Texas Democrats Go Scorched Earth to Stop Election Reform

What does it mean when Democratic politicians in Texas flee the state and abuse a technicality so that the Republican-controlled legislature couldn’t pass election reform? Clay and Buck had just that on their minds. “This is Alinskyite sabotage of institutions,” Buck said, “and yet the media’s gonna act like, ‘Well, this is just whatever it takes.'”

Clay predicted that the runaway legislators would have a press conference on the steps of the Capitol. “All of the Senate Democrats and all the House members are gonna show up, and they’re going to use it as a major platform to argue, ‘This is why we need federal legislation to protect voting rights in this country, because things are so bad in states like Texas that we’ve had to flee the state!”

Despite the hyperbolic, exaggerated claims that simple reforms will kill democracy, over 70% of the American people, including huge majorities of African-American and Latino voters, support voter ID — and set records for voter turnout. Facts like that left Vice President Kamala Harris groping for a reason to oppose the bill.

Explaining what Biden calls Jim Crow 2.0 laws, Kamala Harris — who Clay described as “either dumb or just one of the worst communicators to ever be a nationally elected official” — claimed rural voters would be “have to Xerox — or photocopy your ID to send it in to prove you are who there are. Well, there are a whole lot of people, especially people who live in rural communities, there’s no Kinko’s, there’s no OfficeMax near them!”

Buck joked, “Clay, there are whole parts of red state America where you have to drive, like, 500 miles to have a Xerox machine, never mind a fax machine, man!” On the practical side of copying a document, Clay remarked, “How about the fact that everybody has a phone and take a picture almost exclusively from their phone?”