1. The spot on quote. "Treating the right to vote as a chip that can be won or lost during the game of ordinary politics is a bad idea. It signals that the majority of citizens are entirely free to change their mind about who counts, and who doesn’t, as a political equal.
2. And they're absolutely right. But, from a developmental standpoint, I'd argue that this is better than what we had, and--and this is important--we have to build the political capacity for a 15th amendment fight.
3. So, simplifying, we've got two broad tendencies. One that takes the post Civil War amendments as the backbone of the country. And then we've got the neo-confederacy that ride or dies off of the 2nd amendment.
4. For real for real there's broad unwillingness to make 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment battles the essence of our political struggle. The GOP isn't about that life (obviously)....
5. But--with exceptions--neither are the Democrats. The more voters big city mayors have to wrestle with, the less they're able to work with the FIRE (finance, real estate, insurance) sector. No sweet Amazon deals.
6. It seems to me that the ballot initiative--as fraught as it is--is one way to build the capacity required to force the state to take the 15th amendment seriously.
7. Now there's an Amendment 4 assumption in my @jacobinmag piece that is worth critiquing. I assume that those 1.4 mill are going to vote the right way. Only 400,000 can be broadly expected to do so. Also there are two populations of felons that the Amendment does NOT apply to.
8. With this said, however, I see Amendment 4 as being part of a suite of first steps. We don't end with the ballot initiative for the reasons @TomTheuns and @AndreiPoamaa note. But I think we start there.
