Month: August 2021

GETTR, Trump-world’s new online platform, is going about as well as you’d expect (Politico):

The social network — started a month ago by members of former President Donald Trump’s inner circle — features reams of jihadi-related material, including graphic videos of beheadings, viral memes that promote violence against the West and even memes of a militant executing Trump in an orange jumpsuit similar to those used in Guantanamo Bay.

The rapid proliferation of such material is placing GETTR in the awkward position of providing a safe haven for jihadi extremists online as it attempts to establish itself as a free speech MAGA-alternative to sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The day after an Islamic State-affiliated Facebook account mentioned GETTR, there were at least 15 new Islamic State accounts there expressing themselves strongly.

Days after GETTR was launched on July 1, Islamic State supporters began urging their followers on other social networks to sign up to the pro-Trump network, in part to take the jihadi fight directly to MAGA nation.

[…]

Some of the jihadi posts on GETTR from early July were eventually taken down, highlighting that the pro-Trump platform had taken at least some steps to remove the harmful material.

Supposing they hit GETTR with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — just as “in its early days, it was flooded with a wide spectrum of pornography”? Or perhaps inject it with disinfectant, or almost a cleaning?

Charles Blow, “an unabashed liberal,” asks a series of pointed questions raised by the behavior of one of the country’s major political parties:

What do you call members of a party who, from top to bottom, from elected officials to voters, largely believe a lie and a liar determined to undermine, corrupt and even destroy our democracy? What do you call a party whose leaders use that lie as a pretext to suppress the votes and voices of Americans with whom they disagree? What do you call a party slavishly devoted to a cult over the stability and prosperity of a country?

What do you call a party where many of its members have worked against a lifesaving, society-freeing vaccine in the middle of a pandemic, exposing many of their own followers to the deadly virus, all for the sake of being contrarian, anti-establishment and anti-science?

I call that party a national security threat and a cancer on our democracy.

Blow will get no argument from me. But what to do about the threat?

Democrats have ideas. Lots of ideas. And bills. They have crafted legislation for addressing the threats to democracy multiplying by the week. Those bills are stalled in a Senate held hostage by half its members who represent 43.5% of the country today, and 41,549,808 fewer Americans than senators from the Democratic Party. (Not to mention Democrats in the Senate more concerned for the traditions of the Senate than for small-D democratic ones.) Senate Republicans have not represented a majority of the populace since 1996.

President Biden may lead an administration more progressive than his political history, but there have been to date some holes in that fabric. His heart for the concerns of the working class lead him to believe that if he can pass his infrastructure package and get the pandemic under control, he will improve American lives and the economy. Not to mention his chances for reelection in 2024. That is, assuming democracy itself is not on a ventilator by then.

A Republican Party content to see its own voters on life support has little more concern for the health of the republic they no longer represent.

Agreeing with Biden, E.J. Dionne writes “that our democracy’s health depends on the political system demonstrating its capacity to undertake ambitious projects,” but “our democracy’s success also requires — well, that it remain a democracy.”

Biden’s White House — any White House — has only so much bandwidth, and more serious issues clamoring for it than it can bear at any time. Activists always want their issue placed on the front burner, and quickly get testy when they feel neglected. For the moment, the front burner is occupied by infrastructure. But with 2022 just around the corner and redistricting imminent, voting rights protections cannot wait.

Dionne hopes he sees a focus shifting. The infrastructure bill has survived repeated predictions of its demise, Dionne writes, looking for signs voting rights might survive as well:

Thus the importance of Friday’s White House meeting, in which Biden joined House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to craft a strategy to enact political reform and voting rights bills.

The meeting reflected a growing awareness inside the Biden camp that it cannot hang back and let democracy legislation founder while offering false hope that political organizing can overcome voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering.

The White House seems to have figured out it must spend at least as much political capitol promoting voting rights as bridges. Civil rights leaders, the Democratic base, and this writer demand it.

A White House statement after the meeting did not mention the filibuster. But it declared that “passing legislation to protect against voter suppression, electoral subversion, dark money and partisan gerrymandering” was a “moral imperative.”

In a Friday news conference, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “This is of the highest priority for us.“

[Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer, too, has gone on offense, hosting efforts by Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Raphael G. Warnock (Ga.), Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and others to write a new version of the political reform bill rooted in many of Manchin’s suggestions for easier ballot access. The bill will also include new provisions to try to stop partisan bodies from pushing aside local election officials and nullifying election results.

Some lesser reforms on the Democrats’ wish list can go if that helps core provisions pass. Indeed, some of the campaign finance elements such as a  small donor matching fund system may be included as sacrificial anodes. But “the shot clock is ticking,” says Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), lead House sponsor of the For the People Act. The Census Bureau is scheduled to release its data for redistricting on Aug. 16.

Dionne sees the work of Klobuchar, et al. as a sign there is still hope for a Senate breakthrough to match the one on infrastructure. Otherwise, why go to the effort? Because if they do not fight for the rights so hard-won by their political base, that base may not turn out in November 2022.

The Poor People’s Campaign was in Austin, Texas over the weekend to rally for voting rights. They pledge to go from capitol to capitol to rally support for preserving what the original Civil Rights movement won in the 1960s. Build a community as you go, Rev. William Barber II encouraged anti-eviction protesters and called out Democrats at the U.S. Capitol Sunday evening. [timestamp 5:37]

“This society tries to make us social media activists where we know our issue but we don’t know each other. But while you’re sitting here, get to know each other. Break outside of the boxes.”

This is how movements build. 

Margaret Carlson’s piece about the newly released documents from the DOJ gets to the truth of what they mean:

According to documents that the Justice Department has now turned over to Congress, and that were made public for the first time on Friday, Trump called to discuss his phony voter fraud claims, as if the very political William Barr hadn’t conceded, on his way out the door, that despite looking, he’d found none.

When reminded of that by Rosen, and of the fact Justice couldn’t change an election anyway, Trump said not to worry. All he needed was just one word from him: “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me.”

So many had already left so much to Trump and the country has paid so dearly for it. We don’t have the notes yet but imagine earlier calls to DOJ, then staffed by Trump appointees keeping his tax returns secret, despite a legitimate request from the House Ways and Means committee and a law that says the returns “shall” be provided.

The wheels of Justice grind, but slowly and in the next 72 hours, Congress should have what Trump managed to cover up since he came down the golden escalator in 2016.

Thankfully, Rosen, the last of Trump’s AGs and one with a spine missing in his predecessors, immediately and repeatedly denied the president’s request. Trump pressed on. With all his recounts, audits and court cases, he said, Rosen was missing the forest of legality for the truth on Twitter:

“You guys may not be following the internet the way I do,” he warned, adding that officials who say “the election isn’t corrupt are corrupt.” Oh, puppet.

[…]

The newly released notes of the call, taken by Rosen’s deputy, are a roadmap to Trump’s twisted thinking. The president cited “allies” who would help him once he got Justice to sign on to his racket, including Rep. Jim Jordan who is so slavishly beholden to Trump that he voted to keep Congress from certifying the election even after the Jan 6 violence.

Jordan wasn’t alone. A majority of House Republicans and their leadership stood by the Big Lie. The initial shock and revulsion of Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell quickly softened into acceptance. McCarthy blew up the Jan. 6 committee, pulling all his appointees when Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she wouldn’t seat Jordan, conceding that his party’s official position is to defend Trump’s conduct at all costs and not to investigate anything at all.

In case the acting AG didn’t understand the stakes back in December, Trump used his “people tell me” tack. “Thousands of people” called, complaining to him about the election, the inaction of DOJ, and how none of them “trust the FBI.” Other “people” say how great Jeff Clark is, as in the acting chief of the civil division who supported all things Trump. People wanted Trump to “replace DOJ leadership” with him. A week after the call, Rosen and his deputy would have to defend their jobs against Clark in a meeting in the Oval Office.

Of course, no 2020 Trump call would have been complete without a demand or plea to “figure out what to do” with Hunter Biden, on the grounds that “people will criticize the D.O.J. if he’s not investigated for real.”

It was a failed coup. There never was a doubt. But these notes of Trump threatening, cajoling and harassing the DOJ to back up his lies make it clearer than ever.

… and count to 10. We’re just going to have to live with the fact that a whole bunch of our fellow Americans require excessive coddling and attention and there’s nothing we can do about it. They can’t even save their own lives, even though they have an easy, free, effective way to do it, so we are now having to to it for them.

A return to their carefree, pre-pandemic visits appeared within reach, tantalizing Stacey Graves and her boyfriend with promises of coffee in the cafe and sunshine on the patio.

After getting her second dose of a coronavirus vaccine, Graves felt ready to brave the long bus ride to the rehabilitation facility where he lives. They could meet only masked and outdoors for 45 minutes, per the hospital’s policy. But as infections plunged in the spring, the rules seemed destined to loosen.

A feeling of perilous instability now pervades the couple’s time together. As the hyper-contagious delta variant threatens her modicum of comfort, Graves is reevaluating whether the trips are safe. And she misses the simplicity of their restriction-less visits.

“I don’t have that now. And I don’t know when I’m going to,” said Graves, 64. “And I’m very angry.”

Specifically, she’s furious at those eligible to get vaccinated who refuse, citing misinformation or a desire to make a political statement. Graves, who lives in New York City, said she’s more understanding of those who worry the vaccines were rushed to market or people of color whose communities have been historically mistreated by medical professionals. But Graves said she worries about getting long-term symptoms if she contracts a rare breakthrough infection of covid-19.

An unwelcome resurgence of the coronavirus has caused a groundswell of impatience, frustration and even rage from Americans who got their shots months ago toward those whose resistance won’t budge. States are reimplementing mask requirements, corporations are delaying their returns to the office and support is building for more coercive ways to tamp down the virus’s spread, including vaccine mandates.

Watching it all, the vaccinated are emphasizing that it didn’t have to be this way. Some officials are sending a similar message.

“It’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) said this month. “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”

The ranks of the immunized include about half of the country’s population, with children younger than 12 still ineligible. Administered doses have climbed in the past week as daily infections hit roughly 70,000 to match the peak of the spring surge. The country still has not met President Biden’s goal of getting at least one dose into 70 percent of adults by July 4.

Resistance to vaccination appears to have solidified. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found 29 percent of Americans say they are unlikely to get the shots — an increase from April, when 24 percent said the same. In some corners, hesitancy to get inoculated has transformed into outright hostility.

I feel it. I’m trying to get past it and just deal. But it’s hard. A large minority of us (kids don’t count, of course) are simply irrational. We see this in many aspects of life, politics above all. But this situation puts it into stark relief. I don’t know what to do about it.

Steven Moore, who lives in a suburb of Philadelphia, said he long has been in favor of vaccine mandates. While he’s sympathetic to the legal and ethical questions around immunization requirements, he said he thinks more people would roll up their sleeves for the shots if their access to restaurants, concerts or air travel were otherwise limited.

After his own vaccination, Moore spent a fairly normal spring and summer visiting stores and eating at restaurants with his family. In June, he and his wife vacationed with six friends sharing a condo in Key West, Fla.

Moore, 38, said he’s not sure he would do that now as hospitalizations and deaths rise. His 7- and 9-year-old kids are supposed to go to Disney World in the fall, but he said he may rethink that trip if the virus is still surging.

“The thought that that stuff could all disappear again is really maddening,” he said.

Moore feels confident that he or his wife would be fine if they got a breakthrough infection, and he has been going mask-less in stores when not with his kids. But he worries about the long-term effects on his unvaccinated children. That concern fuels his anger at the unvaccinated, particularly those who are avoiding the shots to make a political statement or attempt to demonstrate toughness.

“To be selfish about it like that,” Moore said, “is hindering the rest of us from going back to living normal lives.”

Thanks a lot.

Meanwhile:

Jeanine: And now you want to mask us because you clearly failed in your effort to get us vaccinated… pic.twitter.com/PnUpn7dFlr

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 1, 2021

Governor DeSantis just issued an order banning mask mandates in Florida schools, in the middle of this:

Saturday, the state of Florida reported more new COVID-19 cases to the Centers for Disease Control than any previous day in the coronavirus pandemic: 21,683.

That’s a 12.1% jump over the previous record, Jan. 7’s 19,334 cases during the worst month of the pandemic. Daily case counts routinely surpassed 10,000 as the pandemic peaked a second time. In the succeeding months, daily case counts returned to 2,000 and 8,000.

Florida, which represents about 6.5% of the U.S. population, accounts for about 21.4% of the country’s new cases, based on the data the state is reporting to the CDC.

Florida also reported 108 deaths Saturday, eight days after reporting 148 deaths. Before this most recent surge, you have to go back to March 26 to find a higher single-day death count (159).

DeSantis will not suffer any loss of popularity. His voters are pro-COVID.

I’m putting this here because I think it’s important that this is documented and saved. It says everything about the GOP in 2021.

They are crudely, boldly, openly engaged in propaganda and whitewashing of criminal, insurrectionist behavior for political gain:

In the hours and days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, rattled Republican lawmakers knew exactly who was to blame: Donald J. Trump. Loyal allies began turning on him. Top Republicans vowed to make a full break from his divisive tactics and dishonesties. Some even discussed removing him from office.

By spring, however, after nearly 200 congressional Republicans had voted to clear Mr. Trump during a second impeachment proceeding, the conservative fringes of the party had already begun to rewrite history, describing the Capitol riot as a peaceful protest and comparing the invading mob to a “normal tourist visit,” as one congressman put it.

This past week, amid the emotional testimony of police officers at the first hearing of a House select committee, Republicans completed their journey through the looking-glass, spinning a new counternarrative of that deadly day. No longer content to absolve Mr. Trump, they concocted a version of events in which those accused of rioting were patriotic political prisoners and Speaker Nancy Pelosi was to blame for the violence.

Their new claims, some voiced from the highest levels of House Republican leadership, amount to a disinformation campaign being promulgated from the steps of the Capitol, aimed at giving cover to their party and intensifying the threats to political accountability.

This rendering of events — together with new evidence that Mr. Trump had counted on allies in Congress to help him use a baseless allegation of corruption to overturn the election — pointed to what some democracy experts see as a dangerous new sign in American politics: Even with Mr. Trump gone from the White House, many Republicans have little intention of abandoning the prevarication that was a hallmark of his presidency.

Rather, as the country struggles with the consequences of Mr. Trump’s assault on the legitimacy of the nation’s elections, leaders of his party — who, unlike the former president, have not lost their political or rhetorical platforms — are signaling their willingness to continue, look past or even expand his assault on the facts for political gain.

The phenomenon is not uniquely American.

“This is happening all over the place — it is so much linked to the democratic backsliding and rising of authoritarian movements,” said Laura Thornton, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It’s about the same sort of post-truth world. You can just repeat a lie over and over and, because there’s so little trust, people will believe it.”

Behind the Republican embrace of disinformation is a calculus of both ambition and self-preservation. With members of the select committee hinting that they could subpoena Trump aides, allies on Capitol Hill and perhaps Mr. Trump himself, the counterfactual counterattack could pre-emptively undercut an investigation of the riot.

As videos shown during the hearing gave harrowing new reminders of the day’s violence, leading House Republicans claimed that Ms. Pelosi — a target of the mob — had been warned about the violence in advance but failed to prevent it.

From his private club in New Jersey, Mr. Trump suggested that Ms. Pelosi should “investigate herself,” yet again falsely insinuating that antifa and Black Lives Matter — not his followers — caused the destruction on Jan. 6 and that a democratically decided election had been stolen from him.

All the while, in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican, who once led his party in condemning both the riot and Mr. Trump’s role in it, made no visible attempt to stop the flood of fabrications, telling reporters he had not watched the hearing and had little new to say about the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.

House Republicans’ desire to bury the attack on their own workplace has created a dysfunctional governing atmosphere. Ms. Pelosi has increasingly treated them as a pariah party, unworthy of collaboration or trust, and has expressed deep disdain for Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, whom she called a “moron” this past week.

“Anytime you mention his name, you’re not getting an answer from me,” she told reporters. “Don’t waste my time.”

Almost as soon as the police retook control on Jan. 6, hard-core defenders of Mr. Trump in Congress began recasting the gruesome scenes of violence that left five people dead.

Mr. McCarthy, the California Republican, responded differently at first: He angrily demanded that Mr. Trump stop the rioters, according to an account he gave fellow Republicans at the time. A week later, as the House moved to impeach Mr. Trump, Mr. McCarthy said that “the president bears responsibility” for the “attack on Congress by mob rioters” and called for a fact-finding commission.

But in the months since, that early resolve has given way to an out-and-out intent to bury the attack. Mr. McCarthy, who is trying to win back the majority in 2022, moved quickly to patch things up with Mr. Trump, gave latitude to far-right members of his caucus and worked furiously to block the creation of an independent 9/11-style commission.

This past week, just before the officers began to deliver anguished testimony about the brutality they had endured, Mr. McCarthy repeatedly laid blame not with Mr. Trump, the rioters or those who had fueled doubts about the election outcome, but with Ms. Pelosi, one of the invading mob’s chief targets.

“If there is a responsibility for this Capitol, on this side, it rests with the speaker,” Mr. McCarthy said.

Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the recently selected House conference chairwoman, went even further, saying Ms. Pelosi “bears responsibility” as speaker “for the tragedy that occurred on Jan. 6” and deriding her as “an authoritarian who has broken the people’s house.”

Ms. Pelosi is not responsible for the security of Congress; that job falls to the Capitol Police, a force that the speaker only indirectly influences. Republicans have made no similar attempt to blame Mr. McConnell, who shared control of the Capitol at the time.

Outside the Justice Department, meanwhile, a group of conservative lawmakers gathered to accuse prosecutors of mistreating the more than 500 people accused in the Jan. 6 riot.

Encouraged by Mr. Trump, they also echoed far-right portrayals of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who was shot trying to break into the House chamber, as a patriotic martyr whose killing by the police was premeditated.

As if to show how anti-democratic episodes are ping-ponging around the globe, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in June seized on Ms. Babbitt’s killing — calling it an “assassination” — to deflect questions about his own country’s jailing of political prisoners.

Some senior Republicans insist that warnings of a whitewash are overwrought.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to be successful erasing what happened,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. “Everybody saw it with their own eyes and the nation saw it on television.”

For Mr. Cornyn and other lawmakers, continuing to talk about the attack is clearly an electoral loser at a time when they are trying to retake majorities in Congress and avoid Mr. Trump’s ire.

Most Republican lawmakers instead simply try to say nothing at all, declining even to recount the day’s events, let alone rebuke members of their party for spreading falsehoods or muddying the waters.

Asked how he would describe the riot, in which a hostile crowd demanded the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence, his brother, Representative Greg Pence of Indiana, responded curtly, “I don’t describe it.”

Yet the silence of party stalwarts, including nearly all of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in the attack and the Republican senators who voted to convict him, has created an information void that hard-right allies of Mr. Trump have readily filled. And they have found receptive audiences in a media environment replete with echo chambers and amplifying algorithms.

In a July poll by CBS News, narrow majorities of Trump voters said they would describe the attack as an example of “patriotism” or “defending freedom.”

That silence follows a familiar pattern: Rather than refute false allegations about a stolen election and rampant voter fraud, many leading Republicans have simply tolerated extremist misinformation.

Perhaps no one’s silence has been more significant than that of Mr. McConnell, who criticized Mr. Trump and his party in the immediate aftermath of the attack, denouncing it as a “failed insurrection” fueled by the former president’s lies.

Since Mr. Trump’s impeachment acquittal by the Senate in February, when Mr. McConnell declared him “practically and morally responsible,” the minority leader has all but refused to discuss Jan. 6.

The quiet acquiescence of party leaders has effectively left Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois as the only two Republicans still willing to speak out against a majority of their party.

“Clearly there were security failings at the Capitol, but there was a mob that tried to prevent us from carrying out our constitutional duty,” Ms. Cheney said in an interview. “It’s very hard for me to understand why any member of Congress of either party would want to whitewash that.”

Ms. Cheney has already paid a price: Republicans ousted her this spring from their No. 3 leadership position, replacing her with Ms. Stefanik.

Now, House hard-liners want to expel her and Mr. Kinzinger from the Republican conference altogether, portraying them as “snitches” and “spies” in league with Democrats.

The message is clear: Adherence to facts cannot overcome adherence to the party line.

Authoritarianism? Where?

We haven’t heard from him in a while. He’s still crazy as a loon:

NBC New York’s Melissa Russo interviewed former NYC mayor and former Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani this week, and in very on-brand fashion the outspoken attorney made multiple startling declarations. Of particular note, and sure to be meme’d for all time, Giuliani said that he is “more than willing to go to jail” should it come to that.

Giuliani spoke with Russo at length about the investigations into his and his former client’s activities, and specifically the federal probe into his dealings in Ukraine.

On that subject, he maintains absolute innocence, and said rather grandiosely that, should he be punished, those who enact it will “suffer the consequences in heaven.”

“I committed no crime, and if you think I committed a crime, you’re probably really stupid, because you don’t know who I am,” Giuliani told NBC. “Is the guy who put the mafia in jail, terrorists in jail, Ed Koch’s commissioners in jail, and the worst people on Wall Street — I’m not going to file (a form)? I mean, that’s just crazy.”

“I am more than willing to go to jail if they want to put me in jail,” he said at one point. “And if they do, they’re going to suffer the consequences in heaven. I’m not, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Why are you willing to go to jail if you feel that you’re innocent,” Russo asked.

“Because they lie,” he responded. “And they cheat.”

Giuliani also brought up Hunter Biden and Andrew Cuomo to claim there’s a double standard at the Department of Justice.

“You see the differences between the way a Cuomo is treated and the way I’m treated,” he said.

Have these New York tough guys always been whiny little twits or is this a new thing?

Florida recorded more coronavirus cases this week than California, Texas, New York and Illinois combined https://t.co/egbNuAssld

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) August 1, 2021

This milestone won’t appear on Florida Man’s presidential campaign website.

If experience is any guide, the same people who insist “We are not a democracy” (Sen. Mike Lee, Republican of Utah) are the sorts to preach that voting is a privilege, not a right. That, despite this “privilege” being referenced five times as a right in the Constitution in language such as “shall not be denied or abridged.”

Pew Research found recently that the right vs. privilege debate breaks down on predictable partisan lines:

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overwhelmingly say voting is a fundamental right that should not be restricted in any way – 78% hold this view, while fewer than a quarter (21%) say it is a privilege. Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican leaners say voting is a privilege that can be limited if requirements are not met, compared with about half as many (32%) who say it is a fundamental right.

Joshua A. Douglas, a professor of election law and civil procedure at the University of Kentucky College of Law, adds that there is a clear racial divide in the Pew data.

Douglas writes at Washington Monthly:

We can take some comfort that 57 percent of those surveyed acknowledged that voting is a right and not a privilege. But the 42 percent who disagreed represent a troublingly large minority.

The belief that voting is a “privilege” suggests that it’s somehow better to have fewer voters—which of course just means voters who agree with a certain ideology, with predictable racial and other demographic effects on who can more easily satisfy restrictive voting rules. The solution to the concern about so-called ignorant voters isn’t to shut them out of the process but to improve civics education. Moreover, this myopic view of democratic participation ignores the value of voting to our system of government, the lessons of history, and the proper understanding of our Constitution.

The Supreme Court explained as early as 1886 that voting is “regarded as a fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights.” Voting protects all other rights: we can’t enact legislation until we elect representatives to serve in legislatures. If we dislike government policies, then the way to fix them is to “throw the bums out” and vote in someone else.

To be sure, the Court in that long-ago case also said the right to vote is “not regarded strictly as a natural right, but as a privilege merely conceded by society, according to its will, under certain conditions.” But it followed that statement directly with the one noting that the right to vote is a “fundamental political right” [italics mine]. As the Court put it in 1964, “The right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government.” The Court reasserted the “fundamental nature” of the right to vote in Bush v. Gore, which essentially decided the 2000 presidential election—though the Court did not actually protect the right to vote robustly in that case.

The frenzied effort on the right to add new restrictions to voting in state after state; the moves to allow state legislatures to overrule the electoral votes of the majority of their citizens; and the aborted conspiracy to limit the census count to citizens only; grow from this stark divide between Americans who believe in democratic self-governance as fundamental to freedom and those who loudly celebrate freedom in rhetoric, symbols, and song but fundamentally do not believe in any democracy under which Republicans can lose.

The nativism of the American right today resembles “the right-wing politics of contemporary Europe” and echoes the reactionary politics of the 1920s, historian Rick Perlstein wrote in 2017. It is “a tradition, heretofore judged foreign to American politics, called “herrenvolk republicanism,” that reserved social democracy solely for the white majority.” Pew’s data measuring who considers voting a privilege, not a right, supports that assessment.

Batocchio wrote in these pages the Sunday before the 2020 election:

Conservative policies are completely awful on the merits. But conservatives also want an unfair power structure. These two factors are deeply interwoven – conservatives lie and cheat because they’re unlikely to win in an honest discussion of competing policies. But they’d be especially unlikely to succeed in convincing the general public of their core dogma that they should always win; they should always rule; they should always get their own way. Conservative arguments such as Mike Lee’s ahistorical claims against democracy, Cheney and Addington’s unitary executive theory, the sovereign citizen movement, Ammon Bundy‘s claims that he can seize public lands and not pay taxes, the theocrats claiming United States was founded as a Christian nation, Mitch McConnell’s fabricated and shifting rules for judicial appointments, and hollering that it’s unconstitutional to be asked to wear a mask – all of these claims are counterfactual and complete bullshit, but in addition to that, the common thread is the underlying tenet: we can do whatever the hell we want, with no accountability.

[…]

One of the most telling statements about American conservatism was made in 2019 by a woman who was negatively affected by Trump and the Republican Party shutting down the government for political leverage: “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this. . . . I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” She said the quiet part out loud. The conservative base, authoritarian conservatives, punishment conservatives, are driven by spite, and this sums up their toxic mix of entitlement and resentment – they want to see their many perceived enemies hurt or put in their place.

Limiting the franchise in every way they can think of is on the legislative agenda in state after Republican-controlled state. Last week, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio, author J.D. Vance, offered another not-well-thought-out way to privilege some Americans over others in a trolling dig at the “childless left“:

Specifically, Vance said, “When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our Democratic republic, than people who don’t have kids.”

Move over, poll tax. Stand aside, white, male property owners. Out of the way, “one dollar, one vote.” Adults with children should have bonus political power. Those without lack literal skin in the game, Vance believes.

The pattern is clear, and as clear and present a danger to the survival of the republic as the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.