Political tactics the Democrats and their sane allies need.

The recent Republican blockage of the new Voting Rights Bill (along with infrastructure and every other need)... and the plausibly acceptable compromise offered by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin... has raised some very important thoughts some of you have seen here, before. But that now seem more redolent and relevant than ever.

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As I predicted in Polemical Judo, the Foxite-putinists who are ramming through new voter-suppression 'election reform laws' in many states are painting it as the responsible, accountable thing. 

"Why shouldn't voters prove who they are at the polling station?" And we know that at some level there is merit to that raw question. Alas, Democrats are responding in exactly the wrong ways, giving an impression nursed on Fox that "you just want ways to cheat!"

In fact there is a judo answer that demolishes their entire argument. And it is one that not a single democrat pol or pundit has voiced (to my knowledge).

It would devastate. And no one says it.

"You claim that Voter ID would make elections more secure? Fine! Then help poor folks, minorities, divorced women, the homeless and others smoothly and easily get their ID problems cleared up. Lack of clear ID is one of the problems helping to keep many of them poor! Even those born here."

It's called COMPLIANCE ASSISTANCE and hammer the hypocrisy here! Republicans always demand government helps pay big companies to cover costs of complying with new regulations. So remind voters of that largesse for the rich and make clear this big test of GOPper sincerity:

"Did you accompany these onerous new Voter ID rules with appropriations for major efforts to reach out to your state's poorest citizens and HELP THEM GET ID? Expanding DMV offices and hours? Sending door-to-door outreach workers? Actually NOTIFYING voters purged from rolls for missing an election? 

"If so, then maybe you are sincere about your motives."

In fact, all the GOP's aggressive political cheat-bills are accompanied with reductions in compliance aid! DMV office closures in minority communities. Disallowing motor-voter and so on. 

Yeah, you are shrugging now and saying "Sure, we already knew that, Brin." But I am telling you that it matters how it is parsed! This isn't just blaring hypocrisy that can be attacked as such.

 While it sounds dry and legalistic "compliance assistance" is also a powerful legal argument for court cases against these very bills. So powerful that it might corner John Roberts with the 14th Amendment.

Again, this is explained in detail here... And also in Polemical Judo.

Again, the "Manchin Compromise" is totally acceptable! And thus, McConnell and co. will fight it to the end, knowing that if people can vote, their mad-confederate cult will soon be toast. Just 3 provisions - auto-registration via DMV, 15 days early voting, and ending gerrymandering - would restore US democracy! And 'campaign money' is already less a factor in politics than it used to be, so give way on that one as a sop to "moderates."

But much depends on whether Joe B and Joe M are choreographing a way to end the filibuster (or conversion to the old talk-kind) when they can maximally make it it clearly McConnell's fault... 

...or if it's all just a lot of posturing hooey. I won't take bets either way. I've had my hopes for dem cleverness dashed before. But you are just as wrong to assume the negative.

I do know if Manchin added Compliance Assistance to the Voter ID thing, it would be harder to oppose. And there are ways to end gerrymandering too

== Political miscellany ==

First an announcement-reminder!  My general political essay in four parts - about  the insipid/lobotomizing left-right "axis"- how history betrayed competitive creativity, and what libertarianism might look like, if it ever grew up, is now safely reposted here.

Political Metaphors: Part 1

Political Metaphors: Part 2

Political Metaphors: Part 3

Political Metaphors: Part 4

Re: The Republican Party's open war against every fact-using profession: 

“One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.” 

      ― Hannah Arendt

Yay this!  According to The Washington Post: “Rep. Pressley makes case for postal banking to raise revenue and advance ‘economic justice’.” (You’ll have to scroll down past the deJoy nonsense.)  I lived in the UK and in France, where even the poorest citizens had simple accounts at the Post office, enabling them to save and build credit, customers who commercial banks not only have ignored but actively spurned and drove off, despite their promises in the 1960s, when ‘reforms’ ended postal banking in the US. 

As AOC has said, also championing this reform: This would not only help millions of the poor to uplift themselves, but would decisively be a money maker for the struggling USPS.  And yes. Restoring the US Post Office Bank was one of my 31 consensus goals that ALL democrats could agree on and that should be done together (with a few sane Republicans) ASAP. 

== Favoring the Rich for much too long ==

One, simple chart shows the difference in percent income change between the Trump 2017 "Supply Side IV" tax cut for the rich and the expected effects of the new covid relief bill, both of which cost the Treasury roughly the same. The article goes on to show not percentages but in DOLLARS and shows the uber rich did even spectacularly better under SS-IV.... while sending the economy and main street into hell. 

(Not one prediction ever made by "supply side theory" ever, ever came remotely close to coming true. Ever and bet me on it! Cash awaits.)

So how did Trump's tax cuts compare with the expected coronavirus relief bill? The change in after-tax incomes (including all provisions of the 2017 law) looks like this: 

== Again, can we try some 'judo' tactics, please? ==

I’ve long questioned why no one on the “Union side” of this phase of the American Civil War seems willing to try what would likely be devastating tactics against a treasonous-revived Confederacy and its foreign masters. 

It was the basis of my book: Polemical Judo. There are so many! 

But hot in the news is the flaming hypocrisy of Foxite yammerings about morality. Now there is infamous Putin-mouthpiece, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, apparently caught is spectacular webs of lies and hypocrisy and turpitude. Fox News host Tucker Carlson was angered after Congressman Matt Gaetz attempted to rope him into a scandal involving allegations related to sex trafficking of a minor. 

Every time something like this happens- say that another former 'great guy' 'betrays' Trump, or another gopper is caught molesting children, or committing felonies or yowling incoherently, the Foxite-Putinists spin that it's an individual/unfortunate case! And reliably, good-but-clunky democrats go 'duuuuh' and never, ever answer with statistical proof that stuff like this is actually typical of today's Republican Party. (And my offer of high stakes wagers on this still stands.) 

And so... Here is the 20th installment in a running list of – now 500+! - Republican sexual predators, abusers, and enablers who contribute to rape culture. These are people who abused their power or defended abuse of power, not folks caught in consensual scandals such as being gay, having an affair, or soliciting adult prostitutes.

Again, there are ways to hammer this and a myriad other chinks in the Putinists’ armor. And here's one that could happen tomorrow, at a pen stroke!

Biden's AG Merrick Garland should announce that the Justice Department will defend anyone who violates an NDA, if it results in criminal charges. 

Or else, some decent zillionaire could offer to pay NDA penalties, if revelations have that effect.

And yes, this would edge us toward the real thing America and the world needs. The one thing that would shatter the Oligarchist Cabal.  Biden must declare a Truth Commission that will recommend clemency to the first 20 (or 200) highly placed blackmail victims who step up and turn the tables on their blackmailers.

Some dems will get caught up. But the RATIO will be clear and will make 2022 a cake walk. Nothing short of all of that will even begin to clean up (or 'drain') that swampy town.

The right narrative to fight voter-suppression candidates

I sent the following suggestion to the campaign of Jean Schodorf, who is running to oust the “worst Republican in the world” - Kris Koback - from the office of Kansas Secretary of State. Schodorf is that rare creature, a genuine prairie conservative who would have been republican all her life, till she realized that the madness that has hijacked today’s GOP is not temporary and recently switched parties. 

Unlike the millions of sane but in-denial “ostrich republicans” who have buried their heads, moaning and hoping the craziness will just go away, Schodorf is taking it on, head-to-head. Zeroing in on Koback’s blatant and extreme efforts to suppress thousands of native born Kansans from exercising their right to vote.

Here is my suggestion… which any of you are free to pass along to your own favorite candidates-for-sanity.

 ————

Dear Jean Schodorf,

David Brin here - best-selling author and scientist - with a suggestion how to manage the voter-suppression issue in your electoral campaign.

Let’s start with the obvious: You will get almost nowhere just proclaiming that Voter Suppression laws are unfair.  That will be dismissed as "the whining of losers." Nor will it do any good to compare the exceedingly rare polling-place fraud with the outrageous vote theft called gerrymandering,  which can be brought to heel by other methods. 

No. There is a much better "judo" argument that will expose the Voter ID campaigns as hypocritical cheating... a much more powerful accusation.  Please carefully read my argument below, which is cribbed from one of my more well-known postings: Steering Our Outrage in Wrong Directions.

“In fact, as a moderate, I am not opposed to gradually increasing the demand that voters prove who they are! Even though at-precinct voting fraud is virtually nil, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with improving care and accountability. People who are against voter ID improvements in any form are probably dogmatic, too.

“But -- and here is a very big "but" -- if these laws weren't aimed solely at stealing elections for the GOP, then the states in question would have accompanied the new regulations with measures aimed at helping their citizens to comply with the new burdens.

“States routinely give "compliance assistance" to corporations, when new regulations apply to them. 

 "But apparently not one cent has been appropriated in any red state to help the poor, or young, or women, or minorities to get the required ID -- a move that would also help them in so many other aspects of life.  In some cases, simple access to ID might help them to STOP being poor.

“Please dig that well, because it is the alarm and utter proof of both cheating motives and lying hypocrisy. How much have red states allocated to help newly disenfranchised citizens to comply with onerous new state regulations?  Not… one… red… cent.*

“Hypocrisy is still punished by some voters. If this point -- about helping corporations with regulation compliance, while refusing to help one poor citizen to comply with new regulatory hurdles -- were hammered home, then maybe ten percent of the voters might be swayed, and that’s a lot.

“Hammer that this is what the once honorable and intellectual movement of Goldwater and Buckley is reduced to. Not winning elections based on the merits of their evidence or by comparing the outcomes from their party's past periods of rule. (Those comparisons go very badly for the GOP.) Rather, all efforts go to cheating and more cheating. And if you support this cheat, then no amount of arm-waving will let you escape the clear fact -- that you are a cheater, too.”

Yes, that is a very aggressive way to put it.  But this issue could be a killer for candidates opposing the swarm of vipers who have taken over the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan.

With cordial regards,

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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* Note, Wisconsin does provide compliance help to get ID and has proved that this is very cheap to do.  But Wisconsin is not "red". It is a battleground state and the compliance help has been engaged by blue elements of that state as part of the tussle among fanatical and moderate elements in this, phase eight of our re-ignited Civil War.