They want to lose. It’s the only explanation.
They would absolutely rather lose than see single payer healthcare, real tax reform and real climate change legislation.
All you have to do is look at how Nancy Pelosi allocates time and resources.
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I mean they’d like to get the voting bill through just not at the cost of having to do other things or even being questioned as to why they’re not doing other things.
There was a point in time where Manchin may have actually been willing to make “reforms” to the filibuster that would have allowed some progress. Tough to say whether that was real, but it was a long time ago and it’s possible that his incentives changed. Biden waited a very long time to make voting rights a priority.
What was your prior probability of expansion of voting helping Republicans overall, and how did the Virginia gubernatorial election affect it?
My prior would be something like, 10% chance that voting rights expansion helps Republicans overall. This is based on all of the arguments against this being the case making intuitive sense combined with lots of really wealthy and powerful people betting a lot of money that it is not the case. I’m sure there are some studies out there about where the ‘marginal voter’ falls politically, but haven’t look into it much. The 10% basically just represents a floor where there are some level of “unknown unknowns” that no one currently understands or considers.
The outcome of the VA election might shift my prior from 10% to 10.2%.
You obviously have a much different prior, or you are putting a TON of weight into a single off cycle election.
If it is the latter, you may have a much different model of how elections work than me. The type of voter suppression happening today is all about working at the margins. You turn a half point loss into a tiny victory because you manage to drop turnout by 2% and you are underwater 63%-37% on the marginal voter. These impacts are swamped by the overall partisan sentiment which swings around by several points in every election.
2020 election is another datapoint. Turnout through the roof and Biden squeaks out an EC win and Ds underperform downballot. If Trump just encourages people to vote by mail too, maybe he wins.
No reason to think that the marginal voter is heavily D. In the new era where Rs are dominating rural white America, could be the friend of a Trump fan who is like I don’t want to go to the polls to vote for Trump but sure I’ll mail one in.
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What is your prior that voter suppression laws in Georgia, Texas, etc will help Democrats ?
Obviously when you expand voting access AND Rs stupidly make it socially unacceptable for their voters use the expanded access, it’s amazing for Ds. But once it normalizes, maybe a wash or worse.
Ok so overall your belief is that the laws that restrict voting that were passed post-2020 are basically a wash in terms of which party they help?
For reference these laws tended to do things like:
- Shorten windows for applying and returning mail-in ballots
- Restrict when mail-in voting can be used
- Eliminate online registration or automatic mailing of mail-in ballot applications
- Restrict who and how someone can assist the returning of a ballot
- Restrict the use of ballot drop boxes
- More restrictive ID requirements for voting
- Make voter registration more difficult
- Reduce number of voting precincts
- Reduce number of days of early voting and/or hours of voting
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My lord the midterm wafflecrushing is going to be so extreme.
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Nothing will change because of the presidential veto and the filibuster hilariously. Identical outcome whichever way it goes.
Things will change when the system collapses under its own weight and not before. There’s no mechanical way to get to change from where we are now.
Think those states will move in line with other states. Texas is a good example of turnout being through the roof in 2020 without helping Ds.
Why are Rs doing this then? a) Trump propaganda purposes b) the R donor class being like cool, we don’t like the lower propensity voters on either side.
Republicans are like absolutely amazing at chutzpah. They can start enacting things that the documentation from their own advisors say are targeted towards African Americans and then can turn around and say, “yea but they’re not very effective” and then continue to target African Americans. It really is attempted murder isn’t murder so can’t be charged until a murder is committed attitude.
Ok so you believe (in reality) the Democratic party’s opposition to voting restrictions is more ethical/idealistic than it is utilitarian.
I think the only one that matters on the margins is restricting voting precincts and making those cuts primarily/exclusively in minority neighborhoods.
I think there’s not a lot of turn over with the Rep apparatchiks so it takes a lot time for a new paradigm to set in.
Lots of reasons they could be doing it.
#1 - they just think it’s the right thing to do. Especially since they had every reason to believe that when expanded access helped Ds more.
#2 - not updating their priors that they are the party of the working class and as a result easier access to the vote would always help them. But the non-college educated whites now hates your guts and there are a LOT of them, especially concentrated in swing states.
#3 - campaign purposes. They are stealing your right to vote and filibustering our attempts to fix it
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Kinda ironic VA did about everything people here would want them to do when dems were in control and VA responded by voting them all out.
what did VA do?