It’s become tired and predictable: Democrats cry that Republicans somewhere or everywhere are disenfranchising minorities and suppressing votes; the media play along; after the election, the media report that the election in question actually saw record turnout.
It’s not a coincidence. It’s a strategy.
Democrats believe that crying “disenfranchisement” is the best way to motivate their base, especially if they season those cries with accusations of Republican racism. The evidence suggests this strategy works.
Amid all the Democratic cries of “voter suppression,” turnout in 2020 was far higher than any other recent year. The Wall Street Journal noted that “Georgia had a smaller black-white voting gap than Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia and California — all states controlled by Democrats.”
Nate Cohn at the New York Times pointed out how Georgia’s election law, by providing grist for Democrats’ race-baiting demagoguery, arguably will drive up turnout. “This law’s restrictions on handing out water in line, for instance, may do more to mobilize Democrats than to stop them from voting. One recent study even theorized that the Supreme Court’s decision to roll back elements of the Voting Rights Act didn’t reduce black turnout because subsequent efforts to restrict voting were swiftly countered by efforts to mobilize Black voters.
Politico reported in 2020 that voters “said anger over perceived voter suppression tactics is fueling their eagerness to cast early ballots.”
Convince the voters someone is trying to take away their right to vote, and they are more likely to vote. You may have to divide the country along racial lines in the process, but hey, that’s the price of victory.
And it’s in that light that everyone should understand Senate Democrats’ current pointless fight over “voting rights.”
Senate Democrats are voting and debating this week a series of election regulations they know will fail. President Joe Biden gave a foul, race-baiting, name-calling, dishonest speech last week about such regulation — after he knew it would fail. This is clearly the Democrats’ central campaign premise for the midterm elections: Republicans are George Wallace, and Biden and Harris are MLK.
Should we hold this against Democrats? Isn’t all fair in politics in even-numbered years?
On the one hand, maybe it’s just politics. Demagoguing about threats is a time-honored way for parties to gain an advantage in an election year.
On the other hand, there’s something particularly gross and harmful when your demagoguery involves false accusations of racism. President Biden is sinking to a low not seen in at least a generation, making up falsehoods about Georgia’s election law as a way to call it worse than Jim Crow.
Also, when a party is playing the fearmonger game, the major media, which purport to be straight shooters, aren’t supposed to play along. But they do. In the parlance of the New York Times and CNN, the Democrats’ bill banning voter ID laws and micromanaging drop box hours and locations from Washington is a “voting rights” bill.
So Democrats are playing the race card as election-year demagogues, and they are getting support from a media that apparently share their agenda.
