A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
|
|
Call It What It Is: The GOP Is Pushing for Political Apartheid |
By David Corn May 9, 2023 |
Georgia voters stand in a line that stretched around the Metropolitan Library in Atlanta to vote in primary elections in 2021. Steve Schaefer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP |
|
|
I’m traveling this week. So we’re digging into the Our Land archives and rerunning the lead item from the very first issue, which was published on June 22, 2021, and examined the GOP campaign to institute what I call “political apartheid.” These days, Republicans have intensified their efforts to rig the system to help them gain and retain power, even when they attract the support of only a minority of voters. In Missouri, they are trying to pass a measure that would require a 57 percent majority to approve a ballot initiative, unless the measure received a simple majority across the state and in five of Missouri’s eight congressional districts—a condition that favors the GOP. Republicans throughout the country are scheming to make it harder for college students to vote. In Texas, Republican state lawmakers are pushing legislation that would allow an appointee of the governor to overturn elections in Houston. And there are many other ways the GOP is striving to stack the deck in its autocratic favor. Check out the below and see if I got it right two years ago.
A short while ago, a levelheaded friend sent me a one-sentence email: “What can we do to stop this next coup?” That sounds hyperbolic. But she was referring to an extreme development: the extensive Republican effort to undermine the democratic political system and rig it in the GOP’s favor. And the goal of this Republican scheme can—and should—be described with a harsh term: political apartheid.
By now you’re familiar with the various components. GOPers are in a frenzy to pass laws at the state level to restrict—or suppress—voting, knowing these measures will disproportionately thwart voters of color and other citizens who have tended to support Democrats. The Brennan Center notes, “Between January 1 and May 14, 2021, at least 14 states enacted 22 new laws that restrict access to the vote...Overall, lawmakers have introduced at least 389 restrictive bills in 48 states in the 2021 legislative sessions.” Perhaps what’s most troubling is that many of these bills will grant state legislatures the power to challenge or negate election results they don’t fancy. As the New York Times recently reported in a piece headlined “How Republican States Are Expanding Their Power Over Elections,” in “Georgia, Republicans are removing Democrats of color from local boards. In Arkansas, they have stripped election control from county authorities. And they are expanding their election power in many other states.” This is the most dangerous manifestation of the Republican Party’s embrace of the Trumpish authoritarianism that has totally subsumed the party. As the last election demonstrated, Trump and his cult members did seek to supplant the rule of law in attempts to overturn the results of a democratic election. The system managed to repel this attack, as election officials and legislators in key states (some of them Republicans) held the line. Now the GOP is seeking to tear down the safeguards for what seems an obvious purpose: future putsches.
At the same time, Republicans in state legislatures across the country are in the position to intensify gerrymandering to win an advantage for their party. Creating districts to establish partisan gains has a long tradition in US politics, and both major parties have engaged in such scheming. But in recent years, the GOP has excelled at this underhanded flimflammery. After the 2018 midterms, the Washington Post provided a good example: “Majorities of voters in at least three battleground states—Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina—chose a Democrat to represent them in the state’s House of Representatives. Yet in all three states, Republicans maintained majority control over the chamber despite winning only a minority of votes.”
|
This was an outright defiance of the people’s will. Moreover, the composition of state legislatures in most states determine how congressional districts are drawn, and gerrymandering has provided Republicans a competitive edge in the fight for control of the US House of Representatives. One striking (and stunning) example of this comes from the 2012 election. In Pennsylvania that year, Democrats won more than 50 percent of the total number of votes cast in House races, yet because of gerrymandering, Republicans bagged 13 of 18 House seats. That is, with less than half of the vote, the GOP wound up controlling 72 percent of the House of Representatives delegation from the Keystone State. In the redistricting to come after the 2020 census (which will cause big Democratic states, including California and New York, to lose congressional seats), GOP gerrymandering in Texas and elsewhere could guarantee enough gains for the GOP to seize control of the House.
To top off this list of assaults on democratic representation, there is the structural bias of the Senate. Per the original design, states with smaller populations are granted the same political power as much bigger ones. But as the red-blue divide has become sharper in recent years—with rural states trending hard toward the Republicans and the larger city-centric states trending toward the Democrats—this has created a strong tilt within the chamber. As Nate Silver explains, the Senate “has two or three times as much rural representation as urban core representation...even though there are actually about an equal number of voters in each bucket nationwide.” The Senate also represents a much whiter population. And not only does this institutional bias shape legislation (giving the red states disproportionate power to block bills, especially with the filibuster); it affects the composition of another entire branch of government: the judiciary. With the Senate in charge of approving federal court nominees, the GOP-controlled smaller-population states have much more say in who makes it—or doesn’t—to the bench.
Add all of this together and maybe you can call it a slow-motion coup aiming to topple—or pervert—American democracy. But it can be fairly described as a Republican endeavor to impose political apartheid: a set of circumstances that affords a minority of the nation long-term majority control of the political system.
With Republican Party identification having decreased in recent years—presumably the result of dramatic demographic shifts and the Reign of Trump—the GOP is seeking to compensate through this devil’s brew of ugly political gamesmanship. Some measures (voting restrictions, gerrymandering) come out of the familiar playbook. Others, most notably granting state legislatures more power to nullify election results, are more ingeniously sleazy. All together—and with Trump and his minions continuing to lie about the 2020 election results—they form a well-funded assault on American democracy.
This grand scheme needs to be fully called out. Key elements of the GOP plot—such as the party’s many attempts to undermine voter rights—do draw criticism. And the For the People Act, which would address some of the Republican skullduggery, is scheduled for debate this week in the Senate (and will likely not survive a GOP filibuster). But the Republican effort to make America a minority-ruled nation is not yet a fully accepted talking point that is widely recognized. President Joe Biden and many in the Democratic Party are justifiably focused these days on passing legislation and taking action to revive the economy and beat back the pandemic so next year the Democrats can campaign on accomplishments and results. And much of the voting public, they assume (perhaps correctly), does not relish or respond to hyperpartisan messaging. But to protect American democracy, Biden and the Democrats will have to speak plainly about the Republicans’ crusade, for the surest way to lose a war on democracy is to not acknowledge it is already underway.
Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
|
|
Read Recent Issues of Our Land
|
May 5, 2023: Who controls AI?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Jesse Watters); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
May 2, 2023: President Joe Biden’s crusade; KCSN’s eclectic mix of new and old music; and more.
April 29, 2023: Of guns, God, and a clinging GOP; a useful idiot is gone from Fox; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Sen. Ron Johnson); the Mailbag: MoxieCam™; and more. April 25, 2023: Tucker Carlson’s long con; Blacktop Wasteland and a helluva ride; and more.
April 22, 2023: Robert Kennedy, Jr., we wish we hardly knew ye; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Fox News); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
April 18, 2023: Go take a walk; comparing the Murdochs and the Roys; The Big Door Prize puzzles; and more.
April 15, 2023: Donald Trump’s inanity goes nuclear—literally; more on that disappearing Columbia Journalism Review town hall; a great endorsement of Our Land; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Sen. Tim Scott); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
April 11, 2023: The Trump-Russia town hall that disappeared; Matt Taibbi on the run; the Milk Carton Kids reappear; Adam Sandler’s slam-dunk in the Hustle; and more.
April 8, 2023: Clarence and Ginni Thomas, enough already!; the Trump circus in NYC; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Special Arraignment Edition); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more. April 4, 2023: Why Fox can survive its mega-scandal; Bruce Springsteen’s rock ‘n’ roll revival; a new rock-chick-lit novel from Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles; and more.
April 1, 2023: Trump’s indictment is yet another stress-test for America; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Speaker Kevin McCarthy); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more. |
|
|
Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
|
|
|