Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Crawford
v. Marion County Election Board that states, in particular Indiana, can require
voters to produce photo identification. Very little about the case is what it
appears to be. In short, the whole issue and what passes for coverage of it is total
bullshit, but it is illustrative as a microcosm of the charades of what passes
for party politics in US
electoral process.
The Republican Party position claiming a
need for Voter IDs is baseless – and base. In short, there is no “Voter Fraud”
problem. Visitors to this site understand that America has a big-time Election
Fraud problem, but the Bush regime has spent a king’s ransom looking for
so-called “vote fraud,” and come up with precisely ZERO – nada, zilch – cases.
Remember Gonzales’ US Prosecutors scandal? That was about firing US Attorneys
who didn’t want to waste their time and public resources on phantom non-crimes.
“Voter fraud” is a faux scandal manufactured by a fraudulent “public interest
group,” the American Center for Voting Rights, which disappeared
once the charade could no longer be maintained. The entire empirical foundation
for this Indiana
legislation has been repudiated in the most thorough way conceivable.
The Democratic Party position as a litigant
against the new Indiana
law because it will disenfranchise the poor and minorities is disingenuous.
First, and most fundamental, the right to cast a ballot means little if there
is no corresponding assurance that the vote is counted as cast. Any Democratic
involvement in legislation of this kind is disingenuous given their
lack of commitment to votes being counted as cast, or even to ensuring that
voters can register and vote when it matters! Worse, given that Indiana provides IDs
free of charge to people without driver's licenses and also allows voters who
lack photo IDs to cast a provisional ballot and then show up within 10 days at
their county courthouse to produce identification or otherwise attest to their
identity, the Dems give fodder to their enemies where they are most vulnerable.
The naïve onlooker is left to wonder if maybe the intent of the Dems perhaps is
voter fraud. At very least, it feeds into their caricature among the middle
class as knee-jerk, addle-headed demagogic panderers to the poor.
So, what’s going on? First, why the
legislation in the first place if there is no such thing as Voter Fraud. Well, Rovian
Republicans achieve three important ends with this effort:
First, to the degree they fool people into
believing there’s a problem, they motivate their base. A new Daley-style
Democratic machine manufacturing votes? Heavens me, what a problem! If, in
fact, Richard Daley (the father) got more than his share of graveyard votes,
it’s nothing compared to the way the Republicans have milked this myth of a
machine itself dead for at least three decades. The Democrats' position that it
hurts the poor despite the availability of free IDs and no plaintiffs to
support their contention leads the middle class to believe that the intent of
the Dems perhaps really is voter fraud or addle-headed positioning with
the poor, either of which is leads them not only to desert the Dems, but
despise them!
Even those not fooled about voter fraud
per se, i.e. those who take the trouble to read or think a bit, are likely
confused about – and led to dismiss – the truly serious matter of election
fraud. So even when “voter fraud” faux scandals unravel, it’s also to the good.
Rather than shining on a light on the scandalous condition of election
administration in this country and actual stolen elections, vote-fraud fraud becomes
inter-mixed in the public mind with election fraud, and genuine election
integrity advocates become linked in the public mind with American Center for Voting Rights types as lunatics and
unscrupulous partisans.
Finally, they create a ruse for explaining
how yet another reptilian Republican manages to “win” an election despite the
murderous wars, scandal, mismanagement, hypocrisy, unprecedented thievery, and
utter disregard for decency, truth, and the future of the planet. The claim in
the “liberal media” is that despite taking positions that are anathema to 60%
or more of the electorate, Rove wins because he has, yet again, outmaneuvered
the Democrats, i.e., he stole it fair and square. Unsavory perhaps, but
insufficient to lead to insurrection. Rather, it allows an endless diversion of
efforts into ensuring access to vote. A diversion because, in the end, access
doesn’t matter if the votes aren’t even counted.
And what about the Democrats, and their (weak) prosecution
of voting rights through Indiana Voter ID opposition?
Opposing ID requirements allows the Dems to portray
themselves as the party of the poor and civil rights, while concretely doing
little to benefit these constituencies – the difficult dual mission of the
party.
Although the Democratic Party and aligned “election reform”
groups aggressively solicit donations to fight disenfranchisement, they shirk
and slink when asked to act on behalf of those actually disenfranchised. Not
only have they legitimized and whitewashed stolen elections of 2000, 2002,
2004, and 2006; not only have they supported HAVA and electronic voting and
resisted meaningful election reform. But even when confronted with evidence of
82,000 fraudulently “scrubbed” Florida voters in the 2000 general election,
voters whose ballots would have easily erased Bush’s supposed 527 vote victory,
the Democratic Party leadership kept the news silent. [1] Gore asked Jesse Jackson
to disperse his protesters, even as the Republican “Brooks Brothers” mob
stopped the recount in Miami.
When confronted with solid evidence of a stolen 2004 general election when Ohio votes and voters
were manipulated every way possible, party chieftains uniformly pressed Kerry
to likewise capitulate.
All this is impossible to understand without grasping that the
Democratic Party’s primary place in the American system is to serve as regime
enablers: allow those to wield power behind the scenes and more-or-less directly
through the Republican Party to proceed with little resistance to pursue core
military and industrial interests such as starting a foreign war for oil, establishing
“free trade” abroad while abolishing anti-trust regulations at home, allowing
unfettered inter-generational and cross-national transfer of wealth, creating a
“war on terror” that has eliminated habeas corpus and other fundamental rights,
and, closest to the experience of us in this group, consolidating media control
and securing control of the machinery of elections.
The competition provided by the Democratic Party is
sometimes real, but always limited. Much the same as Ford competes with General
Motors, Kelloggs and General Mills, or Intel-AMD, competition is sharply
delimited. They’ll compete on the size of the tail fins, or the prizes they put
in the boxes, but not on price or quality because both parties are funded by
the same sources. In some ways it’s even worse than that. Sometimes, it’s worse
than that: and often openly employed by
Republicans (e.g., the Florida
Democratic Party State Chair is employed by the ex-Republican Party State Chair
[2]). Republicans advance their careers by winning; Democratic elites advance
their careers by “playing ball.” For example, Bill Daley, the Gore 2000
campaign manager who repeatedly urged surrender in the post-election contest,
was subsequently invited to replace Dick Cheney on the board of EDS, the Texas based computer
services firm on whose board Baker also served. Jeffrey Toobin reported that
Baker “would laugh mischievously about what a good idea it was to ask Gore’s
campaign chairman Bill Daley to take Cheney’s place. [3]
The real vigor of the Democratic Party leadership goes not
into beating Republicans, but into crushing other organized opposition to the
system. They are commonly perceived as ineffectual, losers, and worse. But they
have been remarkably successful at diverting the energies of those who
otherwise might actually effectively fight the system. Even among those of us
who recognize Democratic Party duplicity and the utter corruption of current electoral
processes, most continue to seek change through Democratic Party-led legislation
and Democratic Party electoral gains.
The Indiana
case is one more in which the Dems win by losing. It’s tough to keep support
when you keep losing. But regardless of whether or not the legal defeat really
helps them lose upcoming elections; it certainly provides a ruse for upcoming losses; it helps them maintain control of their own
electorate and thereby help “centrist” candidates win Democratic Party
primaries. (Wonder why the current Democratic-controlled congress is almost
indistinguishable from the preceding Republican ones? The new Democrats are
literally Republicans. [4, 5]) And they now have a cause which can be used to
support their charade as the party of inclusion. By successfully claiming the
mantel of the indigent, the Dems keeps a true opposition party from springing
into existence. And then they help to systematically crush that hope, until
there is no fight left.
The ruling means the ID requirement will be in effect for
next week’s presidential primary in Indiana,
where a significant number of new voters are expected to turn out for the
Democratic contest between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. And
so we have a convenient ruse as to why Clinton
will win despite Obama’s clearly greater popularity, and why the Democratic
Party internal fight goes on.
[1] Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (New York: Plume, 2004).
[2] Jeffrey Toobin, Too close to call: the thirty-six-day battle
to decide the 2000 election (New
York: Random House, 2001)
[3] Michael Collins, “John Russell Interviews Florida Democratic Party Chair Karen Thurman.”
Thursday, 19 July 2007 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0707/S00271.htm
[4] Steve Freeman, “Who
really won the 2006 US Congressional Elections / Who the DCCC fought for and
against.” September 7, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/4cpqen
[5] Matt Renner, “Democratic House
Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives.” t r u t h o u t. September 6, 2007 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090607J.shtml
