Recently a friend and I found ourselves in a conversation about the tendency of some pundits to report on politics as if it were a sporting competition between politicians. We were referring to headlines like the one the former attorney general recently reacted to.
This wasn’t a battle between two people. This was a lawsuit brought on behalf of the people of Wisconsin against Scott Walker who disobeyed the law and denied representation to state citizens. Court said his politically motivated decision was just wrong https://t.co/3YKV2ospMg
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) March 22, 2018
Holder was making a very important point. While it’s true that the lawsuit brought by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee was ultimately successful in forcing Walker’s hand, the fight was for the democratic process of holding special elections in order to allow the people of Wisconsin to vote for the people who would represent them.
One of these two men continues to make this personal.
Holder’s group wants to win elections for governor with the hopes that they can use redistricting to permanently change the makeup of the U.S. House of Representatives and put Nancy Pelosi back in charge as speaker.
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) March 29, 2018
Leave it to a Republican to claim that a legal challenge to a decision not to hold congressionally mandated elections is nothing more than a fundraising ploy. You will very rarely miss when you assume that a Republican argument is nothing more than a case of projection. But notice that Walker wants to paint the entire episode as something that would benefit Holder and Nancy Pelosi rather than the people of Wisconsin. The only nod Walker gave to voters came in the form of an attempt to claim that elections are a waste of taxpayers money.
Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and his Washington, D.C.-based special interest group are behind the legal push to force Wisconsin taxpayers to pay for special elections for seats that will be filled in a few months in the normal elections.
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) March 29, 2018
Once again, Holder shot back.
As the WISCONSIN judge said yesterday, "Representative government and the election of our representatives are never ‘unnecessary,’ never a ‘waste of taxpayer resources,’”
We will continue to advocate for the people of Wisconsin whose voting rights you have undermined and diluted https://t.co/r65OTWzSDS
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) March 29, 2018
This all goes to the heart of what Martin wrote about this issue earlier.
It ought to mean something…that the Democrats are trying to increase civic participation in our elections and that the Republicans are using a huge percentage of their energy and resources devising ways to game the system so that voters have no say.
I would simply remind you that, as Zachary Roth documented in his book The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy, these Republican attempts are nothing new.
Today’s conservatives have no such confidence that the people are on their side. In fact, they are beginning to perceive that they’re in the minority – perhaps more glaringly than ever before. And yet this realization has brought with it another more hopeful one: being outnumbered doesn’t have to mean losing.
In addition to the kind of scheme Walker just attempted to pull off, Roth identifies voter suppression, gerrymandering, big money in politics, preemption and judicial engagement as ways that Republicans are trying to maintain power, even as they increasingly represent a minority of the people. That is precisely why Scott Walker wants to talk about Eric Holder rather than support the right of the people of his state to vote.
