“Forget The Pundits”: Red-State Women Are The Ones Fighting Toughest Battles On Behalf Of Women And They’ll Transform America
Public Policy Polling is out with a new survey showing that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has actually increased his lead over state Sen. Wendy Davis in the wake of her nationally heralded filibuster against SB 5, the draconian antiabortion legislation Perry’s trying to pass in a second special section. It should be noted that Davis isn’t even a candidate for governor at this point, so this is a theoretical matchup absent any kind of campaign.
Still, the poll numbers are likely to bolster the already strong cynicism of Texas political observers about the chance that Davis could beat Perry if she fulfilled the dream of many liberal women nationwide and ran against him next year. Similarly, most journalists dismiss the chance that Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lunderman Grimes can knock off Sen. Mitch McConnell. But the rise of these red-state women is good news for Democrats, even if pundits say they can’t beat right-wing veterans (and national villains among liberals) like McConnell and Perry next year (and I’m not conceding that here). In most red states, the best hope for Democrats is a rising coalition of Latinos, black people, Asians, young voters and white women. Davis and Grimes could accelerate the future.
I’ve been struck by even liberal Texas reporters minimizing Davis’ chances, and suggesting that the national groundswell of support will hurt her in her home state. Writing in the New York Times, Texas Tribune reporter Jay Root reports that it “puzzles” Matthew Dowd, a former George W. Bush strategist, that Davis and her backers “are allying themselves with Hollywood actresses and handing Mr. Perry the ideological battle he so desperately needs to revive his standing — at least with the right,” Root writes.
“The best thing to do with Rick Perry is to make people laugh at him,” Dowd told Root. “If you get into a sort of ideological thing, and into a back and forth, that’s how Rick Perry survives.”
Another Texas Tribune writer, Ross Ramsey, wrote a piece headlined “For Davis, Opportunity Knocks at Inopportune Time,” arguing that the Fort Worth Democrat is little known outside her district and the state party is poorly organized to give her a statewide lift. “It’s her bad luck that she’s the fastest runner on a team that can’t seem to find its way to the track,” he writes. But then he concludes his piece by seeming to contradict it, claiming that if Davis doesn’t run now, “she’ll never have a better shot.” That’s puzzling – to follow his logic, she’d have a better shot if Democrats were better organized in a few years. So I’m not convinced anyone knows for sure that Davis can’t beat Perry.
The truth is, I’m a lifelong blue-state resident, and I don’t presume to suggest I know Texas politics better than these men. I was convinced Rick Perry humiliated and hurt himself with his laughable 2012 presidential run, where he famously forgot the agencies he wanted to cut and made sweet love to a bottle of maple syrup. Instead today he’s stronger than ever with his Texas GOP base. But I do know this: Red-state Democratic women are the ones fighting the toughest battles on behalf of women’s rights – and they seem pretty happy about the attention.
On Tuesday alone, new abortion restrictions took effect in five red states — Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi and South Dakota – all passed by Republican legislatures and signed by Republican governors. Kansas’ new law requires abortion doctors to tell their patients right-wing lies: that an abortion puts them at high risk for breast cancer (totally unfounded by science) and that after 20 weeks, a fetus feels pain and “abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” Again, medical experts say neither is true. In South Dakota, women must wait 72 hours before obtaining an abortion – and weekends don’t count, which means some women will wait six days. Indiana women must undergo ultrasounds. In Mississippi and Alabama, women can no longer obtain a prescription for an early abortion drug via teleconference; they must now go to a doctor’s office. The hypocrites who claim to oppose late-term abortion are ensuring that all abortions will at least be later-term in these states.
Even as women’s votes were credited with reelecting President Obama on the national level, statehouse Republicans are restricting their rights. So national feminists and Democrats have got to turn their attention to these red states, along with purple states like Wisconsin and Ohio where Scott Walker and John Kasich are acting like they govern Mississippi when it comes to women’s rights. Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner’s decision to run for secretary of state is welcome news, in a state known for its attempts to limit voting rights (as well as its failure to elect any black Democrats statewide, ever).
We know that eventually, Texas will be a blue state. That day will arrive sooner if Latino voter turnout rises. Texas women’s groups are paying a lot of attention to the Latina vote, since Latinas are less likely than other groups to go to the polls. Young Latinas are also more likely to be pro-choice, so this is an opportunity to use this battle to make more of them voters.
At any rate, I find it encouraging to see national Democrats paying attention to Texas, with projects like Battleground Texas driven by Obama campaign veterans, most notably Jeremy Bird. Nobody expected Obama to pour money into Texas or Kentucky in 2012; the goal was to win, and there were plenty of states where he had a better chance, as well as some purple states, like Ohio, that he couldn’t afford to lose. But it’s unconscionable for national Democrats to ignore opportunities – and need – in the state that gave us Ann Richards and Barbara Jordan.
Likewise, I’d like to see national Democrats more engaged in the Grimes race. She’s gotten criticism for a lackluster announcement on Monday and her Web presence is minimal. McConnell is unpopular in Kentucky and knocking him off in 2014, while unlikely, would be a sign that Democrats will leave no state behind. McConnell’s campaign gave Grimes a favor Tuesday by releasing a bizarre autotuned ad that made fun of her name but actually served to get me to be able to type it from memory. (Oh, and they misspelled McConnell’s name in the ad.) So his team may not be the second coming of Obama 2012.
Meanwhile, the Texas battle over abortion rages on, with the Legislature expected to vote next week in the second special session called by Perry. I got into a little Twitter discussion with Matthew Dowd, after I Tweeted that he’d “trashed” the involvement of Hollywood actresses in the Times piece. “Wasn’t trashing celebrities, was just saying [Davis] only helps Perry by involving national media and celebs.” Point taken; trashing was useful shorthand in 140 characters; “dismissing” or “disdaining” would have been more accurate.
But Dowd knows Texas past and present, not necessarily its future. I’m not ready to concede that Planned Parenthood’s wrangling television stars like “Law and Order: SVU’s” Stephanie March (a Texas native), Lisa Edelstein of “House” or Connie Britton, who played Tami Taylor in the legendary Texas football series “Friday Night Lights,” are just “Hollywood” liberals who are going to drive more Texans into the arms of Rick Perry.
That PPP poll that found Davis trailing Perry also found that she’d doubled her in-state name recognition, from 34 percent to 68 percent, since January. More significant, she is now the best-liked Texas political figure among those PPP tested statewide — and the third-best-known after Rick Perry and Ted Cruz. That’s not bad for a Fort Worth lady in tennis shoes. National Democrats are going to keep paying attention to Texas; the women of Texas deserve no less.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, July 2, 2013
“The Past Isn’t Dead, It Isn’t Even Past”: Can Republicans Do The Right Thing On The Voting Rights Act?
Now that the Supreme Court has severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, the president and Senate Democrats must revise it to restore its power to protect minority voters. The critical question is: What will the Republicans do?
As the Republican House leaders consider the way forward, they would do well to consider the decisions of the past two generations of top Republican legislators, without whom the Voting Rights Act would never have existed.
Most students of history know that President Lyndon Johnson’s mastery of the legislative process – and his huge Democratic majorities – were key to the bill’s original passage. But few know that the final bill was written in the office of the Republican minority leader, Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois.
President Lyndon Johnson feared a Southern filibuster might defeat the bill. To prevent a filibuster, two-thirds of the Senate would have to move the bill to a final vote, and achieving this would require Republican votes. So Johnson turned to Dirksen. “…[ Y]ou come with me on this bill,” Johnson told him, “and two hundred years from now school children will know only two names: Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen.”
At first, Dirksen was reluctant, but when peaceful demonstrators were viciously attacked by Alabama state troopers and vigilantes on what became known as Bloody Sunday, he was enraged.
Now, he told associates, he was willing to accept “revolutionary” legislation. He began to work privately with administration officials to fine tune the bill. In meetings to draft the bill, Dirksen always sat next to acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, leaving no doubt who was in charge. Later some would call the legislation the “Dirksenbach bill.” Dirksen cosponsored the bill, defended it in floor fights with Southern opponents, and delivered the Republican votes to end debate.
Similarly, when the Voting Rights Act faced procedural death in the Senate Judiciary Committee during its 1982 reauthorization, Republican Senator Bob Dole broke the logjam. “The works around here get gummed up pretty easily,” he later said. Wishing to broaden the Republican Party to include blacks and Hispanics, Dole met privately with Democratic supporters of the bill and civil rights lawyers in order to fashion a compromise, which included extending Section 5, the bill’s preclearance provision, for twenty-five years. It was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.
It is hard to see John Boehner, the current Republican Speaker of the House, or Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican Leader, playing similar roles. Both voted for extending the act in 2006 when it was enthusiastically signed into law by President George W. Bush, but now their party has changed.
In 2010, the Tea Party movement rose to power, sweeping away moderates and even old-school conservatives in primaries, on the way to helping Republicans win control of the House of Representatives and both legislative bodies and governorships in 26 states. Many in the Tea Party believed that President Barack Obama owed his election to massive voter fraud, despite all evidence to the contrary. Quickly, Republicans began passing a series of laws they felt would increase the integrity of elections, but that served mainly to make voting more difficult for many of President Obama’s core supporters: African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans; the poor; students; and the elderly or handicapped. These included the creation of voter photo-ID laws, measures restricting registration and early voting, and laws to prevent ex-felons from exercising their franchise.
It is hard to tell what impact these state laws have had so far, in part because many of the worst of them were overturned, thanks to litigation brought by the Justice Department, the NAACP and others under the Voting Rights Act. But now the act’s power has been substantially curtailed by the Supreme Court, and many Tea Party Republicans and fellow travelers are less likely to want to restore the act than to put in place more restrictions to secure the vote even if (perhaps especially if) they mean some eligible citizens will be disenfranchised.
Republican reactions to the Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act are not encouraging. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who attended the commemoration of Bloody Sunday in Selma last March, did call for bipartisan action to reform the act, but it appears that demography means destiny. The Republican Party now represents the white minority voter, many of whom sat out the 2012 presidential election. Reaching out to African Americans, and especially to Hispanics, is counterproductive, insists long time conservative activist, Phyllis Schafly. “There’s not the slightest bit of evidence that [Hispanics] will vote Republican,” she noted in May.”The people the Republicans should reach out to are the white voters…who did didn’t vote in the last election and there are millions of them.”
If present trends continue, a number of Republicans will obstruct any new efforts to strengthen and restore the Voting Rights Act in Congress. In doing so, they will be acting less like Dole, Dirksen, Reagan and Bush, and more, in an epic role reversal, like the Southern Democratic white hard core who opposed civil rights and voting rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Sadly, the congressional battles fought then look likely to be repeated in years to come. William Faulkner was right: “The past isn’t dead,” he once wrote. “It isn’t even past.”
By: Gary May, Salon, June 29, 2013
“So Much For Sacred Obligations”: It’s Open Season On Voting Rights Right Now In America
Immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, it was hard not to wonder how long it would take for Republican state lawmakers to begin imposing new voting restrictions on Americans they don’t like. As it turns out, GOP policymakers were apparently already revving their engines, just waiting for the green light that came 24 hours ago.
MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin noted that the Supreme Court’s majority said the Voting Rights Act “probably wasn’t a deterrent against new restrictions.” Sarlin added, “Oops.”
Quite right. Just yesterday, Republican state lawmakers in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas all moved forward, with great enthusiasm, on new election measures intended to make it harder for traditional Democratic voters to participate in their own democracy. It is, as Rachel noted on the show last night, “open season on voting rights right now in America,” thanks to the Republican-appointed justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Of course, the responsibility for “fixing” the Voting Rights Act is now in the hands of Congress, where one GOP leader was willing to say … something.
Earlier this year, [House Majority Leader Eric Cantor] participated in the congressional delegation that Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., leads back to Selma, Ala., annually. That pilgrimage visits the sites of the civil rights movement, particularly one where, during a nonviolent demonstration, an explosion of police brutality erupted that left Lewis, then a young activist, with severe injuries.
“My experience with John Lewis in Selma earlier this year was a profound experience that demonstrated the fortitude it took to advance civil rights and ensure equal protection for all,” Cantor said. “I’m hopeful Congress will put politics aside, as we did on that trip, and find a reasonable path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected.”
That wouldn’t be especially noteworthy were it not for the fact that Cantor, to his credit, was literally the only member of the House congressional leadership — in either party — to issue a statement in response to the high court ruling. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and John Cornyn all said nothing.
Looking ahead, to put it mildly, this matters.
Indeed, why is it they were so reluctant to say anything at all? One of their colleagues was willing to explain the situation fairly accurately.
Most House Republicans were relatively subdued in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Tuesday decision to strike parts of the Voting Rights Act.
Conservative Arizona Rep. Trent Franks said that was no accident, but the result of a fear that their remarks would be interpreted as racism.
I suspect that’s a fair summary of the party’s fears, but I hope Republican lawmakers will consider the larger context. If they’re afraid of commenting for fear of looking racist, how do they suppose they’ll look when they reject efforts to “fix” the Voting Rights Act itself?
Boehner, McConnell, and company may not have a plan just yet, and they very likely would have preferred that the Supreme Court not drop this in their laps, but they’re going to have to come up with a strategy very soon.
And while they’re at it, I’d also encourage the Republican National Committee to think long and hard about voting rights in the coming months. Reince Priebus has been on a “listening tour” in recent months, making what appears to be a sincere effort to reach out to minority communities.
But whether the RNC realizes it or not, the party is in an untenable situation — Republicans can’t reach out to minority communities with one hand and wage a war on voting with the other, at least not if they expect their outreach efforts to be taken seriously.
Put it this way: if Republicans think they have a demographic problem now, imagine what it’ll look like after the party refuses to back a revamped Voting Rights Act.
No wonder Boehner and McConnell were feeling shy yesterday.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 26, 2013
“A Culture Of GOP Obstruction”: When Basic Governance Is Deemed Controversial
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, widely seen as the nation’s second most important federal bench, has three vacancies. President Obama yesterday introduced three non-controversial nominees to fill those vacancies. And were it not for the breakdowns of the American political process, none of this would be especially interesting.
Senate Republicans have come up with lots of reasons for not wanting to advance President Barack Obama’s nominees to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, whether it be false accusations of “court-packing” or claims that the court doesn’t need its three vacancies filled because it’s not busy enough.
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) argued there was another problem with moving Obama’s nominees: a “culture of intimidation” being fueled by Democrats.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) went further, responding to the nominees by telling reporters, “There is no basis for the president inventing these crises. It’s unpresidential. It’s embarrassing to me.”
Just so we’re clear, we’ve apparently reached the point at which a president nominating judges to fill existing vacancies is seen by Republicans as outrageous. They not only decry “court packing” — a phrase they use but clearly do not understand — they also feel “intimidated” and “embarrassed” by a basic governmental process outlined by the Constitution.
Indeed, according to Lamar Alexander, Obama is creating a “crisis.” Worse, it’s “unpresidential” for the president to exercise his presidential duties. I realize it’s a little unusual for the White House to introduce three judicial nominees at once, but this GOP freak-out is excessive by any sensible standard.
But, Mitch McConnell says, there’s no reason for Democrats to complain. “You know, we’ve confirmed an overwhelming number of judges for President Obama,” the Minority Leader told reporters yesterday. “So the president’s been treated very fairly on judicial [nominees].”
Is this true?
Greg Sargent took a closer look.
It is not easy to conclusively determine whether GOP obstructionism is unprecedented. But there are some data points we can look at. For instance, Dr. Sheldon Goldman, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts who focuses on judicial nominations, has developed what he calls an “Index of Obstruction and Delay” designed to measure levels of obstructionism. In research that will be released in a July article he co-authored for Judicature Journal, he has calculated that the level of obstruction of Obama circuit court nominees during the last Congress was unprecedented.
Goldman calculates his Index of Obstruction and Delay by adding together the number of unconfirmed nominations, plus the number of nominations that took more than 180 days to confirm (not including nominations towards the end of a given Congress) and dividing that by the total number of nominations. During the last Congress, Goldman calculates, the Index of Obstruction and Delay for Obama circuit court nominations was 0.9524.
Goldman told Greg, “That’s the highest that’s ever been recorded.” He added, in reference to the most recent Congress, “[I]t is unprecedented for the minority party to obstruct and delay to the level that Republicans have done to Obama in the 112th Congress.”
The Congressional Research Service also found (pdf), “President Obama is the only one of the five most recent Presidents for whom, during his first term, both the average and median waiting time from nomination to confirmation for circuit and district court nominees was greater than half a calendar year (i.e., more than 182 days).”
It appears that by objective standards, McConnell’s boasts have no basis in fact. Imagine that.
Nevertheless, the Minority Leader yesterday refused to commit to allowing the Senate to vote up or down on the new nominees, not because he can think of something wrong with them, but because he thinks the D.C. Circuit isn’t busy enough to need filled vacancies.
With each passing day, the “nuclear option” becomes more viable.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 5, 2013
“Trouble In 2014”: All Signs Point To A Difficult Fight For Mitch McConnell In The Coming Election Year
According to a new Public Policy Polling poll released Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will face a very difficult re-election battle in 2014.
The poll finds that McConnell and Kentucky’s Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes, would be tied at 45 percent in a hypothetical 2014 Senate race. Grimes has not yet said whether or not she plans to enter the race.
The PPP poll, which was conducted on behalf of Senate Majority PAC, suggests that McConnell’s greatest opponent may be himself. Kentucky’s senior senator holds a mere 44 percent approval rating in his home state, with 47 percent disapproval. While Grimes’ favorability is just 34 percent, 42 percent of Kentuckians are still unsure of their opinion of her.
McConnell’s standing has been deteriorating over time; two previous PPP polls had McConnell leading Grimes by margins of 7 points in December and 4 points in April.
McConnell supporters immediately lashed out against the survey. National Republican Senatorial Committee strategist Brad Dayspring, for example, argued via Twitter that questions such as “Mitch McConnell has voted to cut taxes for millionaires like himself, while supporting cuts to Social Security and Medicare for hard-working Kentucky seniors. Does this make you more or less likely to vote for him, or does it not make a difference?” are indicative of a push poll. Notably, PPP does have an extremely accurate record.
McConnell’s campaign has long prepared itself to run against Grimes. In April, a secretly recorded tape obtained by Mother Jones exposed McConnell and his aides discussing ways to discredit Grimes, along with actress and activist Ashley Judd, who was considered a likely challenger at the time. On the tape, Team McConnell considered hitting Grimes for ”blatantly endorsing the 2008 Democratic national platform” and suggesting that she “definitely has a very sort of self-centered, sort of egotistical aspect,” due to her tendency to refer to herself in the third person.
The SuperPAC Kentuckians for Strong Leadership has also attacked Grimes, in a series of online ads. The ads equate her to Democratic leaders such as President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), saying “When Grimes promises ‘new leadership,’ it means she doesn’t agree that Kentuckians like McConnell should stand strong against: Obamacare, Higher Taxes, Wasteful Stimulus, Cap and Trade, EPA’s War on Coal, and Gun Control.”
Even if Republicans like Dayspring dismiss the poll’s results, all signs point to a difficult fight for McConnell in the coming election year. The combination of McConnell’s deadlock with Grimes — despite her low name recognition — and his even lower approval rating make it clear that Democrats will have a strong opportunity to take down their number-one political target in 2014.
By: Allison Brito, The National Memo, May 28, 2013
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