There are at least two fascist double agents within the Democratic Party.
I did just use the f-word, so let me explain why I’m making such a bold declaration. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema both oppose the Freedom to Vote Act. OK, that might be completely fine. Let’s take a look at what is in the bill that they oppose. Here’s a summary by widely-respected Democratic Party commentator Heather Cox Richardson (these are her words, verbatim, reformatted as a list):
- It establishes a baseline for access to the ballot across all states. That baseline includes at least two weeks of early voting for any town of more than 3000 people, including on nights and weekends, for at least 10 hours a day.
- It permits people to vote by mail, or to drop their ballots into either a polling place or a drop box, and guarantees those votes will be counted so long as they are postmarked on or before Election Day and arrive at the polling place within a week.
- It makes Election Day a holiday.
- It provides uniform standards for voter IDs in states that require them.
- The Freedom to Vote Act cracks down on voter suppression. It makes it a federal crime to lie to voters in order to deter them from voting (distributing official-looking flyers with the wrong dates for an election or locations of a polling place, for example), and it increases the penalties for voter intimidation.
- It restores federal voting rights for people who have served time in jail, creating a uniform system out of the current patchwork one.
- It requires states to guarantee that no one has to wait more than 30 minutes to vote.
- Using measures already in place in a number of states, the Freedom to Vote Act provides uniform voter registration rules.
- It establishes automatic voter registration at state Departments of Motor Vehicles, permits same-day voter registration, allows online voter registration, and protects voters from the purges that have plagued voting registrations for decades now, requiring that voters be notified if they are dropped from the rolls and given information on how to get back on them.
- The Freedom to Vote Act bans partisan gerrymandering.
- The Freedom to Vote Act requires any entity that spends more than $10,000 in an election to disclose all its major donors, thus cleaning up dark money in politics.
- It requires all advertisements to identify who is paying for them.
- It makes it harder for political action committees (PACs) to coordinate with candidates, and it beefs up the power of the Federal Election Commission that ensures candidates run their campaigns legally.
- The Freedom to Vote Act also addresses the laws Republican-dominated states have passed in the last year to guarantee that Republicans win future elections.
- It protects local election officers from intimidation and firing for partisan purposes.
- It expands penalties for tampering with ballots after an election (as happened in Maricopa County, Arizona, where the Cyber Ninjas investigating the results did not use standard protection for them and have been unable to produce documents for a freedom of information lawsuit, leading to fines of $50,000 a day and the company’s dissolution).
- If someone does tamper with the results or refuses to certify them, voters can sue.
- The act also prevents attempts to overturn elections by requiring audits after elections, making sure those audits have clearly defined rules and procedures.
- And it prohibits voting machines that don’t leave a paper record.
Manchin and Sinema are also blocking the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which is a similar common-sense pro-democracy bill. As HCR said, opposition to these bills is “bananas”.
Now, we know that Republicans are opposed to democracy. They’ve literally told us this without any shame whatsoever; they told us in a condescending way meant to imply that we should have known that democracy is bad. They believe that democracy means “the mob” will take away their power and property and literally destroy the country; this is why they always emphasize that the US is a republic, not a democracy. Moreover, we know that Republicans are fascists. Manchin and Sinema are supposed to be Democrats, though. What’s their excuse?
The answer is that they are not Democrats; they are fascists. They are actively working to support the Republican agenda, which is fascism. HCR is confused as to why anyone — Republican or Democrat — would oppose these common-sense changes to voting law because she — like most Democrats — has not yet accepted that Republicans are fascists. To be clear, I very much respect HCR and and find her daily summaries to be the best source of information about daily politics; she is both smart and well-informed. However, she is clearly in denial about a great many problems plaguing this country, and she shares that malady with most self-described Democrats.