“American democracy frayed in 2021,” writes The Washington Post Editorial Board. Multiple states passed legislation on party-line votes making it harder to vote. But the opening construction underplays the dynamic at work. Democracy did not “fray” itself. Republicans in state after state did that. Deliberately. Methodically. Hastily. Their efforts to re-Jim Crow not just the South but every state Republicans control did not start in 2021. But it did accelerate in alarming fashion. What then do Democrats plan to do about it besides making aspirational statements about bills they would like to pass?
Neither voting bill that Democrats seek to pass should be controversial. One, the Freedom to Vote Act, would permit all voters to cast mail-in ballots in federal elections and require drop boxes. Led by former president Donald Trump, Republicans have trashed these voting methods as fraud-prone; in fact, absentee voting has a long record of convenience and security. The act would make Election Day a holiday, mandate early-voting periods, create automatic voter registration systems and provide same-day registration. It would also curb partisan gerrymandering and limit the extent to which politicians could pressure local election officials. There is no credible argument against any of these provisions, yet every Senate Republican has united against the legislation.
The other bill Democrats want to pass, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, has bipartisan buy-in — if you count that a single GOP senator, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, supports it. This bill would repair the 1965 Voting Rights Act, after the Supreme Court declared in 2013 that Congress would have to revise the law for its strongest provisions to once again apply. Crucially, it would reimpose “pre-clearance” on states with a history of racially discriminatory voting laws, obligating such states to submit proposed election rule changes for federal review before phasing them in. Pre-clearance for decades discouraged state and local officials from seeking to tilt the playing field against racial minorities, recognizing that discrimination could be as obvious as a poll tax or as subtle as a seemingly small shift in polling place locations. Immediately after the court’s 2013 ruling, Republican-controlled states began passing anti-voting laws.
I live in one of those states. Regular readers have heard plenty about that.
Reimposing pre-clearance would make them think twice, which helps explain why nearly all Senate Republicans oppose the John Lewis bill, too. The underlying principle is that voting should be easy, convenient and fair, enabling all Americans to cast ballots without unnecessary difficulties. Over the past year, Republicans have proved that they oppose this principle, raising barriers that discourage people from voting because some calculate that more Democrats than Republicans will be suppressed. Not only is their position morally indefensible; it is not even clear it is politically sound. Republicans just claimed big victories in this year’s Virginia gubernatorial and legislative elections, amid massive turnout. Instead of seeking to depress voting, Republicans should be running more popular candidates and campaigning on more attractive policies.
The Editorial Board urges Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to renew efforts at passage, and to reform of the filibuster if Republicans resist.
Fine. Except the elephant(s) in the room is not a Republican. I’ll not spend more electrons on him/them just now. Rep. Pramilla Jayapal (D-Wash.) does that in a separate op-ed on stalled efforts to pass the president’s Build Back Better (BBB) package. As does E.J. Dionne who writes:
Democrats have a narrow window to get a lot done. They face a nearly unified Republican opposition. They have the slimmest of majorities. And at moments last week, it looked as though they were eager to spend the next year trashing each other.
They can’t afford the luxury of recriminations.
Nor can they afford to not to pass the two voting rights bills if Democrats expect small-D democracy to survive.
Yet, Democrats’ focus on BBB increasingly resembles the sunk cost fallacy. They have poured so much sweat and tears into its passage, both to help the president deliver on his agenda and to have solid legislative accomplishments to run on in 2022 and 2024, that they keep straining to reach that Holy Grail even as the earth cracks and threatens to swallow them.
Preserving the union is more critical. Surviving to legislate another day must be paramount. Is there something for everyone in BBB? Sure. Are its provisions popular? Sure. But Democrats seem to exist in another time, a time in which a political party can expect to see rewards at the polls for good governance and for delivering for constituents. They need only to look across the aisle in both houses of the national legislature and in the states. Their rival party is committed to non-governance and culture-war issues. In many states, they are winning majorities on those.
Republicans are no longer committed to democracy, much less to good governance. Their commitment is to preserving their own power. By nominally legal means, for now. If Democrats lose sight of that larger picture and squander the chance to save democracy first, they, and we, and the world, will come to regret it.
The plane has decompressed. Oxygen masks are hanging from the ceiling. Before Democrats can save their legislative agenda, they first have to put the mask on democracy.
2021 was the year that America’s democracy came under attack from within.
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