Democrats are worried about the wrong thing.
Voter suppression isn't the big problem.
Gerrymandering and vote nullification are the problems.
Democrats lose their credibility as advocates for fair elections when they oppose voter ID rules.
It is the 21st century. People are accustomed to showing their IDs to get onto an airplane or into a big city office building or to cash a check. Eighty percent of Americans support requiring voter IDs. Click: Monmouth poll Democrats fuel Republican rank-and-file suspicion about the 2020 election when they speak out against voter ID rules. It gives a basis for the Trump-Fox-GOP assertion Democrats want "caravans" of people of uncertain identity to vote Democratic.
The 2020 victory for Biden came because more suburban people with education and jobs voted Democratic. Republicans are becoming the down-scale party of nativist populism. Under the new party alignments, voter ID may help Democrats as much as Republicans. Democrats should let go of this.
Republicans are making their own errors. Restricting voting by mail would have weighed against Democrats in 2020, but traditionally it had been Republicans who used absentee voting to get out their vote. Republicans are re-fighting the last war. Old voters tend to vote Republican. The people who will most need absentee voting are seniors.
Republican messaging backfires. They have positioned themselves as the party skeptical of the votes of the "wrong sort" of people: Blacks who live in urban areas and Hispanics everywhere except Florida. Trump and GOP vote-skeptics point to Wayne County, Michigan, i.e. Detroit. They assert fraud in "Democrat cities" with suitcases of ballots brought in--allegations found untrue, but which continue to circulate. In fact, as Attorney General Bill Barr noted to a skeptical President Trump, he was not the victim of a vote-dump in Detroit. Barr told Trump he got more votes in Detroit in 2020 than he did when running against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump was getting stronger with Black voters. The GOP is also discovering that they have policies that appeal to Hispanic voters, and they would do better with them if they would stop openly insulting them as drug-using rapists, thieves, and safety-net sponges. The GOP gives Democrats an easy-to-understand message for Black and Hispanic voters: The GOP is trying to take your vote away. Don't let them.
Still, none of this may matter. The elections of 2022 could be a giant win for the GOP. Indeed I expect it.
Democrats blew the crime issue. They turned a moment of national consciousness about racially-biased policing into a message that Democrats were so completely captured by the anarchist-left voices in their party that they tolerate street violence. Events in Seattle and Portland created a big swing toward the GOP in every race except Trump's presidential race, where Trump's own personal negatives were too much to overcome.
The Trump "stolen election" meme gives enlarged GOP legislative majorities political space to do unapologetic partisan map-drawing. The map of Ohio congressional districts show how easy it is for legislatures to draw maps that take a Democratic majority of votes, yet create a 75-25 split for Republicans.
In 2020 election officials felt duty-bound to administer an election like an honest referee on a ball field. They caught hell for doing so. Mike Pence gets boos. Georgia and Arizona officials got censured. They face the wrath of partisan activists and are greeted by silence from GOP officeholders, even ones who don't for a moment think there was a stolen election. GOP leaders don't want to stand in the way of partisan energy, and can justify keeping quiet. Although there is no evidence the 2020 election was stolen, lack of evidence is not proof something is utterly impossible. Who can really know anything with absolute certainty?
Click: Legislatures did not dare in 2020
In 2022 and beyond, legislatures have license to interpret the real intention and will of the people by selecting the electors. Legislators were under heavy pressure to do exactly that in 2020, but old norms were in place.
Over-rule the voters? We can't do that.
Now they can. Trump sold the idea that Democrats stole the election of 2020 and therefore it is honorable to seize it back. The Stop the Steal insurrection was done sloppily. In 2022 and beyond, it will be done right. Plan A is gerrymandering, which will probably be more than sufficient. Plan B is vote nullification by election officials locally and at the legislatures. The Constitution allows it and elections cannot be trusted.
Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. They had months to get the urban crime issue right, and they failed and kept failing. Black voters are not the Democrats’ problem. People who live in tough neighborhoods don't like crime. The problem is that Democrats are afraid of their own anarchist left. The professors and graduate students in English and Gender Studies departments do not speak for a majority of Americans. Until Democrats figure that out they will lose elections they should be able to win with ease.
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