Stop Calling It Jim Crow

In many states voting will be easier than it was before the pandemic. 

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What a mess. 

Democrats (and their allies in the media) have convinced themselves that the Republican Party is at war with democracy. 

Republicans (and their allies in the media) have convinced themselves that the Democratic Party is at war with democracy. 

They’re both wrong, although in very different ways. 

Let’s set the stage. For years, Democrats have been determined to make voting as easy as possible. The pandemic offered a once-in-a-century opportunity to do just that, because mass gatherings were deemed dangerous. So, various states, including those run by Republicans, eased rules on absentee and early voting. Democracy must go on and all that. 

These changes were, to my mind, entirely reasonable, even if there were some problems with how they were implemented. In some states, changes weren’t made by the state legislature but by governors and judges. Republicans offered no legal objections when they had standing to do so and only complained after Trump lost. 

In the wake of the 2020 election, Trump’s team members claimed these changes amounted to evidence the election was stolen from him. (They also spewed a host of insane conspiracy theories involving everything from Chinese and Venezuelan computer hacking to North Korean counterfeit ballots.)

Partly because of Trump’s false claims and partly because they believed that pandemic voting rules were extraordinary measures that shouldn’t be made permanent, Republicans at the state level decided they had to prove they took “election integrity” seriously. 

They thought, incorrectly, this was a brilliant political strategy that would allow them to sidestep addressing Trump’s lies while placating his voters. Instead, they found themselves seeming to ratify Trump’s lies and annoying his supporters by not going far enough. 

Still, most of the measures that have been made into law are reasonable. Indeed, in many states voting will remain easier than it was before the pandemic. 

But Democrats have stuck to a script that makes no allowances for this reality. Instead, they insist that any tightening of the pandemic rules is a frontal assault on democracy. President Biden and a host of other Democrats, as well as legions of liberal pundits, claim these changes amount to a “21st century Jim Crow assault” on democracy, in Biden’s words. 

Consider one of the few restrictions on voting that’s actually stricter than the pre-pandemic standard: voter ID for mail-in ballots. This is one of the issues that drove a bunch of Democratic lawmakers in Texas to flee the state for Washington, D.C., and sing “We Shall Overcome” rather than allow voting measures to be passed by the Republican-controlled legislature. 

Now, you can think this is a bad policy. (I don’t.) But how on earth it amounts to Jim Crow is a mystery to me. Put aside that a majority of African Americans favor requiring voter ID. Ignore the fact that Texas already required identification for in-person voting. This seems like a far cry from a system that sanctioned lynching, segregation and apartheid. 

Vice President Kamala Harris was asked by BET TV what’s so terrible about voter ID for mail-in voting.

“There are a whole lot of people, especially people who live in rural communities, who don’t (have access to photocopiers), Harris explained. “There’s no Kinko’s, there’s no Office Max near them.”

Whatever you think of the scarcity-of-copy-machines claim—virtually every mobile phone has a camera on it, by the way—there’s another problem. Rural America is about 78 percent white, according to government statistics, and this is where Republicans overperform. Trump beat Biden 2-to-1 in rural counties, and Trump destroyed Biden in rural Texas. 

Are we to believe a restriction that disproportionately affects the GOP’s white, rural base is tantamount to Jim Crow? Really?

Or consider the elimination of drive-thru voting, as some Republicans want. Voters couldn’t cast ballots that way in 2018. Was that Jim Crow? If so, Barack Obama, the first black president, was elected by a Jim Crow country. 

It’s all such nonsense. 

Claims that the Republicans are at war with democracy are ludicrous when directed at these various bills—even if some of the changes are misguided or unnecessary. 

But they do have weight when aimed at Trump himself. He is the first modern president to openly reject the legitimacy of an election. And because of his stranglehold on the party, Republicans have maneuvered themselves into a ridiculous cul-de-sac that gives Democrats all the ammo and permission they need to make ridiculous claims that, among other things, reduce Jim Crow’s real moral horrors to election trivialities.

Shame on all of them.

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Comments (304)
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  1. Kurt Von Fuchs

    The problem with some of these bills is not restricting voting but how the votes will be counted

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  2. CatoTheElder

    The Progressive Left likes to emphasize how people are inherently good and will do the right thing, given a chance. Unless they don’t, in which case they’re obviously evil.

    The Populist form of Conservatism likes to emphasize how the people and their long-held practices are great, noble, and naught but Great Americans. Unless they’re for changing what’s working for moi and my market-minded millionaire minions. In which case they’re obviously evil.

    There. I think I’ve got it.

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  3. GregS

    I think I see what the contours of the defenses of the GOP are going to be in 2022.

    1) The actual GOP politicians will all swear fealty to Trump, saying that he was the greatest president ever, that they are 100% aligned with his America First agenda, that there were a lot of irregularities in the 2020 election and they have questions, etc.
    2) The conservative intellectual movement will denounce Trump as a man who is anti-democracy. But, they'll say, that criticism applies uniquely to Trump. He is the scapegoat on whom the GOP can heap all their sins and carry on, unchanged and unsullied.

    So Jonah can say for example, that claims that Republicans are at war with democracy have weight when aimed at Trump himself, but are ludicrous when directed at the Republicans behind "voter integrity" bills —even though some of the changes are misguided.

    Forgetting meanwhile, that the Republicans behind these bills are openly in the thrall of Trump, and are pursuing these bills to seek his explicit endorsement and approval.
    So by this sleight of hand, you say with a straight face that its ludicrous to criticise as anti-democracy, people who are slavishly following a person who you think is a dangerous anti-democratic demagogue.

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    1. GregS

      Oh and to clarify - this won't be a bad faith position from Jonah et al. I think (I'm speculating) that he (and the rest of TD) think that the laws themselves aren't problematic (which, debatably, could be somewhat true), and that the Republicans kowtowing to Trump are doing so to prevent worse Republicans from winning in these safe GOP districts and states. But my issue is that the last 5 years should have shown that what starts as "I'm just kowtowing to win my seat, but I'll be a principled congressman once elected" always devolves into Chip Roy "come inject it" type of behavior. I don't suspect bad faith from Jonah, just bad judgment on whether Democrats are so bad that these Republicans are preferable.

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    Phil H

    Has anyone compared the voting laws (actual as well as proposed) in effect in Democratic-controlled states as well as GOP-controlled states)?

    Accusations of "VOTE SUPPRESSION!" make no sense unless that comparison shows that "red states" are more restrictive than "blue states". Early voting is not as expansive in Delaware or New York as in some states the Democrats are complaining about.

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    1. Deleted Comment

      This comment has been deleted

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        Patrick

        Left-wing QAnon has entered the chat.

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  5. GregS

    "Claims that the Republicans are at war with democracy are ludicrous when directed at these various bills—even if some of the changes are misguided or unnecessary.
    But they do have weight when aimed at Trump himself. "

    So thrn how about claims that Republicans are at war with democracy aimed at Republicans who are still supporting Trump? Interestingly that group lines up perfectly with the people passing these various bills.

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  6. Katie

    I fundamentally agree with the voting issues you did cover, but you ignored issues that are far more pernicious. Because my points may have been made elsewhere here already, I'll be brief:
    1. What about the efforts to change who counts and certifies the votes? It seems that many of these GOP-sponsored bills want to introduce a whole lot of partisanship into vote certification and electoral vote assignment. To me, this is the "Break in case of fire" emergency that deserves the most attention.
    2. Repeat #1
    3. Repeat #1
    4. What about the recent Supreme Court ruling that goes a long way to neutering Section 2 after axing Section 5 almost a decade ago? Linda Greenhouse makes a good point:
    "According to Justice Alito, because 1982 was when Congress amended Section 2, voting rules that were in effect in 1982 are presumed to satisfy the test that Congress set then. For example, he said “it is relevant that in 1982 states typically required nearly all voters to cast their ballots in person on Election Day.”
    The obvious implication was that current Republican efforts to cut back on mail-in voting are presumptively entitled to a free pass because widespread use of mail-in ballots is a post-1982 development. The invocation of 1982 may prove to be one of the most important parts of the opinion, raising the bar for challenging some of the measures now being fought over in state capitals."

    Greenhouse goes on to note the inconsistency in the court's seeming to freeze Section 2 in time (anything valid in 1982 is valid today) while nixing Section 5 because "the majority’s complaint ... was that Congress had failed for decades to update the formula that dictated which states were subject to federal oversight of their voting procedures. The problem with Section 5 was that it was frozen in time."

    Just sayin' ..................

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    Nicole

    Everything in this piece is accurate except, I believe, Jonah's interpretation of what "Jim Crow" means as a heuristic. The premise of his argument is that this iteration of Jim Crow rhetoric means a return to the brutal past, a regression, a loss of ground. That is not what I hear. I believe it is a shortcut for the premise that these are the weapons to hand of the type of people who would have supported Jim Crow, if it were a thing in the modern era. Basically, "Look what they're up to now." That's what I hear, anyway, and I don't think I'm alone. I'm not endorsing or approving the tactic (I think it's pretty vile), just pointing out that I've heard and read Jonah opine on this for weeks now and I believe he's looking at it through a different window than the target audience of this rhetoric. It's an irresponsible shortcut to take, but one that nevertheless resonates with the people to whom it is directed.

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    1. CatoTheElder

      Sounds like an excuse, and an unacceptable one at that, for what is actually fairly reprehensible behavior.

      If someone calls me a wife-beater, and then says it wasn’t meant literally, but just to indicate that my behavior is the sort of thing wife-beaters do, I don’t look at either the original insult nor the mealy-mouthed pseudo-justification as somehow mitigated by the dodge and weave.

      As for the “target audience” thing, that doesn’t make it better, either, but instead lumps it in with those of the GOP’s far right who fan the flames of discontent with their continued enthusiasm for the Big Lie, ridiculous obstructionism re COVID vaccinations, etc. All are vile, as you say, and deserve the response that vile utterances and acts should receive.

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  8. Gerald Cuesta

    I think aspects of these laws are bad for the country — a slippery slope at best. That said: the Jim Crow crap has to stop. It’s just as corrosive and dumb as the engorged moron base of the gop believing that democrats are commie thugs trying to tear down the country and put them all under the control of a trans Muslim Chinese lgbtq corporate woke dictatorship.

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    Bill Nelson

    Voting is not supposed to be easy. It is a right, not a duty, to be exercised. And remove the idea of informed voters, voters are as informed as they wish to be. As envisioned by the founders, voters come together on Election Day to cast ballots as a community, which is why we have local precincts and a designated day. Voting roles were also assumed as necessary, and while IDs were not, it was assumed that the voter would be known.
    Absentee voting was not anticipated as it was assumed that voting was important enough to keep people home, and at the founding, people traveled often and a trip to see nearby family took several days.
    And the founders believed that the officers who oversaw the election would honestly count the votes because anything else was unthinkable. As stated by several founders, the nation could only survive if it was composed of virtuous people.

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    Will Bates

    I’ve been thinking lately about “feelings.”

    I think Republicans are feeling powerful, after feeling victimized by their perceived powerlessness in the face of the culture war. And now that they have tasted power at the hands of Trump and McConnell, many have bloodlust to maintain it. These voting laws don’t seem like genuine voter integrity laws because they aren’t - they are placations, like suckling at the Teet of Trump.

    Democrats, in turn, are feeling powerless. Its ironic to have the presidency and yet feel powerless, but victimhood runs deep in both parties (Republicans claimed victimization whilst holding all three branches). Democrats see gerrymandering getting worse every election, and then see what is not exactly inocuous legislation, but also not exactly crazy, and go hyperbolic - like when you get sunburn and get slapped. They see the Sunday voter restrictions and the changes that permit partisan republicans at the Stare level to essentially overrule the electoral college, and see smoke.

    Feeling powerless makes people lash out.

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