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Wednesday, December 27, 2017

How Do They Say These Things With A Straight Face?

Have you ever heard of Ryan Cooper?  I doubt it.  Cooper is the "national correspondent" for the liberal site, The Week.  He just wrote a report under a headline which explains how to "crush" Trump.  Cooper's thesis is that Democrats should win control of the government by winning upcoming elections.  This guy is deep (not).  The article is just an angry screed filled with nonsense rather than reality, but I want to focus on a few sentences about how the Dems need to win elections that Cooper emphasizes.  Here they are:

This will mean, of course, overcoming Republican cheating. The GOP has rigged the House to give themselves a roughly 5- to 8-point handicap, and attempted to systematically disenfranchise liberals with voter ID requirements and other deliberately burdensome measures.

These sentences are not just wrong; they are lies.  In fact, they are blatant and outrageous lies.  Let's start with the supposed rigging of the House elections to give Republicans an advantage.  Without a doubt, there is an advantage for Republicans in House elections.  That advantage was given to them by Democrats, however; it was not the result of rigging by the GOP.  The advantage comes from the Voting Rights Act.  That law requires state legislatures to create "minority-majority" districts where possible.  In other words, if there are concentrations of minority voters like blacks or Hispanics, the federal Voting Rights Act requires state legislatures to push all these minority voters into one district so that there will be districts where minorities make up a majority of voters.  This was set up as a supposed civil rights law, but the main purpose was so that Democrats could have safe seats in these minority districts.  Right now about ten percent of Congress consists of minority-majority seats and every one of these seats is represented in the House by a Democrat.  The problem for Democrats, however, is that once they pushed all these minority voters into these districts, they left the other districts with more whites than otherwise would be the case.  For example, instead of five districts which each have 20% minorities there are four districts with 2% minorities and one district with 90% minority voters.  The Democrats pushed all their minority voters into that one district and left themselves with much more Republican districts for the remainder.  Since white voters are now strongly Republican, the Democrats have to win in districts that are stacked against them.  Remember, the Voting Rights Act was passed by an overwhelmingly Democrat Congress and signed by a Democrat president.  If this is cheating, it is Democrat cheating that blew up in their faces.

Second, it's amazing to claim that the GOP is "systematically" working to "disenfranchise" liberals with voter ID requirements.  Is there some reason why it is harder for liberals to get driver's licenses than conservatives?  Are there now political preference questions on the written driver's exam in any state?  Of course not.  Since every state with voter ID also provides free ID cards for those who do not drive, it is extremely easy for anyone -- even a liberal -- to get the necessary ID.  If that were not the case, the liberals could always go to the Justice Department and complain.  Oh wait.  The liberals couldn't go to Justice because the federal government has required a picture ID in order to get into the buildings around the country housing the Justice Department since 9-11.  Well, if that doesn't work, the liberals could fly to DC to complain to their congressman.  Oh wait.  The liberals couldn't get on a plane because that is impossible absent a picture ID.  In other words, normal day-to-day living in the USA requires people to have picture IDs.  That is all the voter ID laws require.  This is an excuse why Democrats lose.  It is not reality.

It doesn't matter to the Democrats that these are lies.  "Reporters" like this moron at The Week will continue to state them as facts.  It's just sad.

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