Losing sleep over ways Republicans might steal 2024?
The New Republic examines a constitutional tool Democrats might use to relevel the playing field in places where Republicans are restricting the right to vote:
Imagine that Speaker Nancy Pelosi were to declare that several states have violated a clause largely unused and forgotten for 154 years: Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which mandates that states lose a portion of their congressional delegation if they unduly restrict the right to vote. Sorry, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, but Georgia went too far in rolling back voting rights; your state lost a seat in Congress—and it’s yours.
It would be a radical decision, one that some could compare to conservative lawyer John Eastman’s “coup memo” urging Vice President Mike Pence to nullify Electoral College votes. But unlike Eastman’s memo, it would have actual grounding in the text of the Constitution.
Can’t imagine that happening? Me neither. Not only, Patrick Caldwell writes in explaining Section 2’s provenance, because “the clause has never been successfully used.” But because for fear of appearing radical to voters Democrats are afraid to use the powers invested in them to defend the republic in this dark hour.
“The Fourteenth Amendment has never really been fully utilized to protect the rights of Black people the way Congress intended,” Reconstruction historian Eric Foner tells Caldwell. “But when you get to other kinds of rights, it’s been used in a very vigorous manner.”
That doesn’t mean it won’t ever be used, however. Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin told me that he and a handful of colleagues discuss how Section 2—along with Section 3, which bars serving in Congress if you’ve “engaged in insurrection or rebellion”—might be implemented to fight back against anti-democracy forces. “We’re in the fight of our lives for democracy, and we need every tool in the constitutional toolbox on the table,” Raskin said. “This is absolutely something we need to consider.”
But the only way you’d know Democrats are in the fight of our lives is by listening to them discuss it dispassionately. Doing something about it they will focus-group to death while the republic burns. Do Democrats mean what they say or are they all talk?
Delineating what would or would not constitute a violation raises tricky questions. Is it voter-ID laws? Voter roll purges? “The devil’s in the details,” Raskin said. “It needs to respond to active disenfranchisement efforts. But there are certainly a lot of those going on.” He noted that many of the broader voting restrictions—repeals of weekend or early voting, say—aren’t as clear-cut. It would be up to Congress to sort out. “It’s been dead for so long that it’s hard to imagine it being resurrected,” Foner said. “Much as I think it should be.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s not time to raise the possibility. We are living in dangerous times—ones that require a revival of the spirit of Reconstruction if we hope to maintain representative democracy. “Everything is hypothetical until it becomes urgent,” Raskin said. “Both Section 2 and Section 3 could be waking up soon. There’s no such thing as a dead letter in the Constitution.”
But Will Democrats Fight? So, One More Time:
I’ve noted before: How many Rocky movies did Stallone make? And they’re all the same movie. So why do people keep going? Because so many Americans themselves feel like underdogs. We want to root for the little guy with heart. Facing insurmountable odds. Risking it all. We want to feel the thrill up our spines and in the tops of our heads when Bill Conti’s trumpet fanfare introduces the training sequence. We want to hear that. Wait for it. Cheer for it. Pay for it. Over and over and over.
Democrats think politics is about good policy and good governance. It is. But only if you win the power to make it happen. Elections are not about good policy. If Trumpism has not disabused Democrats of that fantasy, there’s no hope for them. Voters want leaders — even phony ones — willing to fight for them and to risk themselves in the effort. Wimps need not apply. Stern words to not count.
It’s why James Carville complained this week that “no on fears” Democrats.
“The overwhelming embrace of @MalloryMcMorrow’s speech is proof positive of how desperate people are to hear Democrats actually stand up for what is right.” — Anat Shenker-Osorio @anatosaurus
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