Republicans admit that they cheated, brag about it

Debating the value of democracy

Welcome to a Thursday edition of Progress Report.

Lots to talk about, including some unbelievably blood-boiling news out of Ohio, positive news out of Virginia, and some big existential questions about democracy and power.

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“Cheating was a great idea”

Like a corpulent Midwestern Bond villain twirling his mustache and explaining his dastardly plot, the head of the Ohio GOP has admitted that the party purposely abused its power to kill a constitutional amendment that would have finally guaranteed fair elections and representative democracy in the Buckeye State.

The admission was made at a GOP event on Monday by Republican Party chair Jim Triantafilou, who all but demanded a standing ovation for dashing what was a third attempt to end the GOP’s extreme Congressional and legislative gerrymanders.

“A lot of people were saying, ‘We’re confused! We’re confused by Issue 1.’ Did you all hear that? Confusion means we don’t know, so we did our job,” Triantafilou said. “Confusing Ohioans was not such a bad strategy.”

Triantafilou‘s admission confirmed for the first time that Republicans manipulated the language of the citizen-driven constitutional amendment, which would have established an independent redistricting committee obligated to produce fair and representative maps.

With polls showing upwards of 60% of Ohioans once again supporting a ban on gerrymandering — two previous attempts were neutered by the legislature and state Supreme Court — GOP Secretary of State Frank LaRose simply had the state election board manipulate the wording of the amendment to say it would require gerrymandering.

An outright lie, it was nonetheless upheld by that conservative majority state Supreme Court, and just as activists feared, it created enough confusion that the amendment went from coasting to victory to losing by a few points. There is little recourse, either, as Ohioans also gave Republicans a clean sweep in the state Supreme Court elections, as they have done regularly since they were turned into partisan contests.

And whereas there was once some high court Republican support for fair districts and elections, the retirement of former Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and her replacement with a more conservative judge has ended any kind of bipartisan consensus there.

A growing trail of sabotage

It’s one of several underhanded ways that Republicans have begun to attack democracy in states where they control most levers of power, with state supreme courts emerging as crucial tools in this process. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was permitted by the all-conservative court to use state funds to run ads and other programs to kneecap the abortion rights and marijuana legalization amendments so that they fell short of the 60% supermajority now required in the ever-darkening Sunshine State.

Once Republicans flipped the high court in North Carolina, they quickly overturned a decision that had outlawed partisan gerrymandering in the state and now look primed to overturn Democratic justice Allison Riggs’s re-election, underscoring the all-or-nothing stakes of these races, even if voters don’t know it.

The paradox here is that in both Ohio and Florida, bipartisan majorities of voters have backed abortion rights, marijuana legalization, and other conventionally “liberal” amendments and ballot initiatives, yet continue to choose politicians in positions that can overturn their decisions or permit Republicans to abuse their powers and unfairly influence elections. The Ohio Supreme Court election in 2022 was run almost entirely on the issue of gerrymandering, and O’Connor campaigned crossed the aisle to campaign for Democrats, to no avail.

North Carolina voters gave Riggs the edge by just 500 or so votes, even though it was clear that the conservative Supreme Court was eager to limit their rights in ways that most people found objectionable; had it not been for Mark Robinson proving to be one of the worst gubernatorial candidates in modern history and dragging down state Republicans, they probably would have won the Supreme Court seat, too.

And it’s not as if voters in these three states happened to incidentally be making these conflicting choices based on parochial issues — this is a national trend, and as Democrats learned in November, running on democracy is not a political winner, no matter how much people object to rigged elections. It’s tempting to just conclude that voters being foolish, and there’s some of that in this country, but historical trends play a much bigger role than we want to admit.

The 60-year conservative project to turn government into the enemy has been wildly successful, in no small part due to their own abuses of power. Yet Third Way neoliberalism has also ensured that material conditions declined for many during Democratic administrations, which have also tended to fail to deliver on big, popular promises. Cynicism fomented by social stratification and government inaction has made the idea of democracy less alluring — what is it good for? — and the party that centers it during campaigns simply seems like it is fighting to maintain the status quo and its own power.

(This is why insurgent candidates who run against the “uniparty” have attracted enormous support since Ross Perot won more than 20% of the general election vote in 1992. Barack Obama was the outsider candidate against an old GOP statesman who was anointed in 2008, Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp and beat the uber-establishment Hillary Clinton in 2016, and he remained perceived as the outsider when he beat Kamala Harris last year.)

Decades of rhetoric and spiraling conditions have conditioned people to see freedoms as things that must be safeguarded against the tyranny of democratically elected officials. As a result, majorities of voters in red and blue states alike will back amendments that guarantee them personal liberties and protections, from abortion rights and marijuana legalization to workplace rights, but will often still back Republicans despite their hostility to democracy.

There is no obvious solution, other than to deliver wherever and whenever Democrats have power. That has to come sooner or later, because Republicans are growing bolder and bolder about rigging elections and silencing and screwing over voters.

Always a silver lining: Single party rule is never good for voting rights, no matter which party is in charge. And while we generally think of red states as the least democratic due to the legacy of Jim Crow and ongoing open disdain for voters (see above), blue states for decades had some of the most restrictive voting laws in the nation. That has changed significantly in recent years, and continues to do so.

In New York, Democrats have opened up the past few sessions of legislature with expansions of voting rights, and this year they’re presenting another package of laws that will protect elections and make it easier and more convenient to vote.

The most prominent of the bills focus on election interference. One would ban businesses with foreign ties from contributing money to campaigns or spending on advertising themselves, while another would make it illegal to spread disinformation about voting explicitly intended to stop people from casting their ballots

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Washington: For the second straight year, Democrats in Olympia have introduced legislation that would make Washington just the third state to enact a statewide rent stabilization law.

The Residential Landlord-Tenant Act (and an accompanying bill focused on mobile and manufactured homes) would cap annual rent increases at 7% and prohibit rent increases during the first year of tenancy. It would also limit move-in fees and security deposits, cap late fees, and extend the amount of notice that landlords must give tenants about upcoming rent increases.

A similar bill passed the state House last year but failed to make it through the Senate. Housing costs in Washington State have skyrocketed since the tech industry turned the state from a sleepy forest into an international hub. Since 1984, the price of housing has risen 800% in Washington, the most in the nation.

I’ll have more on this issue and bill in upcoming editions of the newsletter…

New York: Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a busy legislative agenda during her State of the State speech this week, with most of her proposals designed to address public safety and affordability, which just so happen to be the two main lines of attack she’s likely to face during what should be a tough re-election campaign.

Hochul, who has already flooded the subway system with National Guardsmen and the NYPD, wants to put active duty cops on every late night subway car for the next six months. The governor seems to feel that adding even more law enforcement will finally do the trick of convincing people that despite what the NY Post says, crime is falling on public transportation.

She also proposed increasing mandatory psychiatric hospital stays for people with mental health and behavioral issues who pose a risk to themselves — a policy that tends to disproportionately impact homeless people without offering any kind of long-term solution.

Outside of cranking up the police state knob a few notches, Hochul’s agenda does have some solid proposals on the affordability side of things. She wants to double the child tax credit; create a universal school meals program; limit hedge funds from buying up residential homes; and provide free in-state college tuition to students over the age of 25 who want to work in nursing, teaching, technology, engineering, and other in-demand fields.

I’ve often called Kathy Hochul the Worst Governor in America, so it’s depressing that I may wind up reluctantly voting for her in the primary if it follows the current trajectory. At the moment, Hochul’s most likely Democratic primary challenger is Rep. Ritchie Torres, a supernaturally smug AIPAC tool who blocked me on Twitter for questioning why he spent infinitely more time advocating for the Israeli government than the people in his own Bronx district, the poorest in the nation.

Virginia: Democratic legislators have taken the first steps toward protecting popular rights and defining the terms of the upcoming statewide elections.

On Tuesday, the House of Delegates passed resolutions that would enshrine abortion rights, voting rights, and marriage equality in the state constitution. Once the Senate passes the same resolutions, the two chambers will have to pass them again next year before voters get a chance to weigh in on them.

Democrats kept their thin majorities in each chamber by winning a pair of special elections last week, and they’ll use the specter of these constitutional amendments in their campaigns to keep the House and take back the governor’s mansion this November. While Richmond served as the capital of the Confederacy, these amendments’ passage, and Democrats’ reassuming control of the top job, would move Virginia to as close to a northern blue state as it can get.

Quick hits:

• In Maine, lawmakers want to bolster the healthcare workforce by raising the minimum wage for care workers to $20.51 an hour;

• South Dakota Republicans are toying with the idea of overturning the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law;

• The marijuana industry in Florida is going to take another hit at recreational legalization after a close call last year;

• GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Kentucky, Mississippi, and South Carolina have introduced bills that would ban chem trails and other imaginary terrors that haunt their conspiracy-addled followers.

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You did it, Joe (for better or worse)

Outgoing President Joe Biden delivered his farewell address to the nation last night, spending most of his time touting the country’s rapid emergence from the Covid pandemic and an economic recovery driven in part by a neo-Keynesian agenda that broke from half a century of elite orthodoxy.

Though his popularity was hobbled by inflation, history will probably be more generous to the first few years of Biden’s domestic presidency, especially the revitalization of American industry, support for organized labor, and revival of antitrust regulation. Where Biden failed to deliver on issues of fundamental importance, such as restoring the Voting Rights Act and Roe v. Wade, he was often sabotaged by cynical members of his own party who had financial incentives to hold the line against popular demand and little reason to fear a president who seemed determined to protect those who undermined him.

In that sense, it’s fitting that Biden’s speech came on the same day that Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire that closely mirrors the deal that Benjamin Netanyahu rejected this summer. The Israeli Prime Minister, hoping to help get Donald Trump back in the White House, had every incentive to hold out until now, but as was the case with the pro-filibuster Democrats, Netanyahu was emboldened by Biden’s stubborn refusal to apply pressure or dole out consequences for defiance.

In terms of raw power, Netanyahu had even less leverage than petty grifters such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (and other unnamed Democrats who let those two take the heat), who held the votes that Biden needed to pass his agenda. Geopolitically, the president is far stronger; it was only the bombs and political cover provided by the United States that allowed Israel to continue its genocide in Gaza, and any domestic political considerations should have been waved away when it was clear that the most militant pro-Israel figures in the US were going to attack Biden as insufficiently Zionist and back Trump no matter what the sitting president did.

AIPAC and the New York Times can make any assertion they want, but the reality is that the blood of the tens of thousands of victims, including countless children, will stain Biden’s legacy for all of time.

If nothing else, his administration’s enabling of the genocide also functioned as an endorsement of the wealthy conservatives and the politicians they bought (see: Rep. Ritchie Torres, who now wants to run for governor of New York) over the conscientious young protestors who were silenced at the DNC and across college campuses. When Democrats endorse that kind of conduct, it becomes ingrained in our society and legal system for generations.

Zooming out from the Israeli war, Biden’s time in office will ultimately be judged by the fact that he did not eradicate Trumpism, but instead merely provided an interlude before the world’s most unqualified boar returned to the White House with an even larger fascist coalition. And Biden certainly made decisions that helped make that nightmare scenario a reality, including installing Merrick Garland as attorney general and insisting on running for re-election until late July, ending any chance of a real primary. But I would be wary of anyone who blames everything on Biden, of making it the failure of one man instead of a systemic breakdown that led to Trump’s victory.

It’s not Biden who is voting en masse to support the Republican push to make the Laken Riley Act even more fascist, nor is Biden starting to embrace Elon Musk or RFK Jr — other Democratic lawmakers are doing that, and it’ll continue long past the point that the 46th president has retreated back to Delaware and receded from public life.

The Democratic Party desperately needs new leadership, and if Biden’s term can teach us anything, it’s that it’s always better politics to fight for the masses; his popularity rose when he cut child poverty in half and fell as he deferred to conservative Democrats and sided with the old school elite supporters of a genocidal war.

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