Opinion

Remember: With Republicans, every accusation is a confession.

Nowhere is that more true than in the discourse around fair elections and voting rights, both of which Republicans stand firmly against. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats attempted to pass a bill that would both protect voting rights and strengthen elections against blatant Republican sabotage. In response, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., lied and said that Democrats don't care about "securing citizens' rights," but just "about expanding politicians' power."

In a legal blow for Donald Trump, the Supreme Court has cleared the way for presidential records dating from his time in office to be turned over to a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

Trump, through his lawyers, had sought to shield over 800 pages of information from the panel, citing executive privilege, which allows for a president to withhold certain information from public release. But in a 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court on Jan. 19, 2022, rejected a request to block the documents from being handed to Congress.

And oh yeah – they also want to address the fact that in this country we have too few guns readily available to irresponsible, untrained and unvetted people. Their so-called “constitutional carry” provision ought to fix that problem quick as a bullet fired in a road-rage incident.

Honestly, though, it’s a neat trick, especially in an election year. Fake problems are infinitely more susceptible to fake solutions by fake leaders than are real problems, which tend to be complicated and bring the risk of potential failure to those who dare try to fix them.

Republicans have been committing election fraud right out in the open since 1964 and covering it up by yelling about “voter fraud.”

Remember the hours-long lines to vote we’ve seen on TV ever since the 60s in minority neighborhoods? Those are no accident: they’re part of a larger election fraud program the GOP has used to suppress the vote for sixty years now.

Power is the ability to get what you want, even in opposition to others. In our two-party system, the party in power can pass legislation the other party may oppose.

Democrats thought they were in power, but Biden’s inability to pass his Build Back Better legislation casts doubt on how much power Democrats actually have.

There has been a lot of garment rending and hand wringing the last few days over a new Gallup poll which shows that party identification amongst voters has shifted dramatically over the past few months from Democratic to Republican. Coming as it does at the one-year mark of the Biden administration, this does seem to portend doom for Democratic hopes for midterm election success in November. Party identification is one of the traditional predictors of future results, and this one doesn't look good. The shift in 2021 was the largest shift since 2006, as Gallup reported:

On average, Americans' political party preferences in 2021 looked similar to prior years, with slightly more U.S. adults identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic (46%) than identified as Republicans or leaned Republican (43%). However, the general stability for the full-year average obscures a dramatic shift over the course of 2021, from a nine-percentage-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter to a rare five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter.

It is a dramatic shift to be sure. But it's important to realize that at the beginning of last year there was another dramatic shift away from Republicans, likely because of the events surrounding the election and the deadly COVID surge of winter 2021. Reversion to a relatively common partisan split isn't surprising.

There’s a way of looking at reproductive rights that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. With these rights, women have control over their bodies, yes, but they have something more – standing in our society.

Access to abortion is more than “freedom to choose.” It means parity, in theory, with men. It means having the political equality of a full and free citizen. It’s the Declaration of Independence made manifest.

We’ve been warned for decades about the growing threat of white nationalism in the United States. Back in 2020, FBI director Christopher Wray acknowledged that white supremacy is the fastest growing domestic terror threat in the country, accounting for the large proportion of the FBI’s resources. Wray eventually described the J6 insurrection last year, as an act of domestic terror.

This reality is often drowned out by an avalanche of falsehoods perpetuated by the media, especially conservative media. The greatest threat to US security is posed by the existential enemy from outside, we are told. Islamic extremists, or criminals making their way across the border, are the greatest obstacles for national security.

Over the course of 2021, 19 U.S states passed 34 voter restrictions that are already impacting the electorate.

The County Judge overseeing the office in Harris County Texas tweeted Monday, for example, that she's been forced to deny seven times as many vote-by-mail applications after Texas passed their voter suppression laws.

Over the long weekend, Gallup released a poll that sent a shock wave through Democratic circles: There's been a 14 point swing in party preference from Democratic to Republican in the past year. While 49% of Americans leaned Democratic and 40% leaned Republican in January 2021, at the beginning of 2022, the parties have nearly reversed positions. Now 47% of Americans prefer Republicans while a mere 42% prefer Democrats.

From one angle, it makes sense. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be the dominant political issue, and President Joe Biden is getting blamed for it, even though the real cause is Republican pundits and politicians convincing their followers to be disease vectors in order to sabotage Biden's presidency. The ongoing failure of Democrats to pass any of Biden's political priorities can't be helping, either, especially as the result is a drumbeat of headlines about Biden failing.

Jim Jordan is a bad liar. The Ohio congressman can’t pull off deceit like the Dear Leader of the MAGA cult. The diminutive Jordan is wont to stammer, backtrack, draw a blank, deny, admit, or squirm like a trapped weasel. Not a good look for Ohio’s 4th U.S. Congressional District Republican who fancies himself a firebrand in shirt sleeves owning the libs. But the former wrestling champ who came to Congress to brawl — not improve lives through constructive legislating — may well lose a looming takedown by the truth.

Jordan is a small-town opportunist who got a taste of fame as the darling of the Tea Party movement and saw scorched earth theatrics as his ticket to the top. Constituents in his gerrymandered district could count on their representative to rail on cue for the television cameras — and nothing else. Jordan’s histrionics shifted into high gear when a voracious cable TV addict occupied the Oval Office. The Urbana Republican shrewdly tailored his tantrums for an audience of one.

Public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown that white racist attitudes, whether presented as "old-fashioned" racism or in less direct fashion as racial resentment and racial hostility, are strongly associated with support for Donald Trump and his Republican fascist movement. It is certainly true that feelings of economic insecurity, inequality and social alienation among the white working class are central to understanding the rise of American neofascism. But throughout American history, those forces have primarily manifested through white racism in its various forms.

As social theorist Stuart Hall described this dynamic: "Race is the modality in which class is lived."

Today we honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There are many obvious reasons to raise up his name in tribute and praise. But there’s another less obvious reason – the civil rights leader understood southern politics.

Much of our discourse treats southern politics as if it were just another regional bloc. Or the region and its history are whitewashed in ways similar to slavery being whitewashed from US history. I think King knew better. If you don’t understand southern politics, you don’t understand politics, period.