Will the Democrats’ Strategy to Defeat the GOP in the 2018 Midterm Elections Work?
The special election race between Jon Ossoff and Karen Handel is a glaring reminder that despite the Democrats best efforts, their strategy to beat the GOP does not work.
The Democrats have suffered devastating losses in every major election since 2010 when they lost control of the House of Representatives. These losses include Congress in 2014, the White House in 2016 and every single special election since Inauguration Day.
And while excruciatingly painful, these losses are equally predictable.
Ossoff himself unknowingly explained why when he stated: “I’m focused on what I’m running for, not against.”
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At the heart of every single failure of the Democratic strategy to defeat the GOP is an all-offense-no- defense approach that couldn’t win a fantasy footbal game let alone a battle for control of (what was once) the most powerful nation in the world.
The Democrats are at best foggy in their communications regarding what they as a party stand for, and they refuse to carve out a space rhetorically or legislatively to take a stand on what they are against.
The people of color, people living with disabilities, poor folks, members of the LGBTQ community, targeted non-Christians and any other community fending off the active attacks launched against us by the Republican party are far less confused.
We are all too aware that our lives, liberties, and livelihoods depend on our ability to stand against those trying to take them away. Voting is not an offensive act of political self-expression for the suppressed left. Voting is an act of self-defense. Voting is an effort to ensure the least amount of damage is done to our communities.
We vote Democrat because we stand against the GOP. We vote because we are people of color defending ourselves from white supremacists. We vote because we are poor people protecting ourselves from the removal of resources, opportunities, and freedoms fought for by the Republican Party. We vote because we are people with disabilities trying to protect ourselves from eugenicists and their policies.
We don’t vote because the Democratic party does so much for us. It doesn’t. We vote because we are trying to protect ourselves from the GOP. We are against its hate. We are against its treason — Confederate or Russian. We are against its efforts to kill, exploit, incarcerate and assault us. We are against the GOP in theory, in practice, in rhetoric and in policy. We don’t want bi-partisanship with white supremacists. We don’t want collaboration with the Trump Administration or its GOP accomplices.
We want to protect ourselves from them and we want to watch the Republicans lose. Period.
By focusing on what they are for and completely ignoring what they are against, the Democrats have both alienated themselves from their most loyal voters and eliminated their entire line of defense. And this all-offense-no-defense strategy is what the Democrats continue to present for 2018.
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Offensively, the Democrats’ strategy to increase turnout and amongst existing voters and recruit new voters into the party shows potential. Defensively, the Democrats have no strategy whatsoever. None.
As a result, while they may be able to bring on millions of new voters, this number cannot overcome the tens of millions of voters that the GOP has actively deprived the right to vote. Statistically, the Democrats’ strategy doesn’t stand a chance.
The Ossoff vs. Handel election provides a glaring example of how despite a stunning offensive effort, the Democrats cannot win without defending voters from the GOP. As previously reported by the Strategic Institute of Intersectional Policy:
“In efforts to defeat Republican Karen Handel, the Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars on media, door knockers and phone callers in efforts to offensively mobilize support for Jon Ossoff. And they were successful. While only 190,000 voters turned out for the GA-06 election in April, an estimated 240,000 turned out to vote in the June run-off.
But the Democrats still lost.”
Why?
“.…this loss…could be predicted by acknowledging the complete absence of a defensive strategy to counter voter suppression. Georgia is a Crosscheck state. Out of 6 million voters 660,000 are listed as purgeable. It also boasts some of the nation’s strictest voter ID requirements. Voters with disabilities are forced to confront statewide violations of the ADA and Georgia actively suppresses the votes of citizens with felony convictions.
And there are no organized Democratic efforts to confront any of these issues in Georgia, or in Georgia’s Sixth.”
As part of their offensive efforts to block Democratic voters from voting, the Republican party has very effectively used a combination of voter suppression techniques that have collectively resulted in 30–50 million suppressed voters. The GOP spearheaded Interstate Crosscheck System, for example, was used to purge just over 1 million targeted voters from registration rolls just prior to the 2016 elections. 21 million voters have been deprived their Constitutional right to vote because of voter ID laws. Millions more poor, disabled and POC voters were disenfranchised through targeted polling place closures and ADA violations. And 6 million POC, poor and disabled voters have been suppressed through felony disenfranchisement efforts.
And the Democratic party has done nothing to counter these efforts.
Instead, the Democratic party has ignored their most loyal voting blocs in favor of focusing on unsuppressed voters.
This strategy is exemplified in the current push to register new voters in the Democrat led, bipartisan focused efforts to pass the Automatic Voter Registration Act of 2017. As described by the Brennan Center:
“Under the plan, when a citizen interacts with a government agency — for example, to get a driver’s license, apply for public services, register for classes at a public university, or become a naturalized citizen — they are automatically signed up to vote, unless they decline. An individual’s information is electronically transferred to election officials, increasing convenience for voters and the accuracy of information in state databases.”
The estimated number of voters that would be registered as a result of the AVRA is approximately 50 million. The effort is touted as bipartisan with Democrats and Republicans benefitting in different ways. For Democrats, there is a perceived ability to add at least 25 million new voters to their ranks though newly registered recruits.
For Republicans, they stand to gain the same number of new voters through the AVRA, and they also will be able to use the data provided to run all new recruits through the Interstate Crosscheck System for targeted purging and suppression efforts such as polling place closures can still be used to suppress these new Democratic voters.
Ultimately the Democratic led efforts to register new voters will lead to the Republicans gaining more votes than the Democrats if voter suppression efforts are not countered.
As previously reported by SIIP:
“People of color, poor people, the working class, and people living with disabilities are the ones who pay the price for the Democrats’ failures against GOP advancement, but rather than allow us to stand as equals in the party — the Democrats strategically allow our disenfranchisement at the expense of both the party and the nation.
Re-enfranchising and re-uniting voters of color, voters with disabilities, poor voters and working-class voters would destroy the Democratic party as we know it. And perhaps that is a good thing.
The Democratic party would more than outnumber the GOP and its white supremacist driven, Russian puppetted network of racists, traitors, and eugenicists. It would be a party that demolished the barriers of inaccessibility, enforced, and expanded minority rights, passed a living wage, provided safe and secure housing, legislated national transgender rights, actively protected indigenous sovereignty, and ensured universal healthcare. If minority voters were re-enfranchised, the Democratic Party would be the party of the People.”
But until the Democratic party unites AGAINST the GOP and in defense of the people it is targeting, this nation will continue to be controlled by white supremacists, Russian conspirators, and the GOP.
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Can anything be done?
Yes. Absolutely.
There are laws designed to protect targeted communities and defend the nation from a confederate take-over at the federal level. For example, 18 USC 241 reads:
“If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured — They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both…”
And 18 USC 242 follows with:
“Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both…”
Unfortunately, prosecution for violations of these laws fall under the authority of the US Attorney General and the Department of Justice. With Jeff Sessions in control, there is little to no chance the DoJ would investigate, let alone prosecute, the GOP for deprivation of rights.
Fortunately, there are other options.
The Democratic party can counter voter suppression efforts in the federal court system by bringing legal challenges under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. While it is true that the GOP dealt a huge blow to the Act when they gutted Section 5 through the case of Shelby County vs. Holder — Sections 2 and 11 are still fully intact. And they can be applied at the federal district and circuit court levels.
Section 11 of the Voting Rights Act reads:
“No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse Prohibitions to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote under any provision of this Act or is otherwise qualified to vote, or willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, and report such person’s vote”
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act also specifies:
“No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
The NAACP further clarifies that:
“The types of voting practices and procedures that may violate Section 2 include, but are not limited to: (1) annexing largely white neighborhoods into districts where people of color are the majority; (2) moving from electing candidates by districts to at-large voting; (3) replacing elected officials with appointed officials; (4) moving conveniently-located polling locations to inconvenient locations; (5) closing or consolidating conveniently-located polling places; (6) reducing early voting opportunities or changing voting hours; (7) implementing restrictive photo identification laws for in-person voting; (8) limiting registration opportunities; (9) limiting multi-lingual voting assistance; (10) adopting onerous candidate qualifications; (11) adopting discriminatory redistricting plans that either pack together or crack apart communities of color; and (12) counting incarcerated people as residents of their prison communities for purposes of redistricting rather than as residents of their pre-prison home communities.”
There are ways the Democrats can successfully counter voter suppression even without control of Congress. And until the Democrats counter GOP efforts to deprive POC’s, PWD’s and poor folks the right to vote — there is no reason numerically, strategically, or ethically that they should win in 2018, 2020 or anytime in the foreseeable future.
Until the Democrats stand against the GOP and in defense of the communities they are targeting, this nation will continue to be dismantled by the Republican Party.
Until the Democrats re-enfranchise the tens of millions of GOP suppressed voters — the will likely never win a major election again.
