most of them vote Democrat).
It makes sense when you think about it: the poorer you are, the more economic pressure’s on you, and the less you can afford to ignore your economic self-interest in the name of race or ideology.
Chris
@Another Halocene Human:
Addendum to above:
I also think one reason why outsiders don’t think to differentiate between the “true crackers” and “petty bourgeois” is that the bourgeois guys love to project an image of themselves as, well, not quite crackers because that has negative connotations, but Brave Manly Rural Frontiersmen.
In reality, the places these guys grew up in are no different from my suburb on the DC/Maryland border, but they take the Daniel Boone/Davy Crockett heritage seriously and love to imagine that they’re cut from the same cloth.
Another Halocene Human
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): The racism is real, but it is, and always has been, a tool of the ruling class.
I don’t know anything about the Appalachian culture and why they are so racist/resistant to Obama. Dunno.
But I have spent a lot of time around Southerners in the Deep South. I gotta say, there was more overt Klan activity in Maryland (which, btw, was a slave state, so don’t think I’m trying to paint Northern Illinois or Massachusetts or NYS with the same brush).
Going after voting rights is one strategy, eviscerating public ed is one, imprisoning Black men is one–but so is attacking the estate tax. So is rolling away the intangible property tax (a la Jeb). So is fighting back every intercity rail proposal. (Floridians–twice, I think–voted for intercity rail, and then voted for Obama/Biden who also promised it, but Republican governors keep killing it.) Why? Because the poor do not have access to transportation and this stifles economic activity. A weak or deflationary economy favors landholders. Also look at SOH, which is a blatant move to shift the tax burden onto snow-birds and retirees, and away from the big money interests.
The end result is a state which is very attractive to criminals. Rick Scott bleats about jobs as the state bleeds them. He is all about cutting taxes on the corporate criminals. (The black market criminals have already had their taxes pared down to nothing.)
The monied, landed interests wish to hold onto power, and they will play every card in their deck to do so. That’s my point here.
Also, too, the data shows that more COLLEGE EDUCATED white males vote Republican than HS-only white males. THAT’S NO ACCIDENT. Educational attainment is a proxy for class status, especially when your state schools dole out aid according to “merit” (proxy for parental economic status–Johnny and Janey got tutored, etcet) rather than need (using state schools–land grant institutions–as they were intended to provide access to higher education for those who cannot afford private institutions).
Another Halocene Human
@Chris: And those sometimes half, sometimes a bit less than half of working-class white males who do vote Republican, sometimes it was because they were gulled into thinking that a Richy Rich, like “Connie Mack” is “just like me”.
Ha ha, I was just reminded of the Republicans’ “black tie and blue jeans bbq” fundraisers. Very “Gone With The Wind”.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@Another Halocene Human:
That may be true, but the overall white vote for Obama in the deep south states was like 10 to 15 percent. It was double that for Clinton, if I remember correctly.
I grew up in SE Kentucky, and have lived in TN, southwest VA, Ok, and Fl, and lived 5 years in Biloxi in the 90’s. Daily living in those places, concerning racism, is a far cry better from what it once was. My point is the seeds of apartheid are still in the south, and racial, for purpose of electing more white people if the VRA no longer exists. I know there are lots of decent poor white people in the south, I am talking about the meta politics of the region, that is no where near ready to fly on their own. The old ways will take over, and that is my point.
Chris
@Another Halocene Human:
Politicians are born actors. The ability to convince people that they’re “just like you” is probably most of the point of any campaign.
Still it’s telling, like you said, that it works better on the middle class suburbanites than the poor and working class.