The Democrats Are Stuck in 1964

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Source: The Wall Street Journal (behind paywall).

You can just say No to the myth of systemic racism in America.

Like many of our racial debates of late, the discussion about voting rights has a certain broken-record aspect to it. Republicans call for voter restrictions in the name of ballot integrity, while Democrats pretend that it’s still 1964.

That was the year before Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which might be the greatest achievement of the civil-rights movement. In 1964 only 6% of blacks in Mississippi were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the region. Two years later, that number had climbed to 60%, the highest in the South. “In every southern state, the gains were striking,” wrote the late political scientist Abigail Thernstrom. “Sometimes good legislation works precisely as initially intended.”

n 1970, there were fewer than 1,500 black elected officials in the U.S. Today there are more than 10,000, and they have included mayors of large cities with significant black populations—Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Washington—as well as governors, congressmen, senators, a twice-elected black president and the current vice president. Black voter registration in the South, where most blacks live, is higher than in other parts of the country and, in Mississippi and Georgia, black voter turnout has outpaced white turnout.

Ideally, this history would inform media discussions of “voter suppression” and “disenfranchisement,” but it seldom does. Nor does evidence of increased black voter participation, including in states with stricter voting requirements, stop the left from invoking the ghost of Jim Crow.

After several states implemented more rigorous voter-identification requirements in the early 2000s, liberals cried foul and said the new laws would depress black turnout. Not only was the photo-ID requirement upheld as constitutional in a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling authored by liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, but in places such as Georgia and Indiana, minority voter turnout increased after the laws were passed. A 2007 Heritage Foundation study concluded that “respondents in photo identification and non-photo identification states are just as likely to report voting compared to respondents from states that only required voters to state their name.”

Blacks voted at a higher rate than whites in 2008 and 2012 despite these supposedly racist laws, and the trend predates the Obama presidential campaigns, according to the Census Bureau. “The 2012 increase in voting among blacks,” reads a 2013 census news release, “continues what has been a long-term trend: since 1996, turnout rates have risen 13 percentage points to the highest level of any recent presidential election.”

A 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, cited current black voter data as a justification for lifting the Voting Rights Act requirement that states with a history of racially motivated voter intimidation have changes to voting procedures cleared by a federal court or the Justice Department. Once again, the political left claimed the end of the black franchise was nigh. It’s true that black voter turnout overall dipped in 2016—basically returning to pre-Obama levels—but if right-wing voter suppression efforts are to blame, what explains the Pew Research Center finding that in the 2018 midterm elections “all major racial and ethnic groups saw historic jumps in voter turnout”?

Earlier this year, Kyle Raze, a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Oregon, produced a paper on how the Shelby decision affected the racial composition of the electorate. “Despite well-founded fears to the contrary,” he concludes, “the Shelby decision does not appear to have widened the turnout gap between black and white voters.”

Really, you can just say No.

Published by John Todd Roberts

Published

35 thoughts on “The Democrats Are Stuck in 1964”

  1. This is a bullshit article pandering to weak-minded “conservatives” who desperately want to keep non-whites from voting. Period. The evidence that non-white voters disproportionately face unnecessary obstacles to casting their ballots is overwhelming and undeniable. For you originalists out there this sort of administration of the electoral process is a direct violation of the 15th Amendment.

    So, yeah. I will just say No! To this kind of bullshit.

    BTW, do you have authority to cut and paste WSJ articles and post them on a public web site. I would advise caution on that score for both you and the owner of the blog.

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          1. Believe what you want. I still don’t have a dog in this fight. It is obviously unlikely that WSJ is going to take action against you or Tabor, but it is possible based on such an extensive extract that is not part of any other material. Not part of a review. Not a part of a critique. Just a subversion of their paywall for the benefit of non-subscribers.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. RE: “It is obviously unlikely that WSJ is going to take action against you or Tabor, but it is possible based on such an extensive extract that is not part of any other material.”

            Why is it possible, because you say so?

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          3. “Why is it possible, because you say so?”

            With all due respect, that is a very dumb question. It is “possible” because you took a very long passage from copyrighted material that they own and shared it with people who do not subscribe to their service. From the article on “Fair Use” that YOU provided . . .

            “[A] reviewer may fairly cite largely from the original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism. On the other hand, it is as clear, that if he thus cites the most important parts of the work, with a view, not to criticise, but to supersede the use of the original work, and substitute the review for it, such a use will be deemed in law a piracy.”

            That is exactly what you did.
            In effect saying . . . “No need to be a subscriber to WSJ, you can read the piece here.”

            So, should WSJ decide to suppress such “piracy”, you and Tabor would be “possible” targets of litigation. That’s why. Not because I say so.

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      1. “Requiring ballots to be cast by a live person…”

        Still dazzled by the big lie that lots of dead people voted?

        So far as all the investigations showed was a handful of Trump voters casting ballots for their dead parents.

        A few years ago NC legislators were soundly taken to task for new laws that targeted minorities with “surgical precision”. So there is a track record of red states screwing minority voters.

        Like alcoholism, conservatives just keep on sneaking in the “shots” when they think no one is looking.

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        1. Where did I claim that large numbers of zombies voted?

          I pointed out that it is reasonable, and not racist, to exclude the dead from voting, whether it happened in decisive umbers in the past or not.

          Why do you want to facilitate dead voting?

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          1. “Where did I claim that large numbers of zombies voted?”

            Your choice to include the word “live” in your sentence CLEARLY implies that you think votes by the dead are an issue and that these non-live voters justify GOP measures.

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          3. “I don’t know how many dead people voted”…

            I think the final count nationwide was less that a dozen. And they ALL voted for 45. Then there was the one in PA who voted for 45 and then the other one was caught.

            So much fraud. And all PRO-GOP.

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          6. You are either stupid or you think everybody else is. Dead people don’t vote. In the biggest turnout and most scrutinized election in history (2020) there was no evidence of an impactful problem of dead people voting. So, measures supposedly intended to stop dead people voting which just happen to inconvenience non-white people disproportionately ARE racist. It is the intent and the effect that matters, not the form.

            But, you know what, you people carry on. It is what losers with no sellable ideas or programs gotta do. The election of 2020 showed that the most significant impact of these filthy tricks was to motivate Democratic voters to do whatever it takes – including standing in line for double-digit hours – to get their votes counted. The tide of history cannot be stopped by losers like Kemp or DeSantis.

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          8. “If Democrats don’t need the dead vote, why are you so upset at measures to prevent it?”

            Okay, so stupid it is. THERE IS NO DEAD VOTE. Extremely minor examples found after much searching in 2020 were done by ignoramus Trump supporters.

            In short, Democrats do not have and do not need the votes of dead people. Measures to stop a problem that does not exist at the cost of greater difficulty in voting are inherently bad because they make voting more onerous without accomplishing any sort of public good. And since many of these needless measure impact non-white citizens disproportionately they are a violation of the Constitution. That is bad too.

            As I said before, you people can carry on with this bullshit. It is going to backfire on you yet again. IMHO.

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        2. Then you should be jumping with joy that Georgia is preventing those dead Trump voters from voting, right??? I’m cool with that, why aren’t you?

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      2. “Requiring ballots to be cast by a live person, in private, and qualified to vote has nothing to do with race.”

        In the abstract, sure. But real life does not happen in the abstract. These new requirements popping up everywhere the GOP holds sway are both pointless (THERE WAS NO SIGNIFICANT VOTER FRAUD) and intended to reduce the voting of non-white citizens. You can deny that until you turn blue. We both know that such is the intent. You may think that is just politics since it will likely hurt Democrats. It is not. The Constitution does not allow it.

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        1. You don’t “know” s hit from shinola as far as YOUR assertions of suppressing the non-white vote. Prove it!!

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          1. In Georgia in the election of 2020 the average wait in line for white voters was 7 minutes. For non-white voters that average was 51 minutes. Nationwide the pattern is the same – if you are non-white it takes longer to cast your vote than if you are white. There are countless studies reaching this same factual conclusion. Here is just one of them . . .

            Click to access 1909.00024.pdf

            And you tell us, Bobr, why is it now a crime in Georgia to give a drink of water to someone stuck for hours in a line because there are not enough polling places in non-white neighborhoods to handle the volume? Let’s see you turn that shit into Shinola.

            Liked by 1 person

    3. Just because you want to promote some bullshit systemic racism narrative, you still need to provide some proof of your bullshit assertions to the contrary besides claiming facts are bullshit. Got anything or are you just full of bullshit!!! My bets are on the latter!!!

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  2. The NY Times did an analysis of the new voting law in GA and found 16 points highlighting the restrictions or hurdles to voting.

    But the LT Gov ADMITTED the new law was driven, not by election integrity, but by T****’s BIG LIE, fueled by Giuliani’s idiocy. There was ZERO widespread fraud to cause this law to be enacted. So why was it done? IMO – to attempt to reduce the number of people voting. And the GOP knows that is the best way for them to win; limit turnout. How do they limit turnout? By making it more difficult for people to cast their ballots.

    The absentee ballot provisions don’t appear to be overly onerous; it is mostly directing voters to put the proper information on the outer envelope. Making it harder to obtain an absentee ballot is more of an issue.

    https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/547102-georgia-lieutenant-governor-giuliani-election-claims-helped-lead-to-new

    Both sides are spinning Georgia’s law to their own narrative. Both sides have inaccuracies in their arguments. The Times analysis points out a lot of those.

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  3. RE: “The NY Times did an analysis of the new voting law in GA and found 16 points highlighting the restrictions or hurdles to voting.”

    NYT’s 16 points are more smokescreen than reality. For example, NYT’s first point complains that the new law gives voters only three months to request an absentee ballot, instead of six months to do so. NYT claims, “This will almost certainly reduce the number of people who seek absentee ballots and the number of people who vote,” but gives no evidence to support the “almost certainty.”

    This is cheap and shallow journalism that reveals the 16 points to be dishonest.

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    1. …”reveals the 16 points to be dishonest.”

      Got it. Your aversion to an analysis that does not feed YOUR opinion is not worth the paper it is printed on.

      For someone who posts more shallow garbage than puddles after a rain, you have little room to refer to anything as shallow.

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      1. RE: “Your aversion to an analysis that does not feed YOUR opinion is not worth the paper it is printed on.”

        Tell me why I should take the analysis seriously when it is objectively flawed (lack of evidence to support the assertion).

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          1. I don’t matter. YOU need to answer the question: Why should ANYONE take the analysis seriously when it is objectively flawed (lack of evidence to support the assertion)?.

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          2. You believe it is objectively flawed. I don’t. Your opinion of the piece is based solely on the source. Yeah, I said it. You can deny it, but I have seen enough of your garbage that I know where you come from.

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      2. How much time do you need to get an absentee ballot??? A year, 2 or 3?? You people are full alarmist nonsense to babble about. There is NOTHING suppressive in the law except in the liberal imagination of phony systemic racism.

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  5. There is a running joke among avid golfers. A player is starting to improve his shot making so it must be time to get a new driver or a set of irons. “Don’t fix what ain’t broke” rears it’s ugly head.

    The 2020 election might have been the most scrutinized, investigated, observed, recounted and checked over and over. No discernible fraud was found.

    So now that we have found that the election systems were working as well as any in the world, voila, time to change the rules.

    I predict that Democrat turnouts will improve as the resultant backlash becomes a campaign issue.

    The Republican claim of being the party of ideas is dead. Rather than revitalize their platform, they are trying to change the rules so the rest of the nation will join their demise. The attempt at autogolpe is evidence of a failed party.

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