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/
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.
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!"
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/
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.
Illinois Democrats just gerrymandered a GOP district out of existence., so the technique isn’t limited to the 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!"
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.
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?"