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Trump's 2024 strategy could echo the disputed US election of 1876
For Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page, new voting laws in some Republican-led states could help Donald Trump do in 2024 what he failed to do in 2020.
The changes, he says in a GZERO World interview, will make it easier for state legislatures to decide electoral college votes. That's exactly what Trump's people tried to do in the last presidential election.
It reminds Page of what happened in 1876, when the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War coincided with a disputed presidential election.
The outcome? Jim Crow.
"This is the legacy of, of those days," he says. "A that's part of the big argument now. Are we going to get rid of these last vestiges of discrimination from the Jim Crow era?"
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Black voter suppression in 2022
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Black voter suppression in 2022
Until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Black people in America who wanted to vote faced impossible poll questions and literacy tests. But the Supreme Court gutted the law in 2013, allowing states to pass new voting legislation that progressives say restrict Black access to the ballot box.
The 2022 midterm elections will be the first major test of these laws — which Democrats in Congress are unlikely to be able to stop. How will this all affect Black turnout in November?
On this episode of GZERO World, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page tells Ian Bremmer that if Trump loyalists win in key states, their legislatures — not voters — may end up deciding the next US presidential race.What may happen in 2024 reminds him of 1876, when Page says the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War, along with a disputed presidential election, ushered in the Jim Crow laws that ended his ancestors' ability to vote in Alabama.
What's driving all this? For Page, part of the problem is the grievance narrative around critical race theory, which has made some Americans confused between being a Democrat and being democratic.
Still, he says you can't deny that Republicans want to make it harder to vote, while Democrats try to make it easier. That's a big problem because "we're at loggerheads over who should be allowed to vote and, and who shouldn't."
Page also compares President Biden's pledge to nominate a Black woman to fill Justice Breyer's seat on the Supreme Court to Ronald Reagan's decision to pick Sandra Day O'Connor. And as a bonus, Ian looks back at the history of Black women judges in America.
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The history of Black voting rights in America
Until 1965, Black Americans who wanted to vote first faced faces unanswerable poll questions, and later equally tough literacy tests.
The Voting Rights Act banned these and other forms of overt voter suppression. But in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the law, requiring states to get prior federal approval to tweak their voting laws for racial discrimination.
The ruling has allowed dozens of states to pass increasingly restrictive voting laws targeting minority groups with measures like bolstering voter ID, eliminating polling places, and rolling back mail-in voting.
But things aren’t always so black and white, or blue and red, Ian Bremmer explains on GZERO World. Georgia is now ahead of New York on expanding early voting and no-excuse absentee ballots.
There are many reasons why Black voters turn out less than white Americans, and not all have to do with voter suppression. Still, progressive leaders worry restrictive laws will (further) widen the gap.
The upcoming 2022 midterm elections will be the first major test of these new voting laws. That is, unless Democrats pass new voting rights legislation — but the bill will die on the Senate floor.
Voting reform bill will likely be blocked, but still a key issue for Democrats
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, discusses the Democrats voting bill.
What is the status on the Democrats voting bill?
The Democrats are pushing a bill that would largely nationalize voting rules, which today are largely determined at the state level. The bill would make Election Day a national holiday. It would attempt to end partisan gerrymandering. It would create a uniform number of early voting days and make other reforms that are designed to standardize voting rules and increase access to voting across the country. This matters to Democrats because they think they face an existential risk to their party's political prospects. They're very likely to lose at least the House and probably the Senate this year. And they see voting changes that are being pushed by Republicans at the state level that they say are designed to make it harder to vote, particularly for minorities, a key Democratic constituency.
Republicans see this as a power grab. They argue that the changes happening at the state level are reverting back to the pre-pandemic baseline. And during the pandemic, voting laws were expanded nationally. And they argue that the laws in states like Georgia, which Democrats are calling Jim Crow 2.0, are actually no more restrictive than the voting laws in a state like Delaware or New York, where two of the nation's most prominent Democrats come from. Regardless, this voting legislation is going nowhere. Republicans are uniformly opposed. And while Democrats are united in support of the voting reform changes, there are not enough votes in order to change the Senate rules to overcome a Republican filibuster.
As long as the filibuster exists, it will be nearly impossible to pass any kind of electoral reforms that could help Democrats push back on the tide of a system that largely benefits Republicans today. The US political system is structured in favor to benefit the more rural areas, and Republicans largely dominate in rural areas.
So knowing this bill will be blocked, why hold the vote at all? Well, this is a hugely important issue for the Democratic base and for the Democratic Party who worried about being locked out of power for the next 10 years. By holding the vote, Majority Leader Schumer hopes to pressure two moderate democratic holdouts and draw a contrast between them and the rest of the party. And he wants to send a message to the activist base that they support them, even though the Democrats are not united. The end result will probably be a failure to act and also further alienation of the two moderate holdouts, who Biden also needs their support on his fiscal policy bill, the Build Back Better bill, which is currently stalled until least March and probably beyond that.
Biden infrastructure plan would boost jobs; Georgia voter law tensions
Jon Lieber, Managing Director of the United States for the Eurasia Group, shares his insights on US politics:
What specifics do you expect to be in Biden's "build back better" infrastructure plan?
Well, this is really a two-part plan. The first part Biden's rolling out this week, and it's focused mainly on infrastructure. Bridges, roads, tunnels, transit, the whole infrastructure smorgasbord, including on broadband deployment, as well as investing in things like rural hospitals, schools and upgrading buildings to be more energy efficient. Biden's proposed between $2 and $2.5 trillion depending on how you do the math, paid for by tax increases primarily falling on the corporate sector that actually spread out over 15 years, as opposed to the bill's spending, which spreads out over 10. That means the bill will be mildly stimulative to the economy on top of creating potentially new jobs through the direct spending that's going to happen.
The tax increases are focused largely on corporate America, higher corporate tax rate, changes in the way US taxes its multinational corporations, and other changes that come on the individual side, which will be primarily used to fund the second half of the plan, which is going to be focused on more of a human services element. These are things like education, healthcare, subsidies for daycare, universal pre-K, community college, and other things that the Biden administration contends have to be invested in to keep the American economy going. Now, these tax increases are going to be really controversial with Republicans, which means you're probably not going to see a lot of Republicans vote for this. But Democrats are pretty aligned around doing something big and meaningful in advance of the 2022 midterms. So both of these bills probably pass into law before the end of the year.
What's going on with the Georgia voter law?
Well, in the wake of a 2020 election, where President Trump claimed there was widespread fraud, Republican politicians are now moving across the country to roll back some of the expansions that were done during the coronavirus pandemic to make it easier to vote. In Georgia, this has meant curtailing the ability to vote on Sundays, it's meant requiring a photo ID, and it's meant limiting to some extent, the ability to apply for an absentee ballot. Most of these changes are rolling the voting rules back by a couple of years. This is not the apocalyptic changes that the Democrats have been claiming, but the Democrats are really motivated to stop all of this from happening because they want to open up voting and make it as easy as possible for their constituents to get out. They typically do better at higher turnout elections. Republicans typically do better in lower turnout elections.
So for Democrats this is really, for both parties, this is really considered an existential threat, and the voting rules are going to be a really important battleground over the next 12 to 18 months. At the federal level, the Democrats are pushing a bill, H.R. 1, that would fundamentally alter the way elections are conducted in this country, including by changing money in politics and eliminating partisan gerrymandering, by requiring each state to use a nonpartisan commission to draw the districts for the House of Representatives. If it passes, and I don't think it will because it would require today 60 votes in the Senate, but if it were to pass, it would be a big structural shift towards the Democrats in US elections.
Minimum wage won't go up for now; Texas sets reopening example
Jon Lieber, Managing Director of the United States for the Eurasia Group, shares his insights on US politics in Washington, DC:
Another stimulus bill is about to pass the Senate. Why won't the minimum wage be going up?
Well, the problem with the minimum wage is it didn't have the 50 votes it needed to overcome the procedural hurdles that prevent the minimum wage when traveling with the stimulus bill. Clearly support for $15 an hour minimum wage in the House of Representatives, but there's probably somewhere between 41 and 45 votes for it in the Senate. There may be a compromise level that emerges later in the year as some Republicans have indicated, they'd be willing to support a lower-level minimum wage increase. But typically, those proposals come along with policies that Democrats find unacceptable, such as an employment verification program for any new hire in the country. Labor unions have been really, really fixated on getting a $15 an hour minimum wage. They may not be up for a compromise. So, we'll see what happens.
What's next for Congress after the stimulus?
What's next is probably more stimulus. Over the summer, you're going to see Democrats focus on doing a lot of nominations for executive branch nominees, as well as starting to apply pressure on some of their more moderate members to eliminate the legislative filibuster. If they eliminate the legislative filibuster, that will open up a whole suite of new possibilities, including voting rights reforms that will be critical for the Democrats if they want to maintain the majority in the House of Representatives going forward because the voting rights reform bill that passed the house would block partisan gerrymandering that's helped Republicans get a structural advantage that's kept them in the majority now for quite some time. And will probably be helpful and winning it back for them in 2022.
Texas is open. What's happening in the Lone Star State?
Well, Texas is the first large state to fully reopen and to eliminate any restrictions on coronavirus. That means no mask mandate, no capacity restrictions on restaurants. Governor Abbott recognizes that coronavirus is still an issue in his state, but sees the hospitalization and death numbers going down, and the vaccination numbers going up. He claims they have the testing ability to keep the virus under control even without these restrictions on people's movements. And that's probably a pretty popular move in Texas. The reality is even without the mask mandates, some restaurants and individuals are going to continue to wear masks and insist that their customers do. And they're going to keep social distancing and all that. And even under the mask mandates, a lot of people weren't following the rules anyway. So, this is going to be a trend that happens over the next six to eight weeks as vaccinations become widely available in America. And you're going to see more and more states start to drop their restrictions, which is likely to lead to an economic boom in the spring going into the summer.