I have long called myself a disloyal Democrat because I can’t go along with every nugget of insanity that flows from the far left edge of the party, which seems to be steering the ship, or at least plotting its course.
By the far left, I specifically mean the PC-evolving-to-woke, the element more concerned with pronouns than the welfare of the racist working class, the “criminals are victims” prosecutors, the hard-core haters who believe America is systemic racist, and what centrist/realist James Carville has described as “whiny” Democrats. Whiny is not a good look when Donald J. Trump does it, and it is no more attractive when coming from the hysterical Cassandras of the left, crying wolf about “rights” being denied.
As someone who is fact-based, wild exaggerations turn me off, and the current insanity comes from Democrats who yelp that “Democracy is under attack” because of new voting rules and regulations passed in a handful of states.
Those who passed the rules say they insure voter integrity.
The truth is somewhere between.
(If Democracy is under attack, it may come from Trump loyalists who are trying to get their acolytes embedded into the machinery of elections, but that is a different subject.)
Georgia has become a particular fixation with Democrats who scream that new voting rules are racist and poisonous. The whiners actually got the cowardly Major League Baseball to move the All-Star game from Atlanta, once known as the city too busy to hate, to Denver, which is one of America’s whitest cities. The decision was made by good intentions and shoddy research. Georgia disenfranchised nobody.
The fact, according to Pew Research, is that Georgia, rather than being throttled, has had an explosive increase in Black voters since 2016.
Ah, but that growth would not have been possible under the new rules, say some Democrats, expressing an opinion, rather than fact.
The much-ballyhooed “voting rights bill,” which is actually a “voting rules” bill, is doomed because hyperventilating Democrats oversold it, while demonizing opponents. It’s bad strategy and worse politics.
It may come as a surprise to those Democrats that Georgia’s “restrictions” are actually less severe than in many blue states, such as Delaware, New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, according to the liberal The Atlantic.
Even in reporting this out, Atlantic exhibits some tells about its orientation. Suggested Republican changes to voting rules are characterized as “restrictive,” while changes from Democrats are called “reform.”
See the game?
You have heard, for instance, the Georgia law criminalizes providing water or food to voters standing in line. You may not have heard that is a wild and willful exaggeration that the nonpartisan PolitiFact has rated “mostly false.”
And yet you keep hearing Democrats repeat the “no water” line as if it were true. Isn’t it embarrassing that they have such low regard for voters’ intelligence?
The Atlantic reports that “Few states have more limited voting options than Delaware,” even while Delawarean Joe Biden refers to other states’ “restrictions” as “Jim Crow 2.0.”
It reminds me of Biden’s infamous line that Republicans want to put Blacks back in chains. Shameless, really.
I have yet to hear the testimony of any Black man who says he was prevented from voting by a white Republican.
“Georgia citizens will still have far more opportunities to vote before Election Day than their counterparts in the president’s home state,” says The Atlantic.
Is Biden misinformed, or lying?
As I said about his predecessor, when you continue repeating things that have been proven to be untrue, that’s lying.
The Atlantic reports Connecticut has no early voting at all, New York’s rules are onerous, and Democrat-controlled Rhode Island recently enacted a photo-ID law that Democrats would call racist if suggested in a red state.
In a piece headlined “Voting Rights Under Attack,” CNN reported seven changes in Texas’ voting law, including banning drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, two things never imagined by the Founding Fathers.
Do these changes actually restrict your “right to vote,” or just someone’s crazy idea about convenience? (The 24-hour voting was replaced by 6 a.m.-10 p.m. voting. Isn’t 16 hours enough?)
The Atlantic story acknowledges, as I do, that some of the restrictions changes benefit Republicans, and the Democrats’ reforms changes benefit them.
As we know, elections have consequences, and in a polarized nation, we can’t expect exemplary behavior from either side. Be wary of hysterical claims.
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