“A Visceral Reaction Like None Before”: The Gun-Vote Backlash Has Only Just Begun
As the Boston area was gripped by the manhunt that followed the Marathon bombings late last week, the opinion pages of the Concord Monitor just up the road in New Hampshire were consumed with another subject: Senator Kelly Ayotte’s vote against legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases. The paper’s lead editorial Sunday decried Ayotte’s rationale for opposing the bill as “utter nonsense” and an “abomination.” The letters to the editor section is riddled with anti-Ayotte broadsides, the tenor of which are conveyed by their headlines: “Ayotte’s vote should propel her out of office.” “Beyond disappointed.” “Ayotte did not represent her New Hampshire constituents.” “Enabler of murderers.” “Ayotte’s ‘courage.’” “Craven pandering.” “Reckless vote.” “Illogical vote.”
If gun control advocates are going to have any chance of resurrecting reforms after last week’s crushing defeat, much is going to depend on the depth of the initial backlash against the Democratic or swing-state Republican senators who opted to vote with the gun lobby. In a piece the day after the vote, I lamented that some leading liberals and mainstream media types were so willing to chalk the vote up to the predictable dynamics of the gun control issue, thereby essentially letting the senators who cast the crucial votes against the legislation off the hook for their decisions. One major columnist avoided holding accountable the senators who took the actual votes by wishing that President Barack Obama had acted more like a president in a movie.
But there are signs that the reaction against the vote will be stronger than what has followed prior setbacks for the cause. First, of course, there was the angry cri de coeur from Gabby Giffords. On Friday came spontaneous protests around the country at district offices of senators who voted no. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has set up a number for people to text so they can be patched through to the office of a senator who went the other way. “In years past when we lost on a vote, we had to generate [reaction], we had to push people,” says Brian Malte, the group’s director of mobilization. “This time it’s just directing it to the right place. It’s ‘I’m so angry, what should I do?’”
Perhaps the most surprising outburst came from Bill Daley, the former Clinton commerce secretary, JP Morgan Chase executive and Obama chief of staff. Daley, son and brother of the Chicago mayors of the same name, is no one’s idea of a conscience liberal—in fact, he was a leading voice during the past two decades for making the Democratic Party more welcoming to centrist types, be they pro-business moderates like himself or red-state working-class voters who, yes, cling to their guns. But there he was in Sunday’s Washington Post excoriating the four Senate Democrats who voted against the background-check legislation, particularly Heidi Heitkamp, the newly elected North Dakotan who does not face voters again for another five years:
I want my money back. Last October, I gave $2,500 to support Heidi Heitkamp’s campaign to become North Dakota’s junior senator. A few weeks later, she won a surprise victory. But this week, Heitkamp betrayed those hopes. She voted to block legislation to make gun background checks more comprehensive. Her vote — along with those of 41 Republicans and three other Democrats — was a key reason the measure fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage.
Polling has shown that nine in 10 Americans and eight in 10 gun owners support a law to require every buyer to go through a background check on every gun sale. In North Dakota, the support was even higher: 94 percent. Yet in explaining her vote, Heitkamp had the gall to say that she “heard overwhelmingly from the people of North Dakota” and had to listen to them and vote no. It seems more likely that she heard from the gun lobby and chose to listen to it instead.
Daley is just one person, but this seems pretty significant to me, as a sort of signal to establishment Democrats nationwide. For so long, party poo-bahs have cosseted Democrats from red or purple districts on issues such as gun control—heck, Daley’s fellow Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel deliberately picked pro-gun candidates to run for the House in 2006. Some liberals still seem inclined to cut the Gang of Feckless Four a lot of slack. But here is Daley turning the frame on its head—instead of making excuses for Heitkamp et al, he praised the Democrats running for reelection in tough states who did for the legislation, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan. They, not Heitkamp and the other three no’s (Max Baucus, Mark Begich and Mark Pryor) will be getting his money from now on, he said.
On the Republican side, the accountability will be left up to the voters in swing states like New Hampshire or Ohio, where Rob Portman also voted against the legislation (after letting it be known that he couldn’t cross party lines on guns after having already done so on gay marriage). It is not at all hard to envision a Democrat running against Kelly Ayotte on a law-and-order-line—here she was, a former attorney general, voting to leave a huge loophole in our system for making sure that felons are unable to purchase guns.
Of course, it won’t be easy. Ayotte, for one, is not even up for reelection until 2016, allowing plenty of time for the memory of her vote to recede in voters’ minds. As political scientists note, the unique circumstances of the gun debate still plays to the advantage of the NRA. But as my colleague Nate Cohn argues, the NRA’s sway has been overstated for some time now—the fact is, not a few senators have managed to survive in purple or red states despite consistently voting against the gun lobby. Last week’s setback was a sign that some senators were not yet willing to embrace that reality, and by doing so, they of course further enshrined facile assumptions of NRA prowess.
But their votes do seem to have produced a visceral reaction unlike any we’ve seen for some time on this front. And rightly so. It would take a jaded soul indeed to feel nothing on reading, say, of the scene Wednesday night in the Oval Office when some of the families who lost children in the Newtown massacre learned that 45 senators had not seen it in them to vote for even the most measured, limited reform: “Mr. Obama hugged the brother of one victim, Daniel Barden, who was 7, and told him to take care of his mother, who was sobbing quietly.”
By: Alec MacGillis, The New Republic, April 23, 2013
“Why Aren’t They Protecting Us?”: Congressional Cowards, Afraid To Cast A Vote To Protect Millions Of Innocent People
Neil Heslin, Carlee Soto, and Erica Lafferty, each of whom lost loved ones in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in December, appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday, still disappointed by the Republican filibuster that killed expanded background checks last week.
“It’s not about the Second Amendment, it’s strengthening and adding to laws that already in effect,” said Neil Heslin, whose son Jesse Lewis was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “I don’t think they did justice for all the victims of Newtown.” […]
Carlee Soto, whose sister Vicki Soto was a teacher at Sandy Hook, chastised lawmakers for not doing enough to prevent future shootings. “My sister was not a coward, she protected her kids. Why aren’t they protecting us?” […]
Erica Lafferty, the daughter of principal Dawn Hochsprung, echoed Soto’s comments. “My mom was not scared in the halls of Sandy Hook, they should not be scared to cast a vote to protect millions of innocent people,” she said.
Lafferty added she felt “disgusted” by the Senate opponents of the bipartisan compromise.
Also over the weekend, Caren Teves, whose son was killed in the Newtown slayings, showed reporters a hand-written note from Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), saying he was “truly sorry” for her loss and that “strengthening background checks is something we agree on.” That Flake went on to help crush expanded background checks struck Teves as a betrayal.
“What he did was to go against his own words and vote no against comprehensive background checks … I believe he’s a coward,” she said.
For Flake and other Republicans, “strengthening background checks” is an amorphous phrase with multiple meanings.
Meanwhile, it’s also worth keeping in mind that the pushback from the right against Newtown families is intensifying.
We talked a week ago about complaints from Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Rush Limbaugh, and congressional GOP staffers about the victims’ families. Apparently, some conservatives were willing to go even further.
A Minnesota radio host said he would like to tell the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims to “go to hell” for infringing on his gun rights.
Bob Davis was discussing those affected by the Newtown, Conn., tragedy during a Friday segment of his show, “Davis & Emmer,” on Twin Cities News Talk AM 1130, according to Minneapolis’ City Pages. The topic focused on how family members of the 26 victims, 20 of whom were between the ages of 6 and 7 years old, have become advocates for gun control. In Davis’ opinion, these Newtown families are infringing on his constitutional rights.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Republican strategist Ed Rogers late last week were also still insulting Newtown families, calling them “props” for the White House’s efforts to reduce gun violence.
It’s hard to even imagine a group of people more deserving of our sympathy and respect than Newtown families, but for some on the right, the only thing that seems to matter is preventing any new gun laws. If the victims’ families interfere with that goal, for the right, they deserve more aggressive pushback.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 22, 2013
“Corporations Are People, People Are Peasants”: Gun Vote Reveals A Democracy in Decline
The United States faces many grave challenges, such as declining living standards, global warming, rogue nuclear regimes, gun violence and now domestic terrorism. But none are as fundamental as or more pressing than the decline of democracy.
Last week’s vote in the United States Senate to defeat a proposal for more thorough background checks for gun buyers is the new poster child for popular disgust with Congress. It’s been 125 days since the massacre in Newton, Connecticut. 20 kids and six adults lost their lives and Congress hasn’t done a thing to curb gun violence.
The president has certainly done his part and more. A clear majority of Americans favor a ban on assault weapons, but Senators ignored their constituencies. (57 percent favor-41 percent oppose, ABC News/Washington Post). Even worse, nine of ten people favor background checks for gun purchases but Congress couldn’t even get that right. (91 percent, ABC News/Washington Post.)
Even if the Senate had passed the background check proposal it would have almost certainly failed in the House of Representatives, which the National Rifle Association owns gun lock, gun stock and gun barrel. The founders created the House of Representatives as the “peoples’ house,” but that was long ago and far away. Last year, Democratic House candidates won a majority of the vote but Republicans harvested the majority of seats.
Right now fewer than one in five Americans gives Congress a positive job rating. (18 percent, Gallup). The abject failure of Congress to respond to the public’s concern about rampant gun violence means that grade will get even lower. The questions are how low Congressional approval can go and how long democracy can endure when one of the three branches of the federal government is completely unresponsive to the public it should represent.
Gun control isn’t the only area of concern in which Congress is completely clueless. Seven out of ten Americans favor an increase in the minimum wage to $9.25 but that won’t even get a vote in the GOP dominated House (71 percent, Gallup). Less than one out of every five people favor cuts in Medicare and Social Security, but both the president and congressional Republicans want to hack at health care and pensions for seniors (18 percent, CBS News).
Why is Congress able to ignore public opinion? Because it can do anything it wants with the financial backing of corporate America. Forty two of the forty five U.S. Senators who voted against background checks received campaign contributions from the NRA. Data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that corporate America donated $1.3 billion to party committees and politicians last year.
That figure does not include the money that corporations spend in independent expenditure campaigns. The corporate money in the 2012 campaign dwarfed the contributions from labor unions. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that corporations prosper while the standard of living for working families continues to decline.
An unresponsive Congress isn’t the only challenge to democracy. The right to vote has steadily expanded all through history, except in late 19th century Jim Crow America. In the early days of our republic, only white men with property enjoyed suffrage. By the 1830’s all white men got the right to vote. Women finally received their due in 1920. And except for a few years right after the Civil War, the vote came for many black Americans only 50 years ago.
Now, Republican governors and state legislators want to roll back the clock and the tide of American history by finding ingenious ways to prevent black and Latino voters from fully enjoying their rights as citizens.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his famous treatise celebrating our great democracy, “Democracy in America,” in 1824. If he had written the book today, the title would be either “Democracy in America?”, “Democracy in Decline” or even “Democracy at Death’s Door.” I’m optimistic that democracy can revive itself, but it will take a lot of work and a lot of commitment from Americans who take their freedom for granted.
In post-Citizens United America, corporations are people, politicians are bought and people are peasants. The U.S. faced the same problem late in the 19th century when U.S. Senators represented companies rather than their constituents. But democracy survived and the excesses of the gilded age led to a renewal of economic populism during the presidencies of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The sooner that happens, the better off we all will be.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, April 22, 2013
“A Political Price To Pay”: Obstruction Of The Gun Violence Bill Will Further Damage The GOP
On Wednesday, supporters of legislation to limit gun violence failed to muster the sixty votes necessary to stop a Republican filibuster of the Toomey-Manchin compromise that would expand background checks to include all commercial gun sales in the United States.
Polls show that universal background checks are supported by 90% of Americans – including a vast majority of gun owners and Republicans. A clear majority of Senators are fully prepared to pass a background check measure. But no matter – the Republican Leadership decided to obstruct the democratic process in the Senate to prevent an up or down vote on the measure.
Conventional wisdom continues to hold that, while the vast majority of Americans support universal background checks, in many areas it is still smart politics not to antagonize the NRA and their relatively small number of very active – very passionate – supporters. Conventional wisdom is wrong. Here’s why:
1). Wednesday’s Washington Post poll shows that 70% of all voters and nearly half of Republicans already think the GOP is out of touch with the needs and interests of the majority of Americans. By opposing a common sense measure like universal background checks, that is supported by nine of out ten Americans, the GOP leadership threatens to further tarnish the GOP brand by appearing to be way out of the mainstream and not on the side of ordinary voters.
2). It is no longer true that large number of voters who favor measures to limit gun violence are less “passionate” about their views. It is also no longer the case that those views will be less likely to affect their voting than opponents of restrictions on guns.
In a poll released Wednesday by Project New America, over 60% of voters in Arkansas, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Ohio said they strongly support background checks for gun purchasers.
And an overwhelming number of voters said they would be more likely to support candidates for Senate that supported background checks – 70% in Maine, 65% in North Carolina, 64% in Illinois, 64% in New Hampshire, 62% in Nevada, and 56% in Arkansas.
3). The GOP lost women 55% to 44% in the last election. Republican obstruction of gun violence legislation will only make their problem with women voters worse, since they are particularly passionate supporters of legislation to stem gun violence. The same goes for Millennial voters who overwhelmingly support gun violence legislation.
4). Some pundits will say that Democratic Senators contributed to the failure to muster 60 votes to end the Republican filibuster by refusing to vote to cut off debate. Forty-one of forty-five Republican Senators voted against background checks. Over 90% of Democratic Senators voted to support the background check legislation and there would have been no need for 60 votes in the first place if the Republican leadership had not decided to filibuster the bill.
The fact is that everyone in America knows that the President and Democratic Leadership strongly favor background checks, and the Republican Leadership – as well as most Republican Senators – opposed them. That is what will create a lasting impression among voters.
5). Many Republicans and some Democratic Senators have made the judgment that the money and energy of the NRA and weapons industry are more potent politically than the forces who promote legislation to curb gun violence. That may have been true in the past — no longer.
The fact is that in the last election the major NRA PAC had a .083% success rate. And now Mayor Bloomberg, the Giffords/Kelly organizations and many others are amassing substantial resources to target against the enemies of legislation to stop gun violence.
Bloomberg already showed the potency of these efforts by investing $2 million in the Illinois 2nd District Congressional District and virtually sinking pro-NRA candidates who had otherwise been strong contenders in this spring’s special election. There will be more of that to come.
6). On a press conference call Wednesday, Democratic pollster Geoff Garin pointed out that Republican opposition to legislation to limit gun violence, further shrinks the playing field where they will be competitive – both in 2014 and the next Presidential race. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a list of 27 Republican incumbents who represent swing districts where voters are supportive of anti-gun violence legislation.
Already Republicans have a very narrow, difficult path to 270 electoral votes in the Presidential map. They need to broaden their electoral playing field. But their opposition to gun violence legislation will make their path to victory in states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon even more difficult.
What does all of this add up to?
The fact is that Democrats and supporters of strong legislation to curb gun violence have the high moral and political ground in this debate — and the issue is not going away. This is, after all, a 90%-10% issue.
The background check bill would have won by five votes. Instead, Republican abuse of arcane Senate rules required that it receive a super majority of sixty votes to pass. This, by the way, is yet another excellent reason to change those Senate rules to end the misuse of the filibuster.
Over the next weeks, it is up to those who support common sense gun violence legislation to come down on those who voted no like an avalanche.
There is simply no excuse for their failure to pass legislation that is supported by 90% of the American people.
Simply put, we cannot let that stand – and those who opposed the measure must be made to pay the political price.
There continues to be a perceived “passion gap” on the gun issue. Members of Congress still believe that while the majority of Americans support legislation to curb gun violence, they lack the passion of opponents. As we have seen, this is no longer true.
Now it is up to us to demonstrate that it is not true to the Senators who are more concerned about contributions and support from the weapons industry than they are about the lives of the 26 people who died at Newtown – and the thousands of others who have died since.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post, April 17, 2013
“Democracy Works No More”: Irrational And Insane Republican Filibuster Kills Background-Check Compromise
Almost exactly four months after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, the Senate took up a bipartisan compromise on firearm background checks — the heart of the larger effort to reduce gun violence. It was a watered-down compromise written by two conservative senators, but it enjoyed the support of a majority of the Senate and the overwhelming support of the American public.
And yet, this afternoon, it died at the hands of a Republican filibuster anyway.
As the dust settled, a 54-member majority supported the Manchin/Toomey amendment, while 46 opposed it. Because of Republican obstructionist tactics, proponents needed a 60-vote supermajority and came up far short. (Technically, it would have been 55-45, but Majority Leader Harry Reid had to switch his vote for procedural reasons.)
A woman in the Senate gallery shouted “shame on you” at the members below, but she, like the Newtown families, Gabrielle Giffords, and 90% of the country were ignored.
The vote fell largely along partisan lines, but not completely. Four Republicans — Sens. Collins, Kirk, McCain, and Toomey — broke ranks and supported expanded background checks, while four red-state Democrats — Sens. Baucus, Begich, Heitkamp, and Pryor — sided with the NRA. Three of the four Dems face challenging re-election campaigns in 2014.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), one of Congress’ staunchest supporters of gun-safety measures, has been absent from the Senate for several weeks with a serious ailment, but made it to the floor today anyway, in case his vote was needed. Indeed, Lautenberg cast a vote from a wheelchair this afternoon.
Given the numbers, the Democratic defections give the opposition a bipartisan veneer, but they were ultimately inconsequential — even if every member of the Democratic caucus voted together, the background-checks measure still would have lost given the scope of the opposition from the Republican minority.
There is a larger indictment to keep in mind. A filibuster killed a popular and worthwhile proposal today, but that’s not all that happened.
Watching the vote, I was reminded of something President Obama recently said while traveling the country to generate support for his gun-safety agenda.
“Ninety percent of Americans support universal background checks. Think about that. How often do 90 percent of Americans agree on anything? … And yet, there is only one thing that can stand in the way of change that just about everybody agrees on, and that’s politics in Washington. You would think that with those numbers Congress would rush to make this happen. That’s what you would think. If our democracy is working the way it’s supposed to, and 90 percent of the American people agree on something, in the wake of a tragedy you’d think this would not be a heavy lift.
“And yet, some folks back in Washington are already floating the idea that they may use political stunts to prevent votes on any of these reforms. Think about that. They’re not just saying they’ll vote ‘no’ on ideas that almost all Americans support. They’re saying they’ll do everything they can to even prevent any votes on these provisions. They’re saying your opinion doesn’t matter. And that’s not right.”
That’s true; it’s not right. But thanks to the way our political system currently works, it happened anyway.
Think about this: everything was in place for success. This one simple idea — close the gun-show loophole and apply background checks to online sales — had all of the pieces lined up in its favor. The White House invested considerable energy in giving the proposal the best possible chance to prevail; the American mainstream strongly endorsed it; the memory of national tragedy still weighed heavily on everyone’s minds; and the only meaningful organization lobbying against it has become a national laughingstock.
“If our democracy is working the way it’s supposed to,” the bipartisan compromise should have passed while barely breaking a sweat.
Is it not time, then, to look anew at whether our democracy has stopped working the way it’s supposed to?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 17, 2013
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