Little of consequence transpired at last night’s Vice Presidential debate. Vice President Pence didn’t raise his voice or ooze contempt like Trump did last week, but the difference was one of style, not substance. Like Trump, Pence flouted the rules, ignoring his time limits to parrot Fox News talking points in a soporific monotone, running roughshod over hapless moderator, Susan Page. Pence lied constantly and refused to answer Page’s questions, yet imperiously demanded that Senator Kamala Harris answer his!
Senator Harris walked an admirable tightrope, remaining firm and factual, while avoiding the trap that Pence was trying to set with his mendacious mansplaining of coming across as an “angry Black woman.” Pence dodged questions about climate change and Trump’s white supremacy, while stubbornly insisting that there was no systemic racism in law enforcement and proudly touting his anti-abortion bona fides. (Source: “Virus Takes Center Stage as Pence and Harris Skirmish in Debate,” by Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, The New York Times, 10/8/20)..
Back at the Coronavirus cluster in The White House, 34 people at or close to The White House have tested positive and 7 of the 8 members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in quarantine after the head of the Coast Guard tested positive. Meanwhile, our steroid-addled Commander-in-Chief tweets endless streams of nonsense while roaming the narrow hallways of The White House maskless, a one man bioterror threat, and no one invokes the 25th Amendment.
Yet the recklessness and lunacy on display is distracting us from seeing how partisan judges and faceless bureaucrats are methodically setting the stage to thwart the will of the people, poll margins be damned. At the state and federal level, Republicans are working feverishly to build the framework for our votes not to be counted and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
A month ago, the 11th Circuit flouted the will of Florida voters, trampling the rights of formerly incarcerated people to hold that they could not regain their right to vote without paying their outstanding legal financial obligations. The ruling disenfranchised 775,000 Floridians, a decision made more outrageous by the fact that Florida’s haphazard recordkeeping prevents people from even knowing what they owe, (Source: “Full 11th Circuit Rules Against Florida Felons in Voting Rights Case,” by Alex Pickett, Courthousenews.com, 9/11/20).
Last week, The Supreme Court sided with South Carolina Republicans and reinstated the prerequisite that absentee ballots be signed by a witness in order to be counted, an onerous requirement during a pandemic. This follows the Court’s July decision upholding a similar law in Alabama, (Source: “Supreme Court Revives Witness Requirement For South Carolina Absentee Ballots,” by Adam Liptak, The New York Times, 10/5/20).
Then yesterday we learned that the Justice Department changed a policy that has been in place since 1980 prohibiting prosecutors from not only “making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election, but also from taking public steps …before a vote is finalized,”(Source: “DOJ Frees Federal Prosecutors To Take Steps That Could Interfere With Elections, Weakening Longstanding Policy,” by Robert Faturechi and Justin Eliott, ProPublica.org, 10/7/20).
This flurry of court decisions and bureaucratic actions make you wonder just what kind of regime they are scrambling to maintain. The answer was made abundantly clear in truly chilling reporting from The New York Times regarding the Trump administration’s child separation policy. Although DHS has justifiably borne the brunt of the blame for the horrific practice of ripping children from their parents and putting them in cages, yesterday’s story made clear that “the Justice Department’s top officials were a ‘driving force’ behind the policy,” (Source: “Border Policy Was Clear: ‘We Need to Take Away Children,’” by Michael D. Shear, Katie Benner and Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times,10/7/20). It is hardly surprising to learn that Jeff Sessions, the diminutive martinet and committed racist, was pushing for Brown children to be callously snatched from their parents. Yet Rod Rosenstein, whose bespectacled appearance and mild manner concealed an odious contempt for human rights, told federal prosecutors that “it did not matter how young the children were,” (ibid). Never forget that these judges and federal officials who drape themselves in the mantle of respectability wield the law as a cudgel to persecute and disempower the marginalized. This is what we’re fighting against on November 3rd. 26 days.
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