Just a quick update while working on something longer — but this from TPM caught my eye as the Republican campaign in microcosm:
Two middle-aged white Republican activists in Texas allegedly harassed and intimidated at least seven elderly African-American voters at their homes in eastern Texas, according to a complaint filed with the Justice Department on Thursday.
Gerry Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, submitted a report to DOJ alleging that two unidentified women visited elderly African-American voters at their homes in Bowie County and questioned them about their mail-in ballot applications, Mother Jones first reported.
The women allegedly showed up to 78-year-old Willard Wherry’s home and asked him who had helped him fill in his mail-in ballot. “We are just trying to be sure no one is trying to coax someone to vote,” one of the woman allegedly told Willard. Other individuals who were allegedly visited by the women were also listed on the complaint.
It’s been repeated so often that it’s a truism that Democrats are doing much better in polls of registered voters than in ones with likely voter screens in place.
It’s also true that a longer view of the American electorate paints an even worse picture for the GOP: their core voters are older and whiter than those of the Democrats, and there are already fewer of them than those associated with what may loosely be called the Democratic coalition — but the groups that favor the Dems have historically tended to vote in smaller percentages.
So far so nothing to see here, folks. This is all old news. Except, of course, the one thing the GOP has decided to do as demographics tilt ever more heavily against it is exactly what you’d expect from the Confederate Party. When in doubt, don’t try to expand the tent; instead, restrict the franchise.
Remember: the form of democracy can long outlive its substance. We’ve got only one real weapon against the at least occasionally violent opposition: Vote by or on Tuesday, and make damn sure all your friends do too. I don’t care how bored you are with politics…or even how justifiably cynical you are about the odds for major change. If all else fails to motivate you and yours, try this: you want to let craptacular specimens like these crow over the results Wed.?
Didn’t think so.
Image: Poster for D. W. Griffith’s Birth Of A Nation, 1915