The more things change, the more they stay the same Snake Plissken Escape From LA
The desperation is almost palpable. In the wake of the Biden election, there have been more than 200 bills introduced in state legislatures controlled by the GOP to restrict voting in future elections. Everything from shortening early voting dates to restricting mail-in-ballot requests, to enhanced voting ID restrictions. It’s so bad that even deep red states are having heart spasms trying to stem the tide.
News Flash! It won’t work. And history is replete with examples of what happens when a minority tries to use what power it has to repel the great unwashed. King Louis CIV had the entire French military at his disposal, but it didn’t stop the overrunning of The Bastille and The palace of Versailles. And Czar Nicholas had the entire forces of Russia ready to rock and roll, but it couldn’t stop the fall of The Winter Palace. It’s kind of simple, when more people are ready to die for a cause than there are there to defend it, the conclusion is kind of pre-determined.
And that’s where we are now. Only without the pitchforks and torches, carbines and cannons. And whether the GOP likes it or not, the electorate has gotten younger, more liberal, and browner. But since all the GOP knows is brute force, that’s what they’re going with.
And this is why it won’t work. Because while the electorate has become younger, more liberal, and browner, the simple fact of the matter is that liberals have gotten smarter! When a major party becomes a minority, the only way they have to win is to make sure that the majority can’t vote! And that means legislation. And the
Democrats have learned their lesson.
Georgia is a perfect example. When Stacey Abrams got jobbed in 2018, she didn’t just hide under a throw in front of the TV with a quart of chunky chocolate chip ice cream., she mobilized. She didn’t just register a half a million new voters, she had activist lawyers ready to go to court and fight GOP measures meant to restrict the vote. Georgians were able to turn out en masse, and Biden narrowly carried the state.
Before the election was even held, Trump proudly proclaimed that he had an army of more than 1000 lawyers ready to fan out throughout the country to fight widespread voter fraud. The
Biden team put together a team of actual lawyers, and Trump’s ambulance chasers went 0-63 in state and federal courts.
But it goes deeper than that, all the way to the grassroots. The GOP did everything possible to make voting as difficult as they could, especially in person voting, in states that they controlled. And it flopped, miserably. Local merchants sent pizza, sandwiches, and water to people waiting in long lines. And in several places, a grassroots effort had flatbed trucks with speakers pulling up, shielding lines of voters from mobs of pro Trump protesters on the other side of the street, and cranked up the tunes. One of my favorite memories is of video footage of a portable truck pulling up in front of a line in Philadelphia, and cranking up the jams. There was a brother in line that was about 6’7″, an d about 170 lbs. but he had moves that would put MC Hammer to shame.
You see GOP, there’s the problem you face. Our right to vote is ingrained, for more than 240 years, by the blood of our ancestors. And when people decide to go out and vote, they will climb over whatever barricades you put in their way. And other Americans who value the right to cast a vote just as much will step up to make it as easy as possible for them to do it.
So, go ahead, pass whatever stupid restrictive voting laws you want. We’re ready to fight you in court.
And as long as Democrats can motivate voters, especially African American voters to turn out, you’re sunk. And do you think that African American voters have the bit in their teeth after the successes in 2020, especially in Georgia? The math is simple. There are more of us than there are of you. And that is only gong to get worse. Welcome to the Brave New World.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
Oh dear Murfster – you’ve added a LOT of French Monarchs to the history books: Louis XVI (16th) was the one who had a neck shave – not Louis CIV (104th)
Ain’t that the truth. And these trumpian agents of evil are going to turn agents of ridicule. They don’t know how to change. They still have the same orange mango of a leader. They still have the same non-message for the people they think will follow them. A lot of the fringe voter are going to look at the GOP and say, you have the same dam message with the same dam idiot running the show. We want change. We want help in our time of need. Biden is providing change and he’s doing his level best to bring relief. And all he’s asking is that you give him the time to accomplish that. You had the ball for four years and all you did was score foul after foul and in the end you tried to murder your own man to further your failed agenda. And there is a code when fighting. Protect your soldiers and don’t leave anyone behind. And plotting to kill your own second in command and then make some miserable excuse that the other side did it when your side has been captured and are coming out with where is our protections you promised. As far as we can tell your whole horrible plan went down the shitter and us with it.
I’d call that less a code and more just good sense. The last thing you do is try to kill the guy who you’re depending on. Vietnam era fragging of officers speaks to what happens when that principle isn’t respected.
I agree, Mr Murphy, that the electorate is now younger, more diverse and smarter, which puts the dinosaurs of the GOP firmly into a shrinking minority. That demographic evolution is reflected also in the slide from grace of Fox News, whose aging, mainly-white audience is similarly outnumbered by those watching CNN and MSNBC.
You can see in states where they still hold sway like TN. It’s mostly white people around here and new arrivals trend towards white retirees who’d be barely living above the poverty line anywhere else. There’s not much of a future in an electorate like that.
As Inagine Dragons put it a little over a decade, welcome to the new age. Now if certain folks on OUR side could catch up to that fact too…
I just hope and pray that is actual way that things go. The recent CPAC stage in the shape of a Nazi symbol still has me shaken.
Funny story about the actual Nazis: when they hit the Nordic countries they filched most of their mythology from (Odal rune included), they expected to be greeted like…well, like W’s people expected we would in Iraq. Instead, they got some of the most vicious, nastiest resistance movements in their conquered territory outside of Yugoslavia. And they looked like such nice Aryans from a distance too.
Some of the stuff they’re trying to pass is outrageous & despicable, like banning independent groups from passing out water to people waiting in line. That’s just cruelty with no valid purpose. But the more they discourage people the angrier and more determined they get, as we saw in the special election in Georgia last spring when people lined up to replace a state supreme court justice, not exactly a sexy, high-profile race. And here in Ohio in 2006, when they imposed an ID rule for the first time for no reason, hoping people would be confused, not have their ID, all away and not come back, I was a poll observer for the Democratic campaign u a 90% black polling place, and didn’t see a single person w/o their ID. I did hear a lot of people grumbling “MY grandfather moved up here from Mississippi so we didn’t have to put up with this crap.”
America is experiencing the inevitable politics and change of “Generational Re-generation!” A country of diverse, progressive change led by a new class of all inclusive politics and new leaders that see the importance of making policy based on lifting all socioeconomic classes and every citizen regardless of power and wealth. A society that is moving toward helping our fellow human beings whether it be through equality in finance, education, healthcare, Civil Rights, dismantling discriminatory policies, the true right of equal justice under the law for everyone and better care of “Mother Earth” it’s happening and that creates great fear in the old guard and as we are experiencing this great change we will continue to see this fear in action as witnessed for example at the January 6th Insurrection. There is no voting law or violent action that can stop the natural “Generational Re-generation” of our society that has occured since the beginning of time. The grass roots will continue to drive this change regardless of obstacle or resistance.