{"id":2448,"date":"2014-11-12T19:14:56","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T00:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=2448"},"modified":"2016-10-06T18:05:27","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T23:05:27","slug":"elizabeth-drew-why-the-republicans-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/elizabeth-drew-why-the-republicans-won\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Drew: Why the Republicans Won"},"content":{"rendered":"

Powerful – and frightening – piece from Elizabeth Drew in the NYRB<\/a>. \u00a0She enumerates some problems we all knew about (turnout, poor messaging from our side, ruthlessness from the other side), but then\u00a0reminds us of issues that are less\u00a0likely to be going away with the return to a presidential-year electorate in 2016: voter suppression and the flood of anonymous, unaccountable money. \u00a0(I’ve added some emphasis<\/strong><\/span> since the quoted text is a little long. \u00a0And don’t blame Elizabeth Drew\u00a0or the NYRB for the images; I added those.)<\/p>\n

In all the breathlessness over the outcome of the 2014 midterms little attention was paid to the too-ample evidence that our democratic election system is working less and less as it should. I say this not because the Republicans were so successful\u2014this trend away from truly democratic elections became apparent well before<\/a> the 2012 presidential contest. The influence of big money is ever greater and more cloaked in mystery\u2014thus more insidiously effective\u2014and the nationwide Republican effort to block the votes of Democrats\u2019 supporters are increasingly numerous and stringent<\/strong><\/span>. Along with anecdotal evidence of voters being blocked at the polls, there are those 40,000 \u201cmissing\u201d registration forms in Georgia; and the estimated 600,000 would-be voters in Texas blocked by a highly restrictive new law that the Supreme Court allowed go ahead for this election. (Unhelpfully, three days after the election, a federal appeals court held<\/a>\u00a0that the new voter-ID laws that had been in effect during the vote\u2014requiring proof of one\u2019s citizenship, which disproportionately affects blacks, the elderly and students\u2014were unconstitutional.)<\/p>\n

\"voter_suppression\"<\/a>The respected Brennan Center for Justice has reported that new voting restrictions on the in twenty-one states held down participation<\/a> in the midterms<\/strong><\/span>\u2014the first election since the Supreme Court removed some of the protections of the Voting Rights Act (on the ground that they were no longer needed). The Brennan report says that in several crucial races\u2014in North Carolina, Florida, Kansas, and Virginia\u2014the margin of difference between the two candidates closely matched the estimated margin of disenfranchisement as a result of these laws<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Any victory that was even partially based on an intentional plan to block the right of an opponent\u2019s supporters to vote is dubious; our elections are increasingly becoming illegitimate.<\/strong><\/span> There appear to be constitutional grounds for nationalizing the standards for implementing the right to vote, but the new Republican-dominated Congress is unlikely to give up one of its most treasured devices for winning. Whether the Justice Department and the conservative-dominated Supreme Court will try to rectify this constitutional depredation is very much in question.<\/p>\n

The infamous Citizens United<\/em> decision in 2010 that, combined with subsequent rulings, permitted corporations to make donations to campaigns for the first time since Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s era, and allowed groups of wealthy individuals (and corporations) to pool their money in so-called Super PACs, changed things drastically, but in ways that were unexpected. It turned out that corporations weren\u2019t champing at the bit to make campaign donations, for fear that the disclosure of such expenditures would bring on attacks from opposing activist groups. So they found other ways to siphon large amounts of money into the political campaigns, with the donors\u2019 names kept secret. The reform group the Sunlight Foundation calls these funds \u201cdark money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"campaign-finance-reform-free-speech-1\"<\/a>A leading tenet of campaign finance reform has been that disclosure of who was making the donations would help reformers and journalists track who was buying influence from whom and for what.<\/span><\/strong> This was a wan second cousin to enforceable limits but as a result of those limits being stripped away (on questionable if not specious grounds), disclosure was all we were left with. Now even that protection against corruption is being eliminated.<\/strong><\/span> Super PACs such as the Koch brothers\u2019 Americans for Prosperity and Karl Rove\u2019s American Crossroads are turning to secret contributions. Thus we don\u2019t know who is contributing vast sums of money or even where the money is going.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This year\u2019s senatorial race in North Carolina provided the most spectacular example of the ever-increasing influence of dark money. It was the most expensive statewide race in the nation\u2019s history: $107 million was spent by the candidates and outside groups; and of that sum less than a third, or $28.9 million, was spent by the candidates. The ads by the outside groups contributed greatly to the negativity<\/strong><\/span> that characterized the North Carolina race (and elsewhere as well) and appears to have turned off so many voters<\/strong><\/span>: according to the Sunlight Foundation, $57 million was spent on negative messages as opposed to $18.3 million on positive ones.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the giant contributions but also the mere threat that one will be made that can influence a politician\u2019s behavior. Party leaders know that great gobs of cash can come in against the members of their caucus if they vote a certain way on a certain issue, and this affects decisions about the Congressional agenda. Certain bills might not be brought up for fear of the outside spending that might be unleashed against the members. However, this doesn\u2019t work equally across the board: if the minimum wage isn\u2019t raised, or the poor are deprived of adequate school lunches or housing subsidies, members of Congress can rest assured that no great amount of super PAC money will come in against them as a consequence.<\/p>\n

If people feel that the system is rigged and are upset about the growing gap between the very wealthy and everyone else, with the middle class getting nearly wiped out, if they feel that \u201cWashington is out of touch\u201d with their daily lives, they can look to the unbridled and increasingly secret campaign finance system for a large part of the explanation. With the Senate now to be led by the foremost congressional opponent of campaign finance reform, action to fix this completely broken system is more remote than ever.<\/strong><\/span> Notwithstanding all the nice talk on the part of the president and the Republican leaders in the days following the election, we\u2019re facing a long and nasty struggle among hard-bitten and cynical politicians with divergent needs, a wounded president desperate for a positive legacy, and the numerous figures positioning themselves for the next election.<\/p>\n

\"Voting-suppression-Block-the-vote\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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