Being able to see ourselves from the outside makes this whole “Jim Crow on steroids” bit so embarrassing. I keep thinking about this old Fox News “man on the street” bit from 2016 that makes our side look like the ignorant racists: https://video.foxnews.com/v/5195355160001/
True. Last year I witnessed a BLM protest attended by mostly white people. The black people walking with me laughed and shook their heads. Embarrassing.
The clip is actually disingenuous and a textbook example of how Fox manipulates the news. The claim is that poor Black people living in remote areas of the rural South don't have access to the internet or the DMV, which may be 50 miles from where they live--not Black people living in Manhattan.
That said, it would seem to be both more cost effective and more impactful to help those people in the rural South--regardless of race--to get internet access and government IDs than to engage in an often futile battle to change the laws so they can vote without having IDs.
As a former Republican, I like to imagine there's a mirror-universe Jeff, with a goatee perhaps, who is justifiably criticizing the right from a position of being right/center or moderate right or whatever. (It could be perhaps called "I Might Be Right," but there'd be a lot of winking innuendo that Right really means Right-wing in the context.)
A lot of the above criticisms of Dems (which I think are sound) have analogous criticisms that the right ought to be hearing. The catastrophizing, the hostage situation with the extreme activist wing of the party somehow being in charge of dictating the platform, and the aforementioned dumbshit state/county/muni-level Repubs who are dumber than a post but got themselves elected by painting themselves orange and cosplaying as a local Trump and denying any evidence of sound or soundish elections.
I think the mirror-universe right-of-center me you're describing might be Ross Douthat, right down to the goatee.
FWIW, I don't write about the right's shortcomings very often for several reasons, but mostly because I just think those articles are boring. "Ted Cruz sucks" is, in my opinion, not news. I explain my reasoning here: https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/why-i-dont-write-about-republicans
Well said. Also, Major League Baseball's move to pull the All-star Game out of Atlanta over this stuff was silly and unnecessary. It punishes local businesses who could've used the increase in customer traffic. Plus, it signals to the country "This is a Democrat-aligned League," which is sure to alienate many.
I didn't say any of this at the time because of fear of being, you know, the c-word.
Voter suppression is a LIE!! In Georgia and especially Fulton county where the majority of Black voters live, we had record turnout of voters and the state in general. We legally elected 2 Democrat senators one of which is Black, pushing out the Republicans. I watch the Democrats yell from the rooftops that we have JIm Crow on steroids. Again, a LIE! Can you honestly, honestly say it is hard to vote? Water being denied to those in line-yeah it's called influencing the vote. Bring your own damn water bottle to the polls! Make people responsible! Do you really want to change the Filabuster so your side can essentially have no debate with the other side? Last, those that decry our new GA SB202 was Jim Crow, well did you take the time to read the Bill? Jim Crow times were horrible and that's why we have the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
Spot on, but I do have one quibble, you have miss-used the phrase “ballot access” –using it as a synonym for voting access. "Ballot access" normally means the ability to get on the ballot not the ability to vote. The Ds don’t really support easier ballot access and have gone to court to keep greens and other 3rd parties off the ballot in various states. here are just some of the most egregious ballot access laws: https://www.fairvote.org/the-worst-ballot-access-laws-in-the-united-states
Honest question from a foreigner: do you think it would make a heap of difference if you got rid of the vote and instead just held a lottery in each state in which every legal citizen of the state had a chance of being picked as senator?
I mean, you can't get more representative than statistical probability, right? And the senator for the state is supposed to represent the whole population, yes?
I've asked politicians in my countyr the same thing, and the funny thing os that all of them (as in all of them I've asked...) agree that it is a horribly undemocratic idea. Weird that, that Ayn Rand- quoting neo-liberals who virtually masturbates to pictures of Hayek and von Mises agree 100% with communists whose only complaint is that Stalin didn't go far enough but should have rolled on to the Atlantic in 1945 completely agree.
And imagine the hilarity when a retired no nonsense lunch lady or a clock-watching DMV drone gets declared senator and immediately gets rid of all the useless chaff in the administration! "Democracy under assault! Party cronies out of sinecures! Yellow journos forced to cover actual facts!"
Personally, I've advocated election-by-conscription for years. The desire for political power has always struck me as a solid argument that one should not be trusted with it. (No matter how fervently any politician argues he or she just wants to "help" people, there really are only two reasons for seeking political office: greed and lust for power.)
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find many to agree with me.
The left can try and sell "making it easier to vote" message all day long. The problem is that there is zero trust between the parties. Republicans assume the left operates in bad faith.
And what the left calls "voter suppression" the right calls "election security."
Hard agree with all of this. The talking point that we need a “special exception for voting rights” is so cringey. Right, it’s a once-in-a-generation emergency but you can’t win without changing the rules. 🙄 They just look like self-serving tools.
Going to shamelessly self-promote here because I did a very similar analysis on voting rights and the hyperbole coming from some activists way back in July.
I looked at it more through the lens of psychology: we want to find meaning by believing that we’re in the fight of our lifetimes, and if we fail, democracy will Literally Be Murdered Forever. We overlook the fact that these fights are unremarkable because we don’t want them to be so. So there ends up being a sort of tragic cyclicality to these fights, repeating over and over again throughout the decades, that most of us can only see after the dust has cleared.
Since the two parties will no longer commit to a program to help the common man, they instead concentrate on a combination of denigrating their opponents and changing the election rules in their own favor. Perfectly logical and to be expected. May the lesser evil rule!
Anyone should be honored to receive a Lynyrd-Skynyrd-ization of their name!
I disagree with Ds about early voting, mail-in voting, and enabling ballot harvesting, but this is a humorous and sensible article as usual.
Being able to see ourselves from the outside makes this whole “Jim Crow on steroids” bit so embarrassing. I keep thinking about this old Fox News “man on the street” bit from 2016 that makes our side look like the ignorant racists: https://video.foxnews.com/v/5195355160001/
Synecdoche problem: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-synecdoche-problem
The people who speak the loudest for a group of people often aren't that group of people
True. Last year I witnessed a BLM protest attended by mostly white people. The black people walking with me laughed and shook their heads. Embarrassing.
wow that clip blew my mind
This is the left's biggest problem
The clip is actually disingenuous and a textbook example of how Fox manipulates the news. The claim is that poor Black people living in remote areas of the rural South don't have access to the internet or the DMV, which may be 50 miles from where they live--not Black people living in Manhattan.
That said, it would seem to be both more cost effective and more impactful to help those people in the rural South--regardless of race--to get internet access and government IDs than to engage in an often futile battle to change the laws so they can vote without having IDs.
As a former Republican, I like to imagine there's a mirror-universe Jeff, with a goatee perhaps, who is justifiably criticizing the right from a position of being right/center or moderate right or whatever. (It could be perhaps called "I Might Be Right," but there'd be a lot of winking innuendo that Right really means Right-wing in the context.)
A lot of the above criticisms of Dems (which I think are sound) have analogous criticisms that the right ought to be hearing. The catastrophizing, the hostage situation with the extreme activist wing of the party somehow being in charge of dictating the platform, and the aforementioned dumbshit state/county/muni-level Repubs who are dumber than a post but got themselves elected by painting themselves orange and cosplaying as a local Trump and denying any evidence of sound or soundish elections.
I think the mirror-universe right-of-center me you're describing might be Ross Douthat, right down to the goatee.
FWIW, I don't write about the right's shortcomings very often for several reasons, but mostly because I just think those articles are boring. "Ted Cruz sucks" is, in my opinion, not news. I explain my reasoning here: https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/why-i-dont-write-about-republicans
What about Jonah Goldberg? He has the goatee, too, and is writing style is funny and entertaining like yours.
David French does this really well, imho: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/ (nowhere near as funny as Jeff tho)
Illinois Democrats just gerrymandered a GOP district out of existence., so the technique isn’t limited to the Republicans.
They had the capability, so they used it, and losing a district was pretty much a required outcome.
Well said. Also, Major League Baseball's move to pull the All-star Game out of Atlanta over this stuff was silly and unnecessary. It punishes local businesses who could've used the increase in customer traffic. Plus, it signals to the country "This is a Democrat-aligned League," which is sure to alienate many.
I didn't say any of this at the time because of fear of being, you know, the c-word.
Colorado’s voting laws, where the All Star Game moved, are currently more “restrictive” than the proposed Jim Crow on steroids law in Georgia.
How-to-lose-the-state-you-just-turned-blue
Oh God I forgot about that. So embarrassing.
Voter suppression is a LIE!! In Georgia and especially Fulton county where the majority of Black voters live, we had record turnout of voters and the state in general. We legally elected 2 Democrat senators one of which is Black, pushing out the Republicans. I watch the Democrats yell from the rooftops that we have JIm Crow on steroids. Again, a LIE! Can you honestly, honestly say it is hard to vote? Water being denied to those in line-yeah it's called influencing the vote. Bring your own damn water bottle to the polls! Make people responsible! Do you really want to change the Filabuster so your side can essentially have no debate with the other side? Last, those that decry our new GA SB202 was Jim Crow, well did you take the time to read the Bill? Jim Crow times were horrible and that's why we have the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
Spot on, but I do have one quibble, you have miss-used the phrase “ballot access” –using it as a synonym for voting access. "Ballot access" normally means the ability to get on the ballot not the ability to vote. The Ds don’t really support easier ballot access and have gone to court to keep greens and other 3rd parties off the ballot in various states. here are just some of the most egregious ballot access laws: https://www.fairvote.org/the-worst-ballot-access-laws-in-the-united-states
Honest question from a foreigner: do you think it would make a heap of difference if you got rid of the vote and instead just held a lottery in each state in which every legal citizen of the state had a chance of being picked as senator?
I mean, you can't get more representative than statistical probability, right? And the senator for the state is supposed to represent the whole population, yes?
I've asked politicians in my countyr the same thing, and the funny thing os that all of them (as in all of them I've asked...) agree that it is a horribly undemocratic idea. Weird that, that Ayn Rand- quoting neo-liberals who virtually masturbates to pictures of Hayek and von Mises agree 100% with communists whose only complaint is that Stalin didn't go far enough but should have rolled on to the Atlantic in 1945 completely agree.
And imagine the hilarity when a retired no nonsense lunch lady or a clock-watching DMV drone gets declared senator and immediately gets rid of all the useless chaff in the administration! "Democracy under assault! Party cronies out of sinecures! Yellow journos forced to cover actual facts!"
All joking aside, the right to choose WHICH mouth-breathing makes the braindead decisions that drive us into a ditch is a fundamental right.
Personally, I've advocated election-by-conscription for years. The desire for political power has always struck me as a solid argument that one should not be trusted with it. (No matter how fervently any politician argues he or she just wants to "help" people, there really are only two reasons for seeking political office: greed and lust for power.)
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find many to agree with me.
Um, this was actually the system used in ancient Athens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleroterion
Government-by-sortition and I'd like someone else to try it first
The left can try and sell "making it easier to vote" message all day long. The problem is that there is zero trust between the parties. Republicans assume the left operates in bad faith.
And what the left calls "voter suppression" the right calls "election security."
Hard agree with all of this. The talking point that we need a “special exception for voting rights” is so cringey. Right, it’s a once-in-a-generation emergency but you can’t win without changing the rules. 🙄 They just look like self-serving tools.
i stumbled on this from josh barro's retweet and it's great.
Fingers crossed that this is all an elaborate Prestige style misdirect to overhaul the Electoral Count Act while no one's looking. Fingers. Crossed.
What do you mean ‘while no one’s looking’? Um, Republicans we’re the ones who actually suggested that instead of this dumb train wreck
Fantastic post! Liked and shared!
Going to shamelessly self-promote here because I did a very similar analysis on voting rights and the hyperbole coming from some activists way back in July.
I looked at it more through the lens of psychology: we want to find meaning by believing that we’re in the fight of our lifetimes, and if we fail, democracy will Literally Be Murdered Forever. We overlook the fact that these fights are unremarkable because we don’t want them to be so. So there ends up being a sort of tragic cyclicality to these fights, repeating over and over again throughout the decades, that most of us can only see after the dust has cleared.
https://sockdemocracy.substack.com/p/people-like-to-think-theyre-special
Since the two parties will no longer commit to a program to help the common man, they instead concentrate on a combination of denigrating their opponents and changing the election rules in their own favor. Perfectly logical and to be expected. May the lesser evil rule!
Re: fn[1]: I Googled "Kyrstyn Synyma" just for the fun of it. Loved the response: "Did you mean: Kyrstyn Synonyms?"