The VRA Is DOA

Let's play make-believe.  Pretend you're a professional music critic.  You've written a column saying that rap. a predominantly black pop form, is not music.  A civil rights lawyer sues to have you fired from the music magazine you work for, citing a racist subtext in your column and implying that you are a bigot.  But you've also written numerous reviews heaping all sorts of acclaim and praise on numerous black musical artists, none of whom are rappers.  The judge throws out the civil rights lawyer's suit, saying that he can't prove racial bias on your part.  Now, here's the clincher - you in fact are a bigot.  You love black music, but you would never seek black friends, live next door to a black family,  or let your son marry a black woman, not even Iman.  You are a total racist, but no one can prove it because you're very good of keeping your bigotry to yourself.

Well, apply that same idea to the standard the Supreme Court in limiting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the point where it's just a meaningless piece of paper enshrined in the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, and you understand why it's so odious and viciously cruel.  The Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais this past week that a plaintiff charging the the voting rights of a minority group have been violated because minority voters have been gerrymandered across districts that make it impossible to elect one of their own to the state legislature or the U.S. House of Representatives has to show direct evidence that the gerrymandering was racially motivated.  The plaintiff can't do that.  The gerrymandering can always be explained away as being a need for bipartisan balance or some rubbish like that.  But the truth is that Republicans gerrymander districts to ensure that as many Democratic voters are spread out over as many districts as possible to keep a Republican legislative or U.S. House majority in a state; and in the Deep South, most Republican voters are white and most Democratic voters are black.  

And there are several Republican-dominated states elsewhere, like in the Rust Belt, where Democratic-leaning minority voters are confined to a handful of urban and inner suburban districts while Republican-leaning white voters dominate the more numerous districts elsewhere.  Black people can still vote - poll taxes and literacy tests have pretty much gone the way of the Studebaker -  but whom they vote for, usually a black candidate, is a lot less likely to win.  This is even assuming they can remain on the registration books, as many jurisdictions that no longer need preclearance to secure minority voting under the Voting Rights Act have purged black voters with impunity. 

In that spirit, Louisiana, the victor in the Supreme Court case, canceled primaries for its U.S. House elections pending a redistricting that will likely eliminate one of its two black-majority districts.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts (above) is no stranger to the conservative desire to eliminate the Voting Rights Act.  He has been working to eliminate it since 1980, the year Reagan was elected President and a 25-year-old Roberts was clerking for the then most conservative justice on the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, whom Roberts succeeded as Chief Justice.  Roberts and other conservatives have been playing the long game to push a conservative agenda for decades, and their long hard work has pretty much paid off.  The only people who get screwed are the innocent.  Because if black people get thrown off the voter rolls, can vote but may not vote knowing they their votes could get canceled out, or are denied representation or political power, there's no one in Congress or the legislature to represent their own interests - some which likely overlap with those of white voters.

Democratic states are likely going to redistrict their own House seats to counteract Republican states gerrymandering their minority, Democratic-leaning districts out of existence to cancel any advantage Republican states get from their own shenanigans, and New Jersey is looking at doing so.  Governor Sherrill has suggested that two of the three GOP districts in the state could be gerrymandered out of being.  But New Jersey and several states may not get to do so until 2028 or 2030, and the census in 2030 might move even more House seats to Republican-leaning states in the Sun Belt (a trend that has been unstoppable for seventy years).  If Democrats can compete more effectively in these Sun Belt states - states Democrats gave up on years ago - they might be able to stanch the bleeding, and they might be able to elect a more progressive Democratic President and Congress in 2032 - without a Voting Rights Act, and largely on the strength of white voters - and accordingly restore the Voting Rights Act while dealing with other right-wing decisions handed down by the Roberts Court.

Like Citizens United. 

If we have to, we can elect a progressive Congress and administration without guaranteed voting rights for all citizens no later than 2032.  After all, Americans managed to do that in 1932.

And by the way, if anyone is wondering . . . no , I don't like rap, of course, but no, I'm not racist.  I think I've proven that many times on this blog.  And come on, if I were racist, do you think I would have written such a long post bitching about the gutting of the Voting Rights Act??