Georgia Rhythm - A New Beginning

In the same way that Friday the 13th, Part V was a new beginning. Just when you think voter suppression, like Jason Voorhees, is dead, well, like Jason, it comes back.

The Republican-majority Georgia legislature passed - and the illegitimate Governor Brian Kemp signed - a new law tightening the screws on restricting he vote in the state. The law now mandates, among other things, voter ID for absentee ballots, a limit on the number of mail-in drop boxes, and the right of the state to take over a local elections board where fraud is "suspected."   It also bans giving food and drink to people waiting in line to vote on the grounds that it constitutes electoral bribery.

President Biden has vowed to do everything he can to fight voter suppression in Georgia and elsewhere - 42 other states, including my home state of New Jersey, have some form of voter restriction legislation pending in their legislatures - which is a way of saying he can do very little.  The President of the United States cannot unilaterally overrule a state's election laws (though Trump tried), and the voter-right law in Congress can't pass without eliminating the filibuster in the Senate, something Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia isn't prepared to support.  I have also heard - I don't know how true this is - that Senate Democrats have suggested excepting any legislation related to voting rights from the filibuster rule, but Manchin reportedly doesn't even want to make that exception.

Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA), who was elected in a runoff for a special election to complete an unexpired Senate term, has made getting this legislation through and to President Biden's desk for his signature a priority, and he plans to persuade Republicans who are on record as having supported renewals of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  If Warnock, above, can do that, he should consider selling ice cubes to Eskimos.  Because Republican senators are no longer in Congress to vote in favor of the interests of the general public.  They're there to satisfy the far-right GOP base.  And the base wants stricter voting requirements to stop Democrats from stealing elections (which Democrats do by voting legally). 

Senator Warnock is noncommittal on the issue of boycotts of Georgia-based businesses and calls to move events scheduled for Atlanta, or Augusta (like the Masters), elsewhere, preferring instead to focus on what he can do about voting rights in Washington.  I say, he's fated to lose his fight and also lose his bid for a full six-year Senate term in 2022, thanks to the new law - and will have be content with just continuing to pastor Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta come 2023.  The odds are simply against him.  But then, what do I know?  Three months ago this time, I didn't think he'd even get elected to the Senate in the runoff.