A long overdue tab-clearing.
- Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern: Democracies and mutual tolerance. He provides an excellent run-down of why the Blanche nomination is a problem.
- From the October 1900 (not a typo) edition of The Atlantic: Voting by Mail.
- Via Politico: We Went to a Yacht Party for the Most Pro-Deportation People in DC.
- Via the NYT: The 85-Year-Old Widow Snagged by Trump’s Immigration Crackdown. The worst of the worst, dontcha know.
- By Perry Bacon at TNR: Democratic Centrists Need to Stop Saying “Both Sides” Have “Extremes”. I fully endorse the following.
But the idea that the U.S. now has a far left that is equally dangerous and radical as the far right is entirely wrong, no matter how many powerful people and institutions hint or claim otherwise. America’s extreme right wing is by far the country’s big problem, and it’s hard to address that problem when powerful elites insist that the trouble is with “both sides.”
Why is this analogy so far-fetched? First of all and most importantly, the political left in America believes in and practices democracy. Until leftists collectively try to use judicial and then violent means to overturn an election that they clearly lost, as MAGA Republicans did in 2020, I don’t want to hear any bullshit false equivalences between leftists and MAGA conservatives. Conducting free and fair elections and respecting their results is fundamental to democracy. MAGA’s leader, Donald Trump, refused to accept the 2020 results, as did dozens of Republican members of Congress and state officials. To this day, Republicans tiptoe around the issue to the point where they can’t even give a straightforward answer to the question, “Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?”
- From April, but it is worth noting. Via The Atlantic: Donald Trump’s Disturbing Welcome for King Charles.
The analysis Trump endorsed is that America is defined not by its founding values but by its Anglo-Saxon cultural and genetic heritage. This idea has radical consequences, some of which have already manifested under the administration.
- Via the NYT: Should You Need to Prove Citizenship to Vote? Ask Kansas. Benefit, meet cost:
A federal judge struck down the law as unconstitutional in 2018, by which time the law had blocked the registration of around 31,000 otherwise eligible voters, or about 12 percent of all those who had tried to register for the first time.
[…]
Moreover, the federal judge found that while the state law was in effect, requiring documentary proof of citizenship had thwarted only 28 noncitizen applicants from registering. And in the roughly 13 years leading up to when the law took effect, just 39 noncitizens had successfully registered to vote.
