HOLIDAY POWER GRAB
https://claytoonz.com/2019/02/01/holiday-power-grab/
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has no shame. The man isn’t afraid of exhibiting blatant hypocrisy. He’s not ashamed of stealing power. He’s not ashamed of preventing bills from being voted on. He’s not ashamed of changing the rules to put the least acceptable people on the Supreme Court. He’s not ashamed of stealing a Supreme Court seat. Most of all, he’s not ashamed of being the leader of the United States Senate while doing all he can to suppress the people’s choice that puts the leader in place. This is why people yell at him in restaurants. Plus, he looks like a tortoise and those things shouldn’t be allowed in restaurants.
This week, he accused Democrats of a “power grab” when they presented a bill to make Election Day a paid federal holiday.
Voting on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November is a United States tradition. It’s also a relic of a bygone era, like the Electoral College. You would have thought we’d have gotten rid of one of those things when we got rid of slavery. Most developed nations hold elections on weekends or have made them national holidays. Most developed nations encourage as many eligible voters to vote as possible. Republicans hate that. Republicans prefer lower turnouts on Election Day. Most Republicans are still in a plantation-state-of-mind.
McConnell is right. It is a “power grab.” But, Election Day is supposed to be a power grab by the people. Our leaders should be elected by the majority vote, not by acreage which is what the Electoral College does. It’s also how we’re represented in the Senate which is why Republicans control it.
McConnell is not opposed to all “power grabs.” He’s not opposed to gerrymandering. He’s not opposed to voters being purged, like what happened in Georgia for the last election. he’s not opposed to wanky new rules preventing Native Americans from voting, like what happened in North Dakota in the last election. He’s not opposed to towns like Dodge City, Kansas moving their voting precinct outside the city limits. He’s not opposed to African-American students at Prairie View A&M being given the wrong information on where to vote. He’s not even opposed to Russian meddling to help elect a Republican president. He’s not opposed to that Republican candidate colluding with the Russians.
McConnell and Republicans fear a large turnout on Election Day because more Americans vote Democratic, that is, when they bother to vote. According to a 2014 Pew Survey, 51 percent of non-voters lean toward Democrats.
Since 2000, Democrats have only won the House when they won a majority of the vote nationwide. In 2018, they won over 53 percent of the House vote. In 2012, Republicans got fewer votes for the House than Democrats, but they still retained the chamber. When Republicans made massive gains in 1994 and 2010, they got more seats than Democrats did in 2018, though with a smaller percentage of the vote.
Republicans actually gained seats in the Senate while losing the vote to Democrats by over 12 million. They even control the White House despite receiving fewer votes than the Democratic candidate thanks to the Electoral College and Vladimir Putin.
Republicans fear an equal playing field. I’ve actually heard Republicans argue that they should receive more representation since more people vote Democratic. They love to display maps showing how Red the country is, ignoring that the majority of that red space is lowly-populated areas, like Kansas and Nebraska. Republicans think grass should have more representation than black people.
When every citizen of this nation has an equal vote, Republicans will lose. The majority of this nation are tired of Republicans and their bullshit. They’re tired of a party that only cares about white, male, Christian, and rich greedy bastards. They’re tired of a party that has more deference to Russia than to patriotism.
Most of all, they’re afraid of what they screamed about during the Obama era, people taking their country back.
McConnell and Republicans should be making voting easier, not harder. But they won’t do that because their ideas can’t compete with those of Democrats. We won’t have a nation for the people by the people until we get rid of the old guys who favor representation by corporations and lobbies that don’t care if your toddler gets shot at preschool.
Democracy could be a beautiful thing, if we ever try it. So would kicking Mitch McConnell to the curb, which would be much more beneficial than screaming at him in a restaurant.
