The confluence of justice, nostalgia and obstruction

I dislike political cartoon sites that are set up to present "differing opinions," because they often -- too often -- have to dip pretty deep into the barrel to come up with a counterpoint, which then gets equal billing regardless of its actual merit.

And it also does not allow for disagreements that aren't strictly binary.

Response to the decision in Shelby County v Holder has been mixed, and, while I kind of wonder where analysis and sentiment tangle in this one, the disagreements haven't been point/counterpoint so much as "What was the point?"

 

Stuart Carlson voices the opinion on one side, which is that the decision guts the Voting Rights Act, and he's hardly the only cartoonist who ties the decision into the Civil Rights Movement of a half-century ago.

But "a half century ago" is key here. I'm generally pretty confident in the analysis provided at Scotusblog, and this "plain English explanation" of the decision is both readable and, in my mind, at least convincing if not reassuring about what it all means. 

Here's the main point:

The Court did not invalidate the actual preclearance provision of the statute.  But it did something just as significant:  it struck down Section 4 of the Act, which contains the formula that is used to identify the state and local governments that have to comply with the preclearance requirements.  The upshot is that although the preclearance requirement survives, none of those jurisdictions have to comply with it unless and until Congress can enact a new formula to determine whom it covers – a prospect that, given the current state of gridlock in Congress, might not happen for a while or even forever. 

 

Or, as Mike Smith opined:

I would agree with those who feel it is a betrayal, if we were still in thrall to the Dixiecrats and their refusal to grant civil rights to African-Americans in the South.

But the dysfunction in Congress is not based on racial animus, except to the extent that the elephants in the legislature refuse to discuss the elephant in the room, which includes the number of conservatives in a variety of decision-making positions who have been caught circulating watermelon and bone-through-the-nose email jokes about the President and his family.

However, blaming racism for the lack of civil discourse over the past six years oversimplifies the crisis and misses the point of what's going on.

Yes, a lot of the opposition comes from people who hate Negroes. And who are careful to include the President's middle name anytime they mention him, just to point out that he's not a real American.

And who spread ridiculous, hateful, paranoia-inducing lies about his background, his achievements and his actions. Granted.

But there was no racial animus involved when these same slime-merchants were spreading vicious, outrageous, unfounded lies about John Kerry's war record.

Prove me wrong: Elect Barney Frank president. He's white, so that will end all the below-the-belt stuff, right? I mean, no pun intended.

To point fingers at racism misses the point, and the problem.

The court didn't say voter suppression was acceptable. They said we need to look at where it's happening now, not where it took place in our parents' or grandparents' day.

I don't have a problem with that, as long as we do look.

F'rinstance: While some Florida counties are listed, the established preclearance list does not include Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, and Volusia counties, the ones for which the Gore campaign demanded a recount in 2008, or Leon County, in which, along with Miami-Dade, significant charges of voter suppression arose in 2012. 

Nor is any part of Ohio targeted for oversight.

Now, on the one hand, the "You're no better up North" argument has been thrown around to excuse Jim Crow laws and Jim Crow customs. And it's no excuse for those practices and traditions.

But the court noted in its majority decision that things have changed in the past half-century, and, if the South isn't off the hook, the list of places in need of scrutiny and oversight has not been kept current.

As I see it, the challenge is to update, not to exonerate. 

Here's the analogy: If a particularly bad stretch of road is posted at 30 mph, but then the county widens it, straightens out some of the worst curves, regrades it to help cars hold when it's wet and repaves the section, you need to look at that 30 mph speed limit. It doesn't mean you take it up to 65. Maybe 45 is all that is justified. But it deserves reappraisal.

Similarly, a stretch that was posted at 55 may have deteriorated, due to shoulder washouts, growth of trees that block sightlines and crumbling pavement. If there are an increasing number of accidents there, it's time to reassess that speed limit.

And, honestly, the way things are going, something as simple as reassessing speed limits probably wouldn't be likely to happen either. I don't know how much Joe Heller was referencing the Shelby v Holder decision in this, but he's defined a problem that goes well beyond that particular issue:

My only quibble is that it's not incompetence. They're very good at what they are attempting to do. And they're doing what they were elected to do.

Which certainly doesn't "beg the question" -- heavens forfend! -- but it should make you wonder: If the oversight list in the Voting Rights Act was so critical and so effective that we should tremble at its loss, how did that gang of foot-dragging obstructionist yahoos manage to gain such power?

 

 
Well, yes, Jeff, but that's a given.

Comments

[Mark Jackson]

I concur in Kevin Drum's dissent from your opinion:

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/06/compare-and-contrast-laws-protect-white-voting-vs-laws-protect-black-voting

[Mike Peterson]

Interesting and well-worth the read. I don't disagree with him.

I'd like, however, to see a challenge to New Hampshire's Voter ID law, which is based on the justification that people can simply go to DMV and get a drivers-license-type ID card to satisfy the requirement. In this rural state, you may have to go 60 miles or more to find a DMV office, which means taking at least a half-day off from work even if you have a car.

This is suppressing the poor vote and is coupled with the need for ID to get ID -- which disproportionately disadvantages the disadvantaged.

In fact, across the nation, that level of disadvantage tends to be disproportionately minority,but I think you can apply a test of fairness that is race-blind and still find it outrageous.

There has been some commentary linking the Shelby decision to the entire corporations-are-people bent of the current Congress, abetted by the courts, and I think the One Percent issue is, at this stage, more compelling than a racial charge.

I guess I don't see the courts as being able to overturn a situation where Congress declines to legislate and, when it does, declines to legislate on behalf of the 99 percent.

That's the sort of thing that has to be overturned on a more grassroots level, and not by sitting the park twiddling your fingers at speakers and forming drumming circles or by running through the streets shouting and staging disruptive pranks, but by going door-to-door, by staffing phone banks, by expending the kind of shoe leather that put us in a place where the original Civil Rights Act could happen.

It's pretty boring, but it's how things get done. And with this court, and this congress, it's the only way things are going to get done.

[Mark Jackson]

Just one more. Gav hit it out of the park today:

http://www.nukees.com/d/20130628.html