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Part One:
We talk to Daniel Block from the Washington Monthly about how some states are actively suppressing the votes of college students. For example, Texas grants voting rights if you show your gun license, but *not* if you show your college ID. Texas’s Republican leaders are working not only to suppress the votes of certain groups of people (whom they think are “lefties” and not likely to vote for Republican candidates) but are also making it difficult to expand the pool of people who register to vote in the state. The state poses restrictions even on the right of average people to go out and *register other people* to vote.
We also discuss Republican officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, who sent out flyers — in Spanish! — which gave voters the *incorrect date* for an election. Clearly targeted at Hispanic voters — the flyers were sent by a Republican party that usually does not try to provide assistance to Hispanic voters — these actions by county officials seem clearly to be intentional and motivated by an effort to suppress nonsupportive potential voters. And Maricopa County is not a petty aberration. This county is larger than the state of NJ, and home to a majority of the State of Arizona’s entire population!
Part Two:
We are again joined by “Dr. Politics,” Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science at Iowa State University. We compare the federal government’s willingness to bail out Wall Street (through TARP) during the Great Recession, with the claim now by government officials that our country can’t pay for any of the programs that would be necessary to help ordinary working Americans because “the money just isn’t there.” Why was the federal budget sufficient to support the 1% but can’t afford to assist the rest of us when our lives and livelihood are suffering?
It’s understandable that people are afraid to change. But *not to* change is also frightening. We have to move forward and take on the challenges that confront us. We have to address the climate crisis and other crises that we are facing on so many levels.
We look forward to the Democratic presidential debate in Houston tonight, reduced for the first time to one night, with the Dems’ top ten candidates on stage with each other. We expect the debate to be as much about messaging as it will be about the candidates’ ideas.
We recognize that the Democratic party is quite diverse. So some candidates’ ideas might appeal to some Dem voters while other candidates’ ideas might turn off the very same people. E.g., Biden might seem too cautious and weak to some Democrats while Warren and Sanders might seem too progressive and risky for other Democratic voters.
Even beyond the top 3 candidates (in the current polls anyway), the debate could be quite interesting. Beto O’Rourke has found his voice recently, in supporting the victims of gun violence, at the same time that this issue has taken on new significance. Gun violence seems to have risen to the top of the list that Democratic voters care about at a visceral level. This message is resonating, possibly because gun violence is what mainstream Democrats (& Republicans & independents) fear the most.
In this way, the issue of gun violence has gained, for Democrats, the same importance that the immigration “crisis” represents for Repupblican voters. Coincidentally, Beto has spoken as eloquently about immigration as he has about gun violence. And he is still beloved in Texas, the site of tonight’s debate.
Finally, we notice that, while the Trump administration has refused to address meaningfully any ways to reduce the scourge of gun violence in the US, they have quickly proposed possible solutions to the recent deaths of young people who vape. Apparently they know how to act quickly when they see what they deem to be an “emergency.” They just don’t seem to see gun violence as a serious enough crisis for our government to address.
