I said earlier that I'm not really (yet) a deep blue Democrat, but that if Democrats under Obama and likely double-blue chambers ("bicyanocameral"?) of congress can pull off the miracle of recovery from the present crisis, while defusing the other ticking bombs of oversize New Deal entitlements, I'd be theirs. Tough assignment, sure, but hey, that would do it for me.
But it may not come to that. Republicans might just be poisoning themselves thoroughly enough that Dems can coast. One issue that makes me see a red mist is voter suppression. We have one of the lowest levels of voter participation in the world, and at best a mediocre history among democracies of giving our citizens the franchise. We should be doing everything we can to encourage voting, but there is a large and very sophisticated machinery that seeks the opposite. What's sad is that this machinery is almost entirely Republican, and deployed to protect Republican interest. Sometimes it comes through ugly legislation, such as the denial of voting rights to ex-convicts. One of the hallmarks of a civilization is that everyone has fundamental rights under the law, even criminals, and there really is no civic argument that an ex-convict, in addition to the sanction imposed by the courts, should also be stripped of the most basic right of citizenship, and you would think it's in the interest of society to encourage civic responsibility of ex-convicts. But Republicans work hard to get such laws into legislatures, and into state constitutional amendments. And they succeed all too often because that's not a demographic whom many are willing to regard. And maybe that's fair enough, except for the bit about "they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist". The next step is for Republicans to target those among likely Democratic voters who are not convicts, but are easy targets: poor people without driver's licenses, the elderly, legal immigrants. Republican legislators fight for laws to erect very high barriers to registration, and very low barriers to challenge of registration. They cite fear of voter fraud, which is a deeply cynical ploy, considering that numerous bipartisan studies have found no statistically significant likelihood of such fraud in US elections. Meanwhile local operatives increase the atmosphere of voter intimidation by posting false information wherever they can, whether posting the wrong polling locations or times, or warning people that those who show up at the polls will be scrutinized for overdue parking tickets. And after they come for the easily harassed, they come for college students, another group that tends Democratic. It's back to the usual weapon of disinformation--warning students, to take the trick used by Republicans in Virginia for example, that if they vote in the precinct where they go to school, they might lose their financial aid. And after they've disenfranchised all those other people we might not be ready to stand up for, they come for you and me. Last week Mike Coffman, our Republican Secretary of State in Colorado attempted to purge the rolls of 35,000 newly-registered voters, seizing on minor clerical errors as excuse to strip voters of their rights. New registrations in Colorado are running 4-1 in favor of the Democratic party, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Republicans pulled out the dirty tricks book. After a major outcry and threats of legal action, Coffman changed his tune to allow corrections of registrations by October 31st. This does hits home. My wife and I have been registered for ages, so we're not in danger, but Lori has helped a number of people register recently, and now, if she didn't follow obscure and poorly specified rules for checking one box in the "identification" section, that voter might be turned away from the polls. One practical matter is that everyone who cares about making sure voters can vote should check out projectvote2008.org, which provides a marvelous service by posting the (often depressingly long) list of registrations that have been invalidated in (so far) Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Nevada. They add information as they find it, so check back for added states and districts. All this cynical trickery is simply outrageous, and I hope that congress finally gets its act together to shore up the basis of our constitution. And no, this is not a matter for states, considering again that constitutional sensitivity of this issue. Meanwhile, until Republicans can bring themselves to stand up for the most basic tenet of American liberty: one person, one vote, it will be very, very hard for me to ever find common cause with them on any other issue. I know they are just afraid of the fact that many new voters will oppose them, but as many of their own pundits like to proclaim: "country first". For them to sabotaging the most precious right in our nation to serve personal interest is hypocritical as well as cowardly.By the way, Fresh Air today had a couple of story segments on voter suppression. Well worth a listen.