Too many Americans tend to see voting rights and any and all other issues as somehow bifurcated. Maybe it's because if they vote regularly, or perceive voter nullification as a problem that minorities only the problem is invisible, and voter nullification doesn't effect them.
They couldn't be more wrong. The only reason anything ever happens in this nation is at its roots connected to and facilitated by voting. If every vote doesn't count, then essentially none do. The people then don't decide anything, the vote counters do. And they are republicans.
The goal is to not count any non-republican votes. That renders your race, ethnicity, wealth, social status, professional position, associations, community involvement, beliefs, voting history, zip code and everything that gives you agency as a citizen moot.
That's not democracy. As long as all Americans don't look at voting as necessary and inextricably connected to every element of life in America, we will lose our democracy and way of in while deceiving ourselves and pretending that America is something that it's not.
I don't like how @Lawrence framed the comparison between voting rights and saving our children with gun laws in his interview with @ChrisMurphyCT. That's because he's wrong. It's not an either/or proposition.
Of course our children must be protected, but we have NO CHANCE of doing that without protecting voting. If anything, voting rights should be elevated because we CAN'T get appropriate legislation for guns to protect our kids.
And as poignant as the issue is today on the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, gun safety and voting have been critical issues in black communities for decades with little interest or fanfare.
McQonnell and Paul could care less about other states, even red states, when they are in physical crisis and mortal danger. Those dangers will increase in frequency and severity due to global warming that they ignore because they're beholden to their donors and special interests.
They could also care less about voting rights which is under existential threat that they are facilitating. And because of their crooked and corrupt politics, they pretend that the issues of voting and disaster relief are discrete and unrelated.
That's false.
They desperately want expedited treatment because disaster struck KY, and the calamity and commensurate suffering are immense. However, it should be clear that the only reason they're desperate for funding now is to secure the votes of the people of KY.
For as much as I like @NicolleDWallace, she is wrong about McCain concerning Putin. For as much as he may have condemned Putin, in 2014, McCain essentially called Obama weak in the international press. nytimes.com/2014/03/15/opi…
There's no benefit in coloring his history especially now that democracy is under threat. McCain's issues we're political disagreement concerning operations in Syria, but the ramifications of his words we're far deeper and irresponsible. He undermined Obama on the world stage.
Immediately after that, numerous high ranking individuals in the GOP began to praise Putin. That's all Putin needed. The door was thus open and the republicans had invited him in to intervene in U.S. politics. That's why domestic politics should always end at the water's edge.
What's the point of institutions if they don't save and protect their own system?
I believe most rational people would agree that there are three things at stake:
1. governing and meeting the people's needs particularly in times of crisis, 2. justice and accountability, and
3. saving democracy.
Does that sound about right?
There is tremendous obstruction, sabotage, and outright maliciousness from an entire dysfunctional political party, along with some self-loathing, self-destruction from some egomaniacs within the governing party itself.
It's deliberately intended to make governance impossible while extracting benefits for personal agendas. But at least a competent administration is in place to fight the battle to govern. They're trying to meet the needs of the people the previous administration sorely neglected.
That's a completely different conversation and misses the point. It may be true for births; I'm not talking about birth. I am specifically talking about in utero - before the child is born.
Right now, pregnant women get deported. Yet, Republicans are trying to have it both ways by trying to claim equal protection rights for fetuses and trying to deny expectant mothers abortions while in custody to force them to eventually give birth...
...and while still deporting those expectant mothers. But if equal rights under the 14th amendment really apply as they say, then based on republicans' own logic, fetuses have ALL rights not just some when it's convenient, including citizenship BEFORE THEY'RE BORN.
If a woman gets pregnant and is forced to carry to full term with lost work time, potential sickness, high pregnancy risks, bills and expenses, possible disruptions to already existing family life, and an infinite list of other factors...
...there's no way that's comparable to putting a child up for adoption. Even the suggestion that that it's an alternative for women in crisis is so flip and dismissive that it reduces the status of women from sentient beings with agency to the rough equivalent of breeding cattle.
And even the issue adoption can be traumatic and life-changing too, as it is personal a matter for a woman to decide for herself as getting an abortion in the first place. It is ultimate hubris for anyone else to decide that they can make that choice.