Vox looks at what the Constitution says about race
Ian Millhiser examines the fly Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson threw into Chief Justice John Roberts’s colorblind soup. That theory is at odds with the constitutional history the court’s “originalists” revere, Jackson pointed out in just her third case:
Roberts and his ideological allies derive the colorblindness principle from the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that all individuals will receive “the equal protection of the laws.” But Jackson explained that the framers of this amendment did not strive for colorblindness. Instead, they were “trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against” — that is, formerly enslaved Black people — “were actually brought equal to everyone else in the society.”
And Jackson brought receipts. Among other things, she cited the Civil Rights Act of 1866, a law enacted by the very same Congress that wrote the 14th Amendment, which provides that all Americans shall have the same contracting and property rights as “white citizens,” and that any non-white person convicted of a crime shall be punished the same way as “white persons.”
The Congress that wrote the 14th Amendment, in other words, rejected the “colorblind” theory, and instead wrote a landmark civil rights statute that explicitly requires the government to consider race when deciding whether a non-white individual’s rights were fully respected. And the Civil Rights Act of 1866 is only one of many such laws enacted by Reconstruction-era lawmakers.
Millhiser adds that “the overwhelming weight of historical evidence suggests that Jackson is correct.” But Jackson’s receipts won’t change any minds on the court’s right (admitting mistakes being against conservative religion), but it will taint their further efforts to sell colorblindness to history. Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s most outspoken opponent of affirmative action has made no effort to argue that colorblindness is consistent with the Constitution’s original meaning. Nor has Justice Antonin Scalia.
Several cases the court takes up this session involve the colorblindness question.
I want to be clear that the full story of how the generation that framed the 14th Amendment understood racial equality is far more nuanced than “they thought affirmative action was fine.” Many of their views on questions of race — and especially on public school segregation — are so wildly out of step with modern values that no justice embraces those views. And some prominent conservative originalists have poked holes in some of the originalist evidence supporting affirmative action.
But these same conservatives have barely even attempted to show that the Constitution, as originally understood, forbids affirmative action. In a world where Supreme Court justices decide cases based on their previously stated views about how the Constitution must be interpreted, the lawsuits challenging affirmative action should be doomed.
Even so, argues Millhiser, “no sensible person would want to live under the original understanding of the 14th Amendment.”
Equal treatment under law remains a contested concept all these years later, both in theory and in practice, as nationwide protests in 2020 illustrated.
Poor and low-wealth people coming together and voting
Bishop William Barber in Asheville, NC on Saturday.
“There are 3.2 million poor and low-wealth voters in North Carolina,” Bishop William Barber began Saturday as Repairers of the Breach concluded its congressional voting organizing tour in Asheville. “One million did not vote in the last election. If just 19 percent of that would vote, it would outdistance any margin of victory in this state.”
Barber hopes to unleash the power of Americans who never have their doors knocked or their needs addressed, people lacking health care access in North Carolina because the state is one of 12, most in the South, whose legislatures have never passed Medicaid expansion.
“If we ever needed to vote for democracy and justice, we sure do need to vote right now! RIGHT NOW!” Barber shouted, leading rallygoers chanting at Oak St. Congregational United Church of Christ.
“We don’t organize around a candidate,” Barber explained, but choose candidates based on where they stand on critical issues. “We are nonpartisan, but we are not nonpolitical.”
Barber interrupted a reading of the statistics above to be sure they sank in.
Half of North Carolina’s workers (2 million people) make less than $15 per hour. To drive home his message, Barber referenced voting margins in the U.S. Senate.
“With just one vote that was blocked last year by 48 Republicans and two Democrats — one out of Arizona, one out of West Virginia. That one vote kept two million people in poverty.”
These are policy choices, not personal choices, Barber said.
A series of speakers testified to their struggles as working people: lack of union representation, threats to reproductive rights, laws turning police into immigration agents. A 13-year-old girl spoke of unaddressed mental health issues and asked people to vote for her because she cannot. “Our future is in your hands.”
“Scarcity is a lie,” Barber insisted. Those who don’t vote become accessories to the crime when people get hurt.
Barber gave a mini history lesson, as he does, highlighting the forgotten history of civil rights. Long before John Lewis walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the women of Selma, Alabama had been organizing since the 1940s. The original plan for the March on Washington was for a week of civil disobedience. Two organizers refused to attend because that changed.
“It took us 20 years fighting Democrats” to get same-day voter registration in North Carolina. It didn’t come easy.
Power. People need to use it, Barber insisted, pointing out how many state elections turn on small margins.
“Every group except for white men with land had to fight for the right to vote,” Barber said. “Anybody that tries to undermine somebody’s vote is ultimately saying you’re not a human being. That’s why you can’t let it slide.”
Trump, Jan. 6th, 20 states passing voter suppression laws? None of it is new, Barber insisted, quoting Martin Luther King from the Selma to Montgomery march: “The threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the masses of poor negroes and the mass of the poor white folk coming together is the great fear of the aristocracy in this nation.”
If you understand that and the Southern Strategy, Barber instructed, the succeeding decades follow. Trump inherited a plan. He is merely a symptom.
“This is not new. It’s a strategy.”
Your vote is your strength. You can tell it is by how hard opponents fight to take it from you, Barber concluded.
The quote above is from a speech in Asheville after the Charleston mass-shooting.
Hey…you wanna see something really scary? Real life. Because, let’s face it. Try as they might, Hollywood can never match the thrills, the chills…the abject horror of, say, watching the news, peeking in on your 401k, popping into a Denny’s at 3am, or waiting for the upcoming election results. Documentary filmmakers have been on to this little secret for years.
So forget the exploding squibs, the fake Karo syrup blood and severed prosthetic limbs-here’s my Top 13 list of creepy, scary, frightening, haunting, spine-tingling tales that you literally could not make up (as per usual, in no particular ranking order). Er….”enjoy”?
The Act of Killing – “At first, we beat them to death… [but] there was too much blood…to avoid the blood, I [devised] this system,” explains former Indonesian government death squad leader Anwar Congo, the “star” of Joshua Oppenheimer’s audacious documentary, and then helpfully gives us an instructive (and macabre) demonstration of his patented garroting method (with the assistance of a stick, some metal wire, and a giggly “victim”).
Then, the eupeptic Congo breaks into an impromptu cha-cha dance.
This is but one of many surreal moments in Oppenheimer’s film (exec produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog). Congo is a self-described “gangster” who claims to have personally snuffed out 1,000 lives during the state-sanctioned liquidation of an estimated 1,000,000 “communists” that followed in the wake of the 1965 overthrow of the Indonesian government.
Congo and Koto were not only amenable to happily skip down memory lane revisiting the scenes of their crimes, but offered to reenact their exploits by portraying themselves in a Hollywood-style gangster epic. This counter-intuitive mash-up of hard-hitting investigative journalism and ebullient “Hey, I have a barn, let’s put on a show!” participation from the very parties the filmmaker aims to expose could make some viewers’ heads explode.
I know what you’re thinking: These men are morally reprehensible, untouchable and beyond redemption, so why indulge them this sick fantasy? (Picture the warm and fuzzy feeling you’d get if the next Powerball winner turned out to be one of those 97 year-old former Nazi camp guards). What’s Oppenheimer’s point? Is he crazy? He’s crazy all right. Like a fox. Because something extraordinary happens to one of our “heroes” when he insists on playing one of his own victims in an execution reenactment. Watch it and be amazed. (Full review)
The Atomic Cafe – Whoopee, we’re all gonna die! But along the way, we might as well have a few laughs. That seems to be the impetus behind this 1982 collection of cleverly reassembled footage culled from U.S. government propaganda shorts from the Cold War era (Mk 1), originally designed to educate the public about how to “survive” a nuclear attack (all you need to do is get under a desk…everyone knows that!).
In addition to the Civil Defense campaigns (which include the classic “duck and cover” tutorials) the filmmakers have also drawn from a rich vein of military training films, which reduce the possible effects of a nuclear strike to something akin to a barrage from, oh I don’t know- a really big field howitzer. Harrowing, yet perversely entertaining. Written and directed by Jayne Loader, Pierce Rafferty and Kevin Rafferty (Kevin went on to co-direct the similarly constructed 1999 doc, The Last Cigarette, a take down of the tobacco industry).
Brother’s Keeper– An absolutely riveting true-crime documentary about a dirt-poor, semi-literate rural upstate New York farmer named Delbert Ward, who was charged with murdering his brother in 1990. Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky follow a year or so in the life of Delbert and his two surviving brothers, as they weather pressures of the trial and the surrounding media circus .
The clock seems to have stopped around 1899 on the aging bachelor brothers’ run-down farm, where they live together in relative seclusion in a small, unheated shack (at times, one is reminded of the family in the classic X-Files episode, “Home”)
The prosecution claims the brothers conspired to kill their ailing sibling, coming up with some odd motives. The defense attorney’s conjecture is that the victim died of natural causes, and that Delbert was coerced by law enforcement into signing a written confession (admitting a “mercy killing”), taking advantage of the fact that he is poor and uneducated. He also cagily riles up the town folk to rally behind “the boys” by portraying the D.A. and investigating authorities as city slickers, out to railroad a simple farmer.
Is Delbert really “simple”? Watch and decide for yourself.
The Corporation – While it’s not news to any thinking person that corporate greed and manipulation affects every life on this planet, co-directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott deliver the message in a unique and engrossing fashion. By applying a psychological profile to the rudiments of corporate think, Achbar and Abbott build a solid case; proving that if the “corporation” were corporeal, then “he” would be Norman Bates.
Mixing archival footage with observations from some of the expected talking heads (Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, etc.) the unexpected (CEOs actually sympathetic with the filmmakers’ point of view) along with the colorful (like a “corporate spy”), the film offers perspective not only from the watchdogs, but from the belly of the beast itself. Be warned: there are enough exposes trotted out here to keep conspiracy theorists, environmentalists and human rights activists tossing and turning in bed for nights on end.
The Cruise– A number of years ago I became friends with a co-worker who would pace his living room, quaffing beers and expounding on the universe. Sometimes, he would stop dead in his tracks, give me a faraway look, and say, “Trust me, Dennis-you don’t want to be in here,” while stabbing a finger at his forehead. Then, he would resume his pacing and pontificating. The idea of being in someone else’s head is always a bit “horror show”, don’t you think?
If you can take it, Bennett Miller’s one-of-a-kind 1998 documentary portrait spends nearly 80 minutes in “here”. Specifically, inside the head of one Tim “Speed” Levitch, a tour guide for Manhattan’s double-decked Gray Line buses. Levitch’s world view is …interesting, to say the least. And he is nothing, if not verbose. Is he crazy? Is he some kind of post-modern prophet? Or is he yet another eccentric, fast-talking New Yorker? It’s a strange, unique and weirdly exhilarating roller coaster ride through the consciousness of being.
The Devil and Daniel Johnston-The true horror of schizophrenia can only be known by those afflicted, but this 2005 rockumentary about cult alt-folk singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston is the next worse thing to being there. Johnston has waged an internal battle between creative inspiration and mental illness most of his life (see: Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson and Joe Meek).
As recounted in Jeff Feuerzig’s film, Johnston, like Chance the Gardener in Being There, repeatedly stumbles into the right place at the right time, steadily amassing a sizeable grass roots following. Everything is in place for his Big Break, until an ill-advised tryst with hallucinogenic substances sends him (literally) spiraling into complete madness. While on a private plane flight with his pilot father, Johnston has a sudden epiphany that he is Casper the Friendly Ghost, and decides to wrest the controls, causing the plane to crash. Both men walk away relatively unscathed, but Daniel is soon afterwards committed to a mental hospital.
The story becomes even more surreal, as Johnston is finally “discovered” by the major labels, who engage in a bidding war while their potential client is still residing in the laughing house (only in America). By turns darkly humorous, sad, and inspiring. (Full review)
Gimme Shelter – It’s unfortunate that Albert and David Maysles’ 1970 film is chiefly known for its inclusion of (unwittingly captured) footage of the infamous incident at a 1969 Rolling Stones’ free concert at the Altamont Speedway in California where a man near the front of the stage was stabbed to death in full view of horrified fellow concertgoers by members of the Hell’s Angels (who were providing “security” for the show)-but there you have it (and hence its inclusion here). Those scant seconds of the doc’s running time have forever tainted what is otherwise (rightfully) hailed as one of the top rockumentaries. One of the (less morbid) highlights of the film is footage of the Stones putting down the basic tracks for “Wild Horses” and “Brown Sugar” at Alabama’s legendary Muscle Shoals Studios.
Grey Gardens– “The Aristocrats!” There’s no murder or mayhem involved in this real-life Gothic character study by renowned documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles (Salesman, Gimme Shelter), but you’ll still find it to be quite creepy.
Edith Bouvier Beale (in her early 80s at the time of filming) and her middle aged daughter Edie were living under decidedly less than hygienic conditions in a spooky old dark manor in East Hampton, L.I. with a menagerie of cats and raccoons when the brothers profiled them (their “high society” days were, needless to say, behind them).
The fact that the women were related to Jackie O (Edith the elder was her aunt) makes this Fellini-esque nightmare even more twisted. You are not likely to encounter a mother-daughter combo quite like “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” more than once in a lifetime. The cult appeal of the Edies was not lost on Broadway; a musical adaptation ran for 2 years.
In the Realms of the Unreal-Artist Henry Darger is not usually mentioned in the same breath as Picasso, but he is a fascinating study. Darger was a recluse who worked as a janitor for his entire adult life. He had no significant relationships of record and died in obscurity in 1973. While sorting out the contents of the small Chicago apartment he had lived in for years, his landlady discovered a treasury of artwork and writings, including over 300 paintings.
The centerpiece was an epic, 15,000-page illustrated novel, which Darger had meticulously composed in long hand over a period of decades (literally his life’s work). The subject at hand: A mythic universe largely populated by young, naked hermaphrodites (the”Vivian Girls”).
Although it’s tempting to dismiss Darger as a filthy old perv, until you have actually seen the astounding breadth of Darger’s imaginary world, spilled out over so many pages and so much canvas, it’s hard to convey how weirdly mesmerizing it all is (especially if you view an exhibit, which I had a chance to do at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum back in 2007). The doc mixes Darger’s bio with animation of his work, with actors reading excerpts from the tome.
An Inconvenient Truth– It’s the end of the world as we know it. Apocalyptic sci-fi has become scientific fact-now that’s scary. In Davis Guggenheim’s 2006 doc, former VP Al Gore is a Power Point-packing Rod Serling, submitting a gallery of nightmare nature scenarios for our disapproval. I’m tempted to say that this chilling look at the results of unchecked global warming is only showing us the tip of the proverbial iceberg…but it’s melting too fast.
Sicko– Torture porn for the uninsured! Our favorite agitprop filmmaker, Michael Moore, grabs your attention right out of the gate with a real Buñuel moment. Over the opening credits, we are treated to shaky home video depicting a man pulling up a flap of skin whilst patiently stitching up a gash on his knee with a needle and thread, as Moore deadpans in V.O. (with his cheerful Midwestern countenance) that the gentleman is an avid cyclist- and one of the millions of Americans who cannot afford health insurance.
The film proceeds to delve into some of the other complexities contributing to the overall ill health of our current system; such as the monopolistic power and greed of the pharmaceutical companies, the lobbyist graft, and (perhaps most horrifying of all) the compassion-challenged bureaucracy of a privatized health “coverage” system that focuses first and foremost on profit, rather than on actual individual need. Better eat your Wheaties. (Full review)
Standard Operating Procedure – There was a fascinating documentary on the National Geographic Channel called Nazi Scrapbooks from Hell. It was the most harrowing depiction of the Holocaust I’ve seen, but it offered nary a glimpse of the atrocities themselves. Rather, it focused on photos from a scrapbook that belonged to an SS officer assigned to Auschwitz.
Essentially an organized, affably annotated gallery of the “after hours” lifestyle of a “workaday” concentration camp staff, it shows cheerful participants enjoying a little outdoor nosh, catching some sun, and even the odd sing-along, all in the shadow of the notorious death factory where they “worked”.
If it weren’t for the Nazi uniforms, you might think it was just folks from the office, hamming it up for the camera. As the filmmakers point out, it is the everyday banality of this evil that makes it so chilling. The most amazing fact is that these pictures were taken in the first place.
What were they thinking?
This is the same rhetorical question posed by an interviewee in Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris’ 2008 documentary about the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. The questioner is a military C.I.D. investigator who had the unenviable task of sifting through the hundreds of damning photos taken by several of the perpetrators. The “answer” is complicated…and what ensues not easy to watch. Nonetheless, Morris’ film is a compelling treatise on the fine line between “the fog of war” and state-sanctioned cruelty. (Full review).
Zoo-It was disturbing enough when the Seattle press broke the story in 2005 about a Boeing engineer dying from a perforated colon as the result of his “love” of horses. But when it was subsequently revealed that the deceased was a member of a sizable group of like-minded individuals, calling themselves “zoophiles”, who traveled from all over the country to converge on a farm where their “special needs” were catered to, I remember thinking that here was a scenario beyond the ken of a Cronenberg or a Lynch; this was true horror.
That said, there is still a “bad car wreck” fascination about the tale, which makes this an eerie and compelling Errol Morris-style documentary about the darkest side of (in) human desire. To their credit, writer-director Robinson Devor and his co-writer Charles Mudede maintain a sensitive, neutral tone throughout; the film is not as exploitative as one might assume.
Here’s what you would expect from a QAnon Conference. They are nuts:
At the QAnon conference today headlined by Eric Trump and Michael Flynn, the speaker says the ‘Angel of Death’ is coming for various govt officials, and God is reinstating Trump to the presidency by the end of the year. pic.twitter.com/i7tyWOdWlB
I think many people assume Trump is playing QAnon music at his rallies and winking and nodding at the QANON people on Truth Social because he thinks he’s owning the libs. But it’s pretty clear that he’s actually cultivating the freak show for political purposes. How do I know this? Well:
Eric calls Trump from the stage tonight at the same QAnon conference where, earlier today, they said ‘Angels of Death’ we’re going to wipe out govt leaders and Trump would be reinstated later this year. pic.twitter.com/e8F426tZXr
You have no doubt heard about the racist conversation recorded among certain LA City Council members. It was terrible and a number of those involved have stepped down. (Not all have realized that it’s just a matter of time…) This is what happened:
Behind closed doors, Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez made openly racist remarks, derided some of her council colleagues and spoke in unusually crass terms about how the city should be carved up politically.
The conversation remained private for nearly a year, until a leaked recording reverberated explosively Sunday and turned the focus of a sprawling metropolis toward Los Angeles City Hall.
By Sunday evening, three of Martinez’s council colleagues had called for her to resign. The leak had quickly become a new and incendiary issue in the coming Nov. 8 election, with candidates — some of them endorsed by Martinez — having to stake out positions.
Martinez and the other Latino leaders present during the taped conversation were seemingly unaware they were being recorded as Martinez said a white councilmember handled his young Black son as though he were an “accessory” and described Councilman Mike Bonin’s son as “Parece changuito,” or “like a monkey.”
Council President Nury Martinez makes racist remarks about Councilmember Mike Bonin’s young son while others chime in during this section of the conversation. The group was discussing a dispute between Councilmembers Curren Price and Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who were at odds last year over whose district would represent USC and Exposition Park once the new maps were finalized. The clip begins with Martinez recounting a conversation she allegedly had with businessman Danny Bakewell.
During the conversation with Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera, Martinez described Bonin at one point as a “little bitch,” according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by The Times.
Martinez also mocked Oaxacans and said “F— that guy … He’s with the Blacks” while speaking about Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.
De León appeared to compare Bonin’s handling of his child to Martinez holding a Louis Vuitton handbag.
Every prominent Democrat from Mayor Eric Garcetti to President Biden demanded they resign. The party simply doesn’t stand for this kind of talk. It’s disgusting.
Meanwhile, when Republican US Senator Tommy Tuberville said this at a huge rally in public the crowd cheered wildly and nobody in the GOP said a word:
I’m pointing this out for no specific reason other than to reiterate once again that fundamentally America’s two parties can be easily defined as racist/anti-racist. It’s not that the Democratic party doesn’t have its share of racists. Obviously, it does. But the party doesn’t endorse it and condemns it when it comes to light. The Republicans cheer.
I know it’s obvious but it’s rare that we see such a perfect contrast in real time.
Speaking of the midterms here’s a good primer from Ed Kilgore about what (and what not) to look for. Whether you obsessively refresh the 538 website or look away the minute the word “poll” appears on your screens, here are some things to keep in mind:
But there are some things we don’t quite know just yet that could wind up being as important as what we know (or at least think we know). Here are a few political suspense stories whose endings might shock or comfort us when it’s all said and done.
Early-Voting Patterns
By my rough calculation, early voting is underway in 31 states. Though polls can sometimes give a sense of how voting by mail is proceeding (along with harder data on mail-ballot requests and returns), the numbers you always here about shortly before any election involve in-person early voting, which is a bigger deal in some parts of the country (notably the South) than in others.
Sometimes the chatter is about overall early-voting levels as a sign of high or low overall turnout levels, as in a CNN report earlier this week:
Three weeks from Election Day, nearly 2.5 million Americans have already cast their ballots in the midterm elections, according to data from election officials, Edison Research and Catalist. In 30 states where Catalist has data for 2018 and 2022, pre-election voting is on par with this point four years ago — which was the highest turnout for a midterm election in decades.
In states with party registration, it’s often possible to discern which party’s voters are turning out early. And even without such data, some southern states collect racial data on early voters as part of a Voting Rights Act reporting requirement (one of the few features of the VRA still in place).
Is that good news for Democrats, who really need high youth and minority turnout to over-perform expectations this year? Maybe, but we don’t know, as Sean Trende pointed out two years ago when there was even more excitement about early-voting numbers:
Unless you somehow know what is going to happen on Election Day, this argument is useless. To take an extreme example: Democrats could turn out every one of their voters early, and Republicans could still win the election by turning out more on Election Day.
Obviously, that isn’t going to happen. But we exist somewhere along that spectrum. Most, if not the overwhelming majority, of these early voters are people who would otherwise vote on Election Day. The fact that they decide to cast ballots early just isn’t all that interesting.
We don’t know in these states what share of Republicans, Democrats, or independents are voting for Republicans or Democrats, and we don’t know how many voters for any party are going to end up voting on [Election Day]. This is all speculation dressed up as news.
Understanding early voting in this particular cycle is additionally difficult because we don’t know if the early-voting habits many Democrats cultivated during the COVID-19 pandemic will stick, and how many Republicans are still averse to anything other than Election Day voting after Trump told them that’s what they should do in 2020. So it’s best to wait and see.
Potential Polling Errors
There was a lot of anxiety over polling errors in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, mostly involving under-sampling of non-college-educated white voters, which in turn led to underestimation of Trump’s vote. That could mean polls may be similarly off-kilter in the same direction again (even though most pollsters have tried to adjust methodologies to reduce under-sampling). But on the other hand, polls in the last midterm election were quite accurate. Then, as now, Donald Trump is not on the ballot anywhere. So what’s the appropriate precedent?
We probably won’t know that until the results are in. But there are some signs that polls with reputations of being more or less favorable to the two parties are beginning to converge as this particular election approaches. In Pennsylvania’s Senate race, for example, six of the last seven public polls, from a variety of outlets, showed John Fetterman two to four points ahead of Mehmet Oz. Similarly, in Nevada’s Senate race, the last ten polls have shown at most a five-point variation in a race narrowly favoring Republican Adam Laxalt. And in Arizona’s tense gubernatorial race, there’s only a four-point variation in nine polls dating back to mid-September, with most showing Republican Kari Lake with a slight advantage. If either candidate won narrowly in any of these races, no pollster is going to be completely humiliated, and there probably won’t be much discussion of polling errors.
That could all change, of course, before Election Day, and polls showing dramatic last-minute trends in key races will be hyped to the stratosphere by the campaigns and parties that appear to benefit. Until then the best bet remains looking at polling averages and not at individual polls. There’s enough confusion now over “best practices” in polling methodology that cherry-picking “better” pollsters is perilous.
Youth Turnout
Back as recently as 2014, you could confidently predict that any party depending on young voters was in trouble during midterm elections, because The Kidz did not vote much in non-presidential elections, for a variety of reasons mostly having to do with personal mobility and complicated lives and work schedules. But something remarkable happened in 2018: Youth turnout more than doubled. Combined with high voting preferences for Democratic candidates, this youth-turnout boom helped Democrats win back the U.S. House and win some key governorships that year. Youth turnout remained high and solidly Democratic in the presidential year of 2020, too.
If the large and diverse millennial and Gen-Z cohorts show up similarly on November 8, they could save a lot of Democratic bacon. Objective indicators of youth engagement with voting this year are high. But there’s significant disgruntlement with Joe Biden among young voters, who are also very much cross-pressured by economic concerns they feel acutely, and a liberalism on cultural issues like abortion on which they feel strongly.
Even fairly small variations in youth turnout and voting preferences could be crucial in close races. And young voters obviously aren’t the only demographic category that should be watched closely. Republicans are counting on maintaining and if possible increasing the inroads they made in 2020 among Latino and certain Black voters.
Contested Elections
Given the extraordinary number of Republican candidates this year who have bought into Donald Trump’s stolen-election fables from 2020, there are obviously reasons to fear that some of these election-deniers may deny their own defeats and cast the results in doubt. A survey by the Washington Postidentified 12 Republican candidates in high-profile statewide races who would not affirm they would accept the results, win or lose. So barring a GOP sweep, we can expect some contested elections in the courts, in the court of public opinion, or unfortunately even in the streets.
Democrats might have some issues of their own given the wave of restrictive voting laws Republicans have enacted in many states, along with the voter intimidation efforts of MAGA “poll watchers” that will appear across the country.
BREAKING: @mcsoaz tells @abc15 they are looking into several individuals watching a voter drop box in Mesa, AZ.
I’m told they have magazine clips, dressed in tactical gear, fully disguised. @Garrett_Archer
With control of the the U.S. House and Senate, and many key state positions at stake this year, you can expect post-election contests over close elections to become larger and more divisive than ever. With one of our two major parties more or less completely subscribing to doubts about “election integrity,” it’s only going to get worse.
The Wave Factor
Some of the talk about “waves” and “winds” and “breezes” in this election represents a meteorological metaphor for perceived momentum and predictions of the results. But as Amy Walter recently pointed out, there is a tendency in most elections for close contest to break in one direction or the other:
[S]ome of the races that many are expecting to go in different directions — like Pennsylvania toward Democrats and Nevada toward Republicans — may not turn out to be the case. Instead, we shouldn’t be surprised to see Pennsylvania not as an outlier but part of a trend. For example, if Republicans are winning Pennsylvania on Election Night, we should expect to see the lion’s share of those other Toss Up seats go that way. A Democratic win in Pennsylvania would suggest that Democrats are going to win a disproportionate share of the closest contests and hold onto the majority.
“Waves” are more predictable in House races where national trends frequently dwarf whatever individual candidates are doing. But we’ve seen Senate waves too: Democrats won eight of ten toss-up Senate elections (using the Cook Political Report’s authoritative ratings) in the otherwise very close 2012 cycle. Republicans won eight of nine toss-up Senate races in 2014. And I’m old enough to remember the elections of 1980, when Republicans netted 12 Senate seats — winning virtually every competitive race — and took control of the upper chamber for the first time since the Eisenhower administration.
Late trends can move a lot of elections, in other words, particularly at a time when partisan polarization has made all elections more or less national.
Another Overtime in Georgia
Lastly, one other imponderable is the possibility that Senate control could come down for the second cycle in a row to a post-November runoff in Georgia. That state eccentrically requires majorities for general-election victories, and the Raphael Warnock–Herschel Walker Senate race looks close enough to make the expected 3 to 4 percent minor-party vote an off-ramp to a December 6 runoff. The two combatants might even be joined by bitter gubernatorial rivals Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp. It could be lit.
Politics are not predictable these days. Polls are unreliable and voters are closely divided in enough states that any one election can mark a huge shift in power. It’s not just the fact that the right has gone batshit crazy, the volatility of it all makes it even more stressful.
Here’s hoping that Dems have a huge turnout. It’s all we’ve got.
I’m getting a knot in my stomach. This piece by Dana Milbank shows what’s already in place around the country. And it will only get worse if they elect even more of these nuts and put them into important jobs overseeing elections:
If the midterm elections degenerate into chaos in a couple of weeks — a very real possibility — then Nevada is poised to lead the way. Indeed, the chaos here has already begun.
The election supervisors in 10 of the state’s 17 counties have already quit, been forced out or announced their departures. Lower-level election workers have quit in the face of consistent abuse. The state’s elections staff has lost eight of its 12 employees.
The (Republican) secretary of state, who vigorously defends the integrity of the 2020 election, is term-limited, and the GOP nominee to replace her, Jim Marchant, leads a national group of election deniers running for office. Marchant is on record saying that if he and his fellow candidates are elected, “we’re going to fix the whole country, and President Trump is going to be president again.”
In Reno’s Washoe County, the state’s second largest, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist led a harassment campaign against the registrar of voters, accusing her of treason and addiction, and she quit in fear for her family’s safety. In her absence, the county recently mailed a sample ballot to voters laced with errors: a missing contest, a missing candidate, a contest that didn’t belong on the ballot and a misspelling.
In Storey County, the clerk resigned earlier this year and was replaced by Jim Hindle, vice chairman of the Nevada GOP and one of the fake electors put forth as part of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Officials expect the eventual losers of several contests, perhaps a dozen, to contest the results, and they are bracing for the possibility that conspiracy-minded county commissioners might refuse to certify the results, as several threatened in 2020. This raises the likelihood that the state legislature could step in and throw out the results in any contested state election, from Assembly up to governor, and install the candidate of their choice — something that is allowed under Nevada law.
A few Nevada counties, meanwhile, are in the process of sabotaging their vote-counting procedures. After Marchant traveled the state making presentations with false allegations of voting machine fraud, at least four counties have taken steps toward abandoning voting machines and running elections by paper ballot and hand counting — a process certain to delay results and introduce more errors.
The furthest along in this return to the 19th century is Nye County, a rural stretch of desert where Donald Trump won 69 percent of the vote in 2020. After Marchant urged the county commission to “dispose of your electronic voting and tabulation machines,” it moved toward doing just that. The longtime county clerk, a Republican, resigned in frustration, and the commission appointed as clerk Mark Kampf, who has touted various election conspiracies and is now seeking election on the same ballot he is administering.
His attempt to shift to paper balloting with both a hand count and machine count is in chaos. He recently submitted to the state a draft 18-page election plan that he is still revising even as early voting begins Saturday. Ginny Okawa, a Nye County volunteer poll worker who runs the local chapter of the progressive group Indivisible, told me she is expecting “a circus” when voting starts because of insufficient training and personnel.
Kampf didn’t reply to email or phone inquiries, so I staked out his office in Pahrump, down the street from Second Amendment Guns & Range. When he emerged, he gave me the name of his lawyer (who also didn’t answer my email), and he said from behind a plexiglass partition: “I can’t talk to you.”
Kampf did acknowledge to me that he’s “working on making some modifications to our draft procedure” and that there are “a lot of things that have got to get prepared.” But he assured me, appearances to the contrary, that “I have no intention of being secretive” and “I want to be transparent.”
Marchant also didn’t respond to my inquiries.
Hannah Fried, who runs the voting rights group All Voting Is Local, sees what’s happening in Nevada as part of a proliferation nationwide of “efforts to create chaos in our election system in service of undermining election results.”
Georgia has had mass challenges to voter registrations, Florida has a new police force that has engaged in voter intimidation, Michigan is battling rogue election workers, and many states have experienced harassment of elections officials, restrictions on voting drop boxes, and more. “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” Fried said. The push for paper balloting, because it will extend the vote-counting time and thereby potentially undermine confidence in the process, “is a tinderbox.”
Nye County, with its 53,000 residents, is no stranger to conspiracy theories. It’s home to the Nevada National Security Site, which includes Area 51, of space alien fame. The Area 51 Alien Center in Amargosa offers alien dolls and T-shirts, an alien autopsy ice freezer and alien fortuneteller. A flatbed trailer on Pahrump’s main drag, across from Phantom Fireworks, displays 10 extraterrestrials in green, silver and black, some pointing upward.
In that conspiratorial tradition, Marchant brought “experts” to Nye in March to warn that their Dominion voting machines were “insecurable” and “uncertifiable.” He cited nefarious “forces” that are trying to “hide” something. Though lacking evidence of fraud, he argued that nobody could prove the negative — that the machines “haven’t been altered or manipulated.”
At the same meeting, Sandra “Sam” Merlino, who had been Nye County clerk for two decades, assured the county commission that “there are a lot of checks and balances in place” and that “the machine counts have never been off in the many recounts I’ve done” by hand. But the county commission voted to move toward tossing the machines, and Merlino announced her retirement.
This is so, so depressing. Close elections are going to be huge battles for the foreseeable future. Can Democrats just swarm elections so overwhelmingly in these swing states that the other side can’t manipulate the vote? I just don’t know.
I would add that news he stole highly classified information about Iran and China was pretty bad too.
Here’s what Andrew Weissman has to say about that trial starting tomorrow:
MONDAY the Trump Organization goes on CRIMINAL trial in Manhattan for a 15+ year tax conspiracy. All eyes will be on evidence of Trump’s knowledge and role in the scheme.
Normal defense strategy is to attack govt witnesses as liars. But if former CFO Weisselberg (W) is treated that way successfully, he may flip finally against Trump. The court has said if W lies he will throw the book at him at sentencing. We will be watching quite the chess game.
I’m not getting my hopes up about that …
Then there’s this:
I’m not going to get my hopes up about that either.
When MAGA Republicans tell you they plan blackmail, believe them the first time. Better yet, keep them from doing it.
Greg Sargent writes that Democratic House member led by Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) are pushing to prevent the hostage-taking:
A small group of Democrats has begun a new push to get the party to eliminate the prospect of future GOP blackmail. The thinking: Republicans are already threatening to use a potential default on the nation’s debt limit as a weapon in fiscal negotiations, so if the GOP wins the House, protecting the country from this looming disaster before the next Congress beginsis imperative.
Odds are that the next Republican House caucus will be the most radical yet. They may not have actually defaulted on U.S. debt in 2011, but that dosen’t mean they were not prepared to. Then-congressman Jason Chaffetz said at the time, “We weren’t kidding around. We would have taken it down.”
Nevertheless, writes Norm Ornstein at The Atlantic:
The Dow fell 2,000 points in the months that followed, and borrowing costs for the federal government increased by an estimated $18.9 billion over 10 years, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Republicans will follow Liz Truss right over the cliff if they can. Don’t think they won’t. They’ll play chicken with the debt limit again, too, says Sargent.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made it plain this week: A GOP-controlled House would use the debt ceiling to force draconian spending cuts. McCarthy, who is likely the next speaker, declared that unless Democrats “eliminate some waste,” Republicans will not “keep lifting your credit card limit.”
For good measure, McCarthy would not rule out using the debt limit to leverage cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
They might not shoot the hostages, but ransoming them is on the table. Mitch McConnell said so in 2011.
What can Democrats do to stop them? Ornstien offers a suggestion:
What to do? One thing is clear. If the Republicans prevail in November, the lame-duck session becomes an opportunity to take this threat off the table once and for all. The way to do so is by making permanent, perhaps via reconciliation, the ironically named “McConnell Rule.” The rule was raised by the Senate Republican leader a decade ago to allow the president to raise the debt ceiling. It allows Congress to pass a joint resolution blocking the action, but contains a provision where the president is able to veto that resolution—meaning, in this instance, that a president would need only one-third of support plus one of the two houses of Congress to avoid default.
The ideas Ornstein and Boyle float may not be workable. They might, started soon enough ahead of January, have the advantage of publicizing coming Republican sabotage of people’s Medicare and Security just as recipents are anticipating an extra 8.7% in the latter and cuts to premiums in the former. Giving the public time to raise plenty of hell might not stop the GOP, but leave them with instructive bruising. The less-engaged might be too busy with holiday preparations to notice otherwise.
That is, unless we’re spending the lame duck session litigating elections in dozens of Republican-controlled states.
This is one of several procedures available to Dems if they want to get rid of the need to pass any more debt limit increases. They're all fine. The best one is whichever they'll actually do. And in real life none of them will produce any electoral effects at all. https://t.co/OMCDZ8qoQf
Election chaos is in the offing in Nevada where election deniers are driving out election professionals, Dana Milbank writes:
The election supervisors in 10 of the state’s 17 counties have already quit, been forced out or announced their departures. Lower-level election workers have quit in the face of consistent abuse. The state’s elections staff has lost eight of its 12 employees.
The (Republican) secretary of state, who vigorously defends the integrity of the 2020 election, is term-limited, and the GOP nominee to replace her, Jim Marchant, leads a national group of election deniers running for office. Marchant is on record saying that if he and his fellow candidates are elected, “we’re going to fix the whole country, and President Trump is going to be president again.”
He seems nice.
In Reno’s Washoe County, the state’s second largest, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist led a harassment campaign against the registrar of voters, accusing her of treason and addiction, and she quit in fear for her family’s safety. In her absence, the county recently mailed a sample ballot to voters laced with errors: a missing contest, a missing candidate, a contest that didn’t belong on the ballot and a misspelling.
It’s deniers all the way down.
Perhaps a dozen races in November could be contested amid chaos and conspiracy-a-go-go. Under Nevada law Milbank links to, the legislature could step into any fouled-up race from Assembly up to governor and appoint whomever members choose.
Your vote. Their choice.
Stone knives and bear skins
A few Nevada counties, meanwhile, are in the process of sabotaging their vote-counting procedures. After Marchant traveled the state making presentations with false allegations of voting machine fraud, at least four counties have taken steps toward abandoning voting machines and running elections by paper ballot and hand counting — a process certain to delay results and introduce more errors.
The furthest along in this return to the 19th century is Nye County, a rural stretch of desert where Donald Trump won 69 percent of the vote in 2020. After Marchant urged the county commission to “dispose of your electronic voting and tabulation machines,” it moved toward doing just that. The longtime county clerk, a Republican, resigned in frustration, and the commission appointed as clerk Mark Kampf, who has touted various election conspiracies and is now seeking election on the same ballot he is administering.
(Did you read the gentleman’s name as Mein Kampf too?)
Early voting begins today even as Kampf’s 18-page draft election plan is being edited. Ginny Okawa, chair of Nye County Indivisible and a volunteer poll worker, expects “a circus.” Training and staffing is in disarray.
Kampf gave Milbank the name of his lawyer when Milbank finally caught him leaving his office. The lawyer wouldn’t comment either. Marchant insists it is instead “forces” trying to “hide” something.
Hannah Fried, who runs the voting rights group All Voting Is Local, sees what’s happening in Nevada as part of a proliferation nationwide of “efforts to create chaos in our election system in service of undermining election results.”
Georgia has had mass challenges to voter registrations, Florida has a new police force that has engaged in voter intimidation, Michigan is battling rogue election workers, and many states have experienced harassment of elections officials, restrictions on voting drop boxes, and more. “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” Fried said. The push for paper balloting, because it will extend the vote-counting time and thereby potentially undermine confidence in the process, “is a tinderbox.”
First it’s charges of voter fraud. Then voter registration challenges. Then ditching machine counts and election deniers in charge. Then when hand counts result in chaos, it’s legislatures choosing leaders for you.
