My Corona Diary (Take XXVIII): The Personal Is Political: Michigan Tees Up Its Voter Suppression Package

 

<"Too Much Democracy 

Is A Dangerous Thing..."/

Take I

The Reckoner>

<i.>

You'd think Republicans would feel giddy, given all the relentless gaming of the system they do to permanently tyrannize the rest of us. To put it in perspective, we're talking about a party that's a) lost the popular vote in six of the last seven Presidential elections, b) hasn't represented a majority in the Senate since 1996, and c) crammed three Supreme Court Justices down the national gullet under a President (Donald Trump) who lost the popular vote, thanks to a bloc of Senators representing less than half the country. 

Cue the standard issue movie image of a gangster crowing in the courtroom, after beating his latest rap in the courtroom: "America, ya gotta love it, right? What a beautiful country. What a beautiful system."

You'd think they'd be flipping cartwheels and doing jumping jacks, right? Guess again. As anybody with an IQ above room temperature knows by now, the inability of Trump and the mob he incited to storm the Capitol has apparently convinced Republicans across the nation to ramp up their Voter Suppression Project, after their State Capture Project -- as in, pack the courts with rubber-stamping allies -- didn't get the job done.

At last report, the Brennan Center for Justice counts a mind-boggling 541 bills pending nationwide, all aimed at suppressing or restricting votes of the Republicans' apparent enemies (anybody who's not an angry, fiftysomething white guy who hates anybody that's not -- you get the idea). The measures range from the standard (curbing or eliminating absentee ballot drop boxes and polling places) to the truly twisted and evil (making it a crime, as Georgia proposes, to give food and water to all those nonwhite enemies that you're forcing to stand in line for hours on end -- because, hey, you want them to earn their vote!)

Now comes Michigan's turn in the voter suppression barrel. Michigan, like many states, has remained yoked under a Republican supermajority for decades -- since the 1980s. Michigan has long been considered one of the most one-sided examples of gerrymandering, or the redrawing of districts to favor one party or the other. One of the more commonly cited examples is the 2016 Presidential election, in which Trump eked out a 10,000-vote victory, while Republicans took nine of the state's 14 Congressional districts. (See the link below, for more in-depth info.)

Just this week, I happened to see an overview -- in USA Today, I think -- that contained an unintentionally humorous punch line, one that seemed hard to beat, for sheer naivete. The reporter sought to contrast the more extreme voter suppression efforts underway, notably in three states that lifted Biden to victory over Trump last fall -- Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania -- with Republican-dominated states like Ohio, that hadn't introduced such legislation. Ergo, not all GOP-led legislatures are bad, right? Or so the reporter claimed.

"O ye of little foresight," I hissed under my breath. "How little you understand, especially when you're dealing with people determined to win at any cost, and wield raw power at any cost." 

<"Too Much Democracy

Is A Dangerous Thing,"
Take II/The Reckoner>

<ii.>

My feelings got a little bit stronger, once I saw a brief summary of what's in this so-called "election reform" package. Mr. and Ms. Michigander, take a look at what your Republican supermajority has in mind for you, all 39 bills of it. Here's a brief rundown on "the most restrictive and alarming provisions," according to Voters Not Politicians (VNP), the group that worked to end gerrymandering by creating an independent citizens' commission to redraw districts*:

Senate Bill 285: Will make voters supply a specific type of photo ID in order to request an absentee ballot (including every person on the permanent absentee ballot list!), also removing voters’ ability to request an absentee ballot by mail or online.

Senate Bill 286: Will remove the ability to return an absentee ballot to a drop box after 5 p.m. the day before election day and require voters to return their absentee ballot at their clerk’s office.

Senate Bill 287: Will require voters to pay to return their absentee ballot by mail by removing prepaid postage on absentee ballots.

Senate Bill 289: Will shift the power to use federal funds earmarked for elections to the legislature instead of the Secretary of State.

Senate Bill 290: Will limit who can serve as an election challenger.

Senate Bill 291: This removes “filing certain false statements” from the list of election related felonies, "removing accountability from bad actors who spread misinformation to voters," in VNP's words.

Senate Bill 303: Will require voters to carry a specific type of photo ID with them to vote on Election Day and removes voters’ freedom to sign an affidavit if they do not have the specific ID with them.

Senate Bill 310: Will ban the freedom to mail voters an absentee ballot application or even to provide voters with a link to the AV (Absent Voter) ballot request webpage.

Bridge Detroit (below) has a more in-depth roundup and analysis than I want to go through here. What strikes me, at first glance, is the absurdly granular detail in so much of this language. 

Senate Bill 273, for example, would require video surveillance on absentee drop boxes -- that is, if any of them are left standing, once this legislative wrecking ball hits them -- while Senate Bill 309 would allow "poll watchers" to stand a "reasonable distance" behind election workers. I guess the spectacle of Trump's cult chanting "Stop the steal!" outside in less than accommodating weather isn't enough for the Michigan GOP, who apparently want to give future intimidators a free pass inside the building. 

<The Reckoner>

<iii.>

Republican contempt for anyone who opposes them is hardly a new phenomenon. We saw this happen in 2017, when they mounted their attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and acted like they were in the witness protection program, once angry voters descended en masse on their town halls -- which, of course, dried up like so loose corn stalks in the wind. 

What is different though, and feels different, is the zealous single-mindedness that the GOP is bringing to its voter suppression efforts. This feels personal, because it is personal. The driving theme behind these so-called bills is pretty simple. Having almost achieved the impossible through Trump's attempted putsch, his GOP allies want to game the system so that we, those pesky "people" that they blather about so much, don't ever get in their way again. 

After all, they're white, (mostly) rich, privileged, big business-friendly fundamentalist Christians who have a direct pipeline to the Almighty. How could we possibly know better than they do?

But we do. And therein lies the rub, as that Shakespeare guy used to say. The two voting rights bills pending before the Senate -- which would replace the gerrymander of old, with independent commissions, and require states to offer early, same-day and online voting, among other measures -- would go a long way restoring the balance. 

Getting those bills across the finish line also requires killing or modifying the filibuster that stands in their way, something that so-called Democratic and Republican moderates, and their spines of Ramen, have claimed to feel skittish about doing. We'll see if they summon up the gumption, but if nothing else, the current debate over the filibuster's future has definitely put Republicans on the defensive.

You know something funny's going on when Napoelon from Louisville, a/k/a Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, bleats that taking away his favorite obstructive toy would amount to a "power grab" -- this, coming from the same guy who jammed through those last three Supreme Court justices, and Trump's tax scam bill? This, from the same reptilian politician who worked hard to change the Kentucky state legislature's process of filling Senate vacancies, so he can push through his hand-picked replacement? This, from the same character who brags about his role as the "Grim Reaper" of bills that enjoy wide popular support?

That's why Mitch the Mummy maintained, with the usual pious I'm-just-doin'-my-defender-of-the-Constitution-bit poker face that he always puts on for the occasion, that voter suppression isn't happening. The two bills, he claimed, "are a solution in search of a problem."

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure!

And if you believe that? I've got some choice swampland you can help me drain. I'm sure that we haven't heard the last word on Michigan's voter suppression package, or any of these other batshit crazy laws that the GOP vampires are working overtime to push. I just keep coming back to one point: The personal is political. Trite as it sounds, it's true. As rotten as they are, these legislative products -- if that's what we want to call them -- tell us, loud and clear, what they really think of us.

<The Reckoner>

<Coda>

We are their enemies, because we don't assume Christianity is America's default religion, or buy the premise that our nation was founded on any religious basis. (Don't believe me? Check out the list of agnostics, atheists and Deists who made up a good chunk of the Founding Fathers, a/k/a, Those Guys In Stockings and Wigs.) 

We are their enemies, because we don't want to join them in some nostalgic fantasyland, where some Donna Reed figure always had a pot of meatloaf humming on the stove, and waited meekly for her man, while those pesky minorities were nowhere in sight, because they knew their place. We are their enemies, because we don't believe that the majority of people should accept "permanently cornered" as their status, so that Big Business can keep its hellish thing, however you define it.

I think LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said it best: 

"We’re in this hamster wheel of doing the work to register to vote. People exercise their vote, particularly Black voters, and then they’re punished for exercising that vote. When Black people exercise our right to vote, there is some kind of punitive measure that is inflicted upon our community."

But that's how it always works, doesn't it? First, the bad actors go after the nonwhites. Then, little by little, they scoop others into their grimy little net. Elderly people who let their licenses lapse, because they're not driving anymore, only to get an unpleasant surprise when they go to vote. People with disabilities, and people who live on thinner margins than you and I can ever imagine, who suddenly discover they have to shell out out a notary fee as the price of participating in our so-called system. And so on, and so forth.

That's how democracies die. Not necessarily with tanks and riots in the streets, but "thousand cuts" legislation, like Michigan's voter suppression package. If this doesn't motivate us to get out and fight, nothing ever will. If the Republicans get away with even a tenth of this stuff, guess what? We won't have a democracy left to defend anymore. Because, remember -- the personal is political. And vice versa. --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,

Before They Run What's Left
Of Your Rights Through The Shredder):

Brennan Center For Justice

Voting Laws Roundup; February 2021: 

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-february-2021

Bridge Detroit

Michigan GOP Mounts "Election Integrity" Push:
Democrats Fear Suppression:

https://www.bridgedetroit.com/michigan-gop-mounts-election-integrity-push-democrats-fear-suppression/

Bridge Michigan

Gerrymandering In Michigan

Is Among The Nation's Worst, New Test Claims:

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/gerrymandering-michigan-among-nations-worst-new-test-claims

MLive

Michigan Senate GOP Debuts Election "Reforms" 

(Sorry, but the latter word is going in quotes -- I don't have to play the "both-sides-ism" games of the mainstream media. I'm calling it for what is. Reform, it isn't. Simple as that.)

https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2021/03/michigan-senate-gop-debuts-election-reforms-critical-of-secretary-of-states-handling-of-november-election.html

The Guardian

US Democracy On The Brink

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-democracy-brink-republicans-wage-100036760.html

Vox: America's Anti-Democratic Senate,

By The Numbers:

https://www.vox.com/2020/11/6/21550979/senate-malapportionment-20-million-democrats-republicans-supreme-court

Stop Hugging Sacred Cows 101 (Sh#itcan The Filibuster)

<Official Portrait: Public Domain>

"The rules in the Senate have really been put there 

to preserve the power of the minority. Now we have to show that it's going to make a difference that we're not going to get caught up in the tyranny of the minority that exists in the Senate."

<Congresswoman Pramilla Jayapal (D-WA)>

You don't let no-one know

Just where the money goes

Because of parasites

I ain't got no rights

All the aces

All the aces

All the aces, I don't like people who ain't got no faces

Motorhead, "All The Aces" (Bomber, 1979)

<i.>

I've just finished shelling out almost $700 in medical bills, between the Squawker and myself. So why do I still have to listen to shriveled mummies like Senator Joe Manchin (D?-WV) lecture me about how costly is to fix the problems that pillage my pocketbook? 

“I think all of them realize that what we have with ACA (Affordable Care Act), it needs to be fixed. Now, they're talking in their grand plan of what they want to do. But then it has to come to fiscal responsibilities. How do you do it? Because those are major changes. It's easier to fix what we have now.” (Washington Post, 6/26/19)

That's where Joe stood then, and he hasn't budged since. As Democrats go, he makes a good Republican, given his overstuffed net worth, which we've variously posted at $6 to 8 million, and $10 million (so our Google walkin' fingers tell us, at various times). I call him The $10 Million Country Boy, because it sounds catchier. Guess that's just my punk rock crankiness calling,.

But I also understand why creeps like Manchin are such immovable objects. Empathy isn't  part of their makeup. They live by an entirely different set of rules that doesn't apply to me. I have no insurance, so therefore, I don't exist. Simple as that. Wait, I take that back. I had insurance, for two years, through the Michigan Medicaid expansion, until my income exceeded the magic number needed to boot me off it.

Still, the music biz is nothing like the healthcare biz, when it comes to what they charge you. Of the $700 I cited above, I racked up almost $500, just from one visit to the urologist ($325), not to mention the resulting tests ($175). Ka-ching! That included a second urine test, for the princely sum of $33. (Once I got the discount, that is.)

Whoops, almost forgot. I stubbed my toe, resulting in a nasty red blotch on the tip of it. Amid whispers of dry and/or wet gangrene, I was advised to check it out, so I duly trooped down to the local urgent care, and had them look at it. Which they did, once I paid the $139 they wanted, upfront. Ka-ching! The diagnosed a blood blister, one that thankfully required no X-rays or testing. Otherwise, they'd have wanted another $100 upfront. Ka-ching!

I don't blame the medical professionals involved for any of this stuff. They often seem apologetic about their position in the American healthcare circus, and the absurdities it enforces on those caught in the ebb and flow of its blackened whirlpool. 

"Do you want to pay me part of this now?" I asked the woman at the urology reception desk. "I'm not with Meridian* anymore." 

"No, we'll just bill you." Pause. Here comes the punchline, I told myself. "That way, you'll still get the 20 percent discount."

"That takes a load off my mind, I guess..."

But seriously, folks. I just flew in from the urology clinic, and boy, are my arms tired. And that's not even what irks me off the most. 

<"Who Do You Work For, Really?"/
The Reckoner>

"I must be an acrobat/To talk like this, and look like that..." (U2, Acrobat)

<ii.>

Now that the ACA has survived so many Republican kamikaze raids to kill it, there's three paths forward, the talking heads tell us. We can try to create some kind of single-payer system (God forbid); implement Medicare For All, and its associated solutions, such as lowering the eligibility age to 55 or 60 (not as painful, but still requires lots of needle threading); or bolster the existing law, by making its subsidies more generous, for those who struggle to pay its monthly premiums (deemed the safest, likeliest bet).

Whatever scenario you favor, you still have to worry about the 60-vote hump needed to kill any potential filibuster, a parliamentary procedure designed to stop bills in their tracks. The most common example occurs when one or more Senators move to block or delay debate on a measure, typically by making lengthy speeches against it, or offering numerous procedural amendments.

Often, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to persuade Senator Blowhard to pull his dream bill off the floor. The repeated failure to enact civil rights laws is the most notorious (and obvious) example of "death by filibuster," but hardly the only one. The struggle to pass a comprehensive voting rights protection law might well end up as the next notorious casualty.

However, the Joe Manchins and Kyrsten Sinemas have expressed much public queasiness about scrapping the filibuster, amid the how-much-is-too-much debate over the latest stimulus package in a 50-50 Senate. Or maybe they're bucking their fellow Democrats because of that math. It's hard to tell when you're dealing with human weathervanes. Hence, the Democrats are relying on the budget reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority to push through the whole shebang, without any Republicans muddying the waters.

But relying on reconciliation to do all your heavy lifting carries big drawbacks. It's solely reserved for measures affecting revenue, spending, and the federal debt limit. Congress can only pass such three bills per year. Either side can appeal whatever provisions displease them to the Senate parliamentarian, who somehow decided recently that a $15 minimum wage proposal doesn't fall into that bucket.

The logic escapes me, but one fact is clear. While the math of reconciliation is simple, the process is a Rube Goldbergian nightmare, as Esquire observes:

"The whole process is like squeezing your way through a tiny window when the door is right there. And the squeeze has caused Congress to recede as a branch of government, increasingly ceding power to the Executive and Judiciary. The Senate has basically banned itself from doing anything but allocating funds."

Honestly, it's strange watching Democrats acting so skittish about the very weapon that their Republican antagonists have wielded to such devastating effect since 2009. You'd think that hearing former President Obama label the filibuster as "a Jim Crow relic" would offer the ideal cue, if not some type of air cover, for all those traditionalists who want to keep on playing by the same rules that their counterparts routinely gamed, ignored, or sidestepped. 

Remember the GOP rallying cry ("Fire the parliamentarian!") that went up during their 2017 ACA repeal crusade, when aspects of the Rube Goldberg process didn't go their way? It didn't happen, but as the old saying goes, "Who dares, wins." Now, close your eyes, and try to imagine Joe Biden and his advisers saying it. See how long that image lasts, before you start busting a gut. 

Yeah, I thought so. Didn't even take more than a couple seconds. Hell. It might even make a great indoor game for you during these COVID-blighted times.

“I do not support Medicare for All. I'm really focused on solutions that are realistic and pragmatic and we can get done.”

Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D?-AZ), clarifying matters for "The Hill" blog (8/22/18)

<iii.>

Okay, now that we've had our civics lesson, and recent history refresher course, what are some compelling reasons for killing the filibuster, the next time Moderate Mickey and Mallory start carping and quailing about staying the course? Let's roll the credits, and count the ways:

"But it'll blow up the Senate!" That's well underway. The Democrats eliminated filibusters for executive branch and some judicial nominees in 2013; the Republicans scratched them in 2017 for Supreme Court nominations, allowing them to shoehorn three of the Federalist Society's latest graduates onto the bench. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.

"But it'll further undermine our democracy!" The  filibuster greases the gridlock that prompts sitting Presidents to rely on executive orders, and thus, make end runs around those pests in Congress. The "phone and pen" model, as practiced by Presidents Obama and Trump, has arguably wreaked as much (or more) havoc on our system as the filibuster. But only the losing side complains.

"But it goes against how the Senate works!" Actually, no. The filibuster isn't some sacred rite handed down by Those Guys In Stockings and Wigs, as they went about dreaming up our republic. It didn't square with their original concept of the Senate, so they didn't put into the Constitution. If they could live without the filibuster, so can we.

"But it'll kill any further chance of bipartisan cooperation!" There's nothing bipartisan about Republicans who a) stay silent over the January 6 coup attempt, b) play along with Trump's Big Lie about winning the election, c) unleash an avalanche of proposed new laws designed to suppress voting (read: no more pesky minorities  getting in our way), d) resist all attempts to hold themselves or their violent, unhinged cult followers accountable for all of the above. 

Searching for that second, third or fourth Republican vote is like searching for the Loch Ness Monster. Have you seen one in a zoo lately? I thought so. The GOP has made its preferences clear enough lately. So should we.

"But it's needed to protect minority rights!" See Ms. Jayapal's quote above. Anyone who swallows that bait doesn't know how the Senate really works, where it only takes one individual Senator to throw sand in the machinery, and grind it to a halt.

"But the Republicans will use it as a club to take revenge, when the Senate falls back into their hands!" Undoubtedly, yes. No question about it; the current generation of GOPers, from Josh Hawley, to Ted Cruz, are scheming, seditious, petty, vindictive you-know-whats, whose lack of regard for anyone but themselves and their clique has raised spitefulness to a whole new level. That being said...

So What?

<Official Portrait: Public Domain>

<"Preserving the filibuster is not worth letting millions of people in this country go hungry, sleep in their cars, or struggle to afford baby formula."

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY),

Twitter feed, three days ago>

<iv.>

If all we do is wait for the Cruzes, Hawleys and similar seditious-minded colleagues to do something terrible, and then, somehow try to fix their damage after the fact, we might as well fold our tents and go home right now. 

Keeping the filibuster preserves Democrats in the same suffocating amber that's dogged them since Napoleon From Louisville, AKA Mitch McConnell, began regularly dropping his procedural pipe bombs a decade or so ago. The script goes like this: Republicans do something horrible; Democrats squeak, "Oh, my goodness me, whatever shall we do," and scurry to play catchup, usually without much success.

Killing the filibuster smashes that dynamic, and potentially offers Democrats more room to dream bigger on goals like the $15 an hour minimum wage, immigration reform, and election reform. Threats of, "We've got 51 votes," might force some Republicans to rethink their tactics on some bills, since the days of odd couples like Bob Dole and Ted Kennedy hammering out some backroom compromise are a distant memory now.

Yes, Centrist Charlie, not every bill will advance or pass, even without a filibuster to smother it, but so far, Biden isn't finding 10 Republicans willing to help him, anyway, let that elusive second or third one on a narrower vote. Without either of those options materializing, the argument becomes more purely academic.

Failing to grasp that simple fact risks springing the same 2010-era trap that nearly cost Obama the ACA, his signature legislative achievement, and ushered in the Age of Cruelty, under Trump. Republicans got away with a double game, first, by paralyzing Congress, the weaponizing that same paralysis against the Democrats.

Sounds absurd? Maybe so, but thanks to the Tea Party's rise, enough people bought it, costing Democratic control of the House of Representatives in 2010, and the Senate, in 2014. The fallout of this failure becomes even more painful when we consider that, for his first 178 days, Obama actually enjoyed a filibuster-proof Senate majority that peaked at 60-40, when he could well have passed whatever he wanted.

That didn't happen, of course, thanks to geniuses like Obama's dimwitted, foul-mouthed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who legendarily advised his boss not to bother aggressively filling judicial vacancies, because he "didn't give a f#ck about federal judgeships." Mitch McConnell certainly did; we all know how that movie turned out.

But losing a majority is one thing; losing our democracy is quite another, so the logic of self-preservation should be enough to convince Democrats it's time to think beyond the box, like modifying or scrapping the filibuster. Otherwise, we risk a rerun of January 6th, with another mindless mob baying for our blood, at the business end of their bear spray and body armor. It's time we find an exit off the Highway of Learned Helplessness, because the price of occupancy is way too high. 

<Coda>

Oh, and as for my medical bills? On the bright side, I'll qualify for Medicare and Medicaid in just under a decade, assuming our democratic experiment isn't a smoking ruin by then, or I'll have to find some way to become wealthy enough to pay out of pocket, however unrealistic that sounds.

You know what? On second thought, I think I'll just buy a lottery ticket when the jackpot gets large enough. Unlike the work world, at least I have the same  chance as anybody else. And it sure beats waiting for Democrats to play catchup. We all know how that movie turns out, too. --The Reckoner

(*The provider who served me during my two-year flirtation with state-sponsored insurance.)

Links To Go

Esquire: Democrats Need

To Sh#tcan The Filibuster, 
Or We Are All Screwed:

https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/lifestyle/democrats-sh-tcan-filibuster-screwed-173100777.html

Yahoo.com: Analysis: Biden Ambitions

Run Into Reality Of Senate's Rules:

Analysis: Biden ambitions run into reality of Senate's rules (yahoo.com)

Yahoo.com: Democrats Launch 

Sweeping Bid To Overhaul US Election Laws:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/democrats-launch-sweeping-bid-overhaul-003305014.html