Posted on 01/14/2022 5:05:19 AM PST by Kaslin
How do you explain why an ultra-experienced politician makes a major speech on the behalf of a legislative goal that is both doomed to fail and unpopular with voters? Especially when his speech is boycotted by the bill's chief backers and consists of one big lie after another?
resident Joe Biden's speech in Atlanta on Tuesday raised these questions, although most of the media are unlikely to ask them.
The speech purported to rally support for the Democrats' legislation to impose federal standards on voting in all 50 states -- legislation that has no chance of passing. It doesn't even seem to have the support of all 50 Senate Democrats, but if it does, it is sure to be the subject of a Republican filibuster.
Biden's calls for Democrats to abolish filibusters for voting laws are opposed by Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and possibly several others.
At the same time, organizations advocating Biden's changes pointedly boycotted his Atlanta event. So did Stacey Abrams, the Georgia legislator who claimed, two years before then-President Donald Trump made similar claims, that she had actually won the 2018 Georgia governor's race, which she lost by 54,000 votes.
Abrams, who is running again this year, said she had a scheduling conflict. Obviously, this was a "shocking snub," as one critic put it, of Biden and also of Vice President Kamala Harris, who accompanied him. But it was not as shocking as the big lies in Biden's speech.
Start with the title of his "Freedom to Vote Act," which implies that Americans are not already free to vote. Go on to his peroration: "Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?"
The implication is that anyone who favors requiring photo ID for voters, as 35 states do, is on the same side as those who proclaimed "segregation forever" or rebelled against the Union to preserve slavery.
This also passes over the embarrassing fact that George Wallace, Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis were all partisan Democrats. Connor, in fact, was Alabama's Democratic National Committeeman at the time he directed police dogs and fire hoses at peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham in 1963.
Biden campaigned as a practitioner of comity who would bring people back together. Instead, he now accuses those repealing the election rules that were passed in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic of being supporters of slavery and segregation, "Jim Crow 2.0" and "voter suppression."
Actually, none of the state legislatures he is accusing of these sins have proposed any changes to make voting harder than it was in 2019. The idea that these laws suppress "democracy" or "freedom" raises the question of why the former Sen. and Vice President Biden didn't do more to change them before 2019.
Biden's stand is also out of line with public opinion. A recent Echelon Insights poll showed that 47% of voters favor returning to pre-pandemic voting procedures versus 41% who favor making the pandemic changes permanent.
Those numbers are similar to the current partisan balance and reflect different ways of balancing the worthy goals of assuring access and preventing fraud.
They also reflect differing partisan interests. For most of the 79 years of Biden's life, most marginal voters have been downscale, transient and more Democratic than Republican. The rule of thumb was that high turnout helped Democrats.
That's no longer clear, as Trump accelerated the preexisting trends of upscale voters toward Democrats and downscale voters toward Republicans.
If anyone has been suppressing votes, they haven't done a good job at it. The 21st century, with its increasing partisan conflict, has seen rising voter turnout, from 105 million in 2000 to 158 million in 2020.
Turnout has only decreased, compared to four years prior, in the two most recent years when Democratic presidents have run for reelection: 1996 and 2012. It has risen most rapidly when Republican presidents have run for reelection: by 16% in 2004 and again in 2020.
Republican turnout increases of 11 million reelected George W. Bush in 2004 and came within just 42,000 votes of reelecting Trump. In the latter case, they also unexpectedly produced Republican gains in congressional and state legislative seats.
So the Democrats' election bill, besides lacking the votes to pass, may not be in their own partisan interest. This makes the big lies in Biden's Atlanta speech all the more inexcusable.
Because, this iligitimate liar is a Dictator destroying his enemies and America.
Joe is a compulsive liar. That means that he can’t control it.
FJB, FHUH
“The 21st century, with its increasing partisan conflict, has seen rising voter turnout...”
At times exceeding 100%.
Anything to distract from his disastrous track record.
Piglosi’s desperation is showing. Her vote fraud bill treats voters of all persuasions as if they just fell off a turnip truck.
Piglosi’s misnomered “Freedom to Vote Act,” includes tax dollars to finance a permanent Dem majority, a 6-1 matching funds giveaway,“ ONLY FOR candidates meeting specified fundraising criteria.”
AND WE ALL KNOW ONLY PURE-HEARTED DEMOCRATS QUALIFY.....SNX
Democrats are terrified of even the barest of security measures.......even requiring a simple photo ID scares the beejesus out of ‘em.
So if Dems think the “right to vote” is so sacrosanct that they gladly destroy the norms and rules of the Senate, you’d think a minimum effort to protect voting integrity would be the least a Dem would support.
Unless they planned to cheat….........
The entire party is desperate, I'm concerned what they might do.
But only by the rats.
I’ve always considered Barone to be one of the few swamp dwelling journalists who has a working brain. He occasionally has given a glimmering of conservative thinking, but usually is so completely focused on appearing unbiased that he does a good job of covering it up. In fact, I would give myself odds of about 52 to 48 that I’m right about his conservatism.
The fact that Barone is so vocal about Biden in this article says to me that Biden is beginning to be discarded by the Swamp Press. He is basically so bad that nothing more can be done to cover up his many flaws. The dilemma now starts, what can be done about it? There are few options, and all of them are bad.
Yes, indeed.
A majority of people no longer regard the Leftist dominated media as being trustworthy.
Most people see them as partisan hacks.
The major power on the Left has been to control the narrative, decide what is a scandal and what is not, who is acceptable to run for office and who is not, and what topics are worth talking about.
All of that is crumbling. The left has to lie all the time; they have to lie to themselves all the time to believe they are on the "correct" side of history. Lies about a doomed planet; lies about disease and death; lies about voting and discrimination.
All they have is lies and deception.
It isn't working for them as it used to.
Its in their interest if they intend to cheat.
I thought Barone was generally considered a conservative? He does come across as scrupulously objective though, and willing to consider all sides of a story. And he definitely dwells in the swamp. So I can see some merit in the “if you’ve lost Barone, you’ve lost the war” argument.
If the Democrats truly believed that they won the election fair and square, they would welcome a bipartisan commission to examine the election. Instead they just attack anyone who questions the outcome.
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