The Voting Rights Act and the Consequences of Our Actions

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A little over a year ago, to counter a vein of left criticism of President Obama during the election year, I wrote, of the 1968 presidential election,

Significantly, while Nixon won 86% of the registered Republican vote, Humphrey won only 74% of registered Democrats. Democratic division before and after the ’68 convention [primarily over the Vietnam War] caused many McCarthy, Kennedy, and McGovern supporters to withhold their votes from Humphrey.

Because of that 12 percentage point difference in support from registered party members, Nixon won the presidency, by 512,000 votes. Ironically, or not, Al Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election by just under 544,000 votes. If 12 percent of the Democratic electorate had not convinced itself that Hubert Humphrey was no better than Richard Nixon –  because he had been, of course,  a loyal vice-president to Lyndon Johnson, under whose leadership the Voting Rights Act was first passed – Nixon would not have been elected president.

Had Nixon not been elected president, William Rehnquist would not have been appointed to the Supreme Court.

Had William Rehnquist not still been sitting on the Supreme Court in 2000, he could not have been part of a 5-4 conservative justice majority that interfered with the Florida recount and effectively handed the presidency to George W. Bush.

If over 97,000 Floridians had not voted for Ralph Nader, rather than Al Gore – as 12 percent of the registered Democratic electorate had withheld its voted from Hubert Humphrey in 1968 – there would have been no Florida recount controversy and no consequent Supreme Court vote to deny the presidency to Al Gore and deliver it to George W. Bush.

Had Al Gore become president in 2000, and not George W. Bush, John Roberts and Samuel Alito would not have been appointed to the Supreme Court.

Were Roberts and Alito not on the court, there would be no likely 5-4 majority to overturn section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which, when last renewed by congress, in 2006, was passed by a vote of 99-0 in the Senate and 390-33 in the House.

Given the efforts of GOP legislatures in a variety of states during 2012 to suppress the minority vote through new voting provisions very much in the spirit of Jim Crow, not only should section 5 not be eliminated, but its reach should probably be extended.

Consequences.

AJA

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5 thoughts on “The Voting Rights Act and the Consequences of Our Actions

      1. Thanks, Marc.

        Puritopians can’t seem to grasp that human beings haven’t reached a stage in evolution where we’ve become all-enlightened beings. Their world view is limited to this age. It’s not like the world was lit on fire only 70 years ago. Not like it’s been on fires since the dawn of civilization. And someone waving a sign or writing even the most eloquent words isn’t going to stop that. Their proximity to evil is mostly limited to what they read on the internets.

        Paraphrasing Jay (who put it best): These people are far more committed to an ideological destination than any honest journey to it.

        We certainly need the dreamers to keep us moving forward as a species, but as a counterbalance, we need realists. Dreaming isn’t going to instantly stop those bent on malevolence. But decent political pragmatists can. Along with, unfortunately, drones, et al.

        Still, Puritopians can call me when tea-party kooks, insane religious zealots, and corporate polluters suddenly see the light. Think I’ll be waiting by my phone for a good long while.

  1. In 2000, I remember a guest on the show Democracy Now! (I cannot recall his name right now) claiming that the worries about the Supreme Court were nothing more than Democratic “scare tactics” and that, at the end of the day, the Supreme “didn’t matter” in the larger picture.

    I wonder if that guest has changed his mind in these past thirteen years, but I’m not holding my breath.

    To me, it seems that the “Puritopians” cannot see past the Presidency; they cannot see the entire workings of government–and in some cases, they refuse to. That blindness has cost us dearly, but they just don’t seem to notice (remember the “Re-create ’68” idea from a few years ago?).

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