Indeed it is. The potential of this backfiring on Republicans is significant. It may have the unintended consequences of highly motivating voters who oppose their agenda.
Don’t get me wrong, though indeed solutions in search of problems and obviously intended to suppress the oppositions vote their is a bit of over reaction to some of these intended actions, particularly redundant voter ID requirements as getting a photo ID is pretty darned easy and organizing drives to to obtain them would probably be easier than voter registration and get out the vote drives. Don’t get me wrong I get it. I understand the principles behind the opposition towards these obviously cynical attempts to repress voting by making voting an onerous chore particularly in urban areas.
Having said that the lack of Democratic counter strategy is appallingly bad. There are simple counter strategies that Democrats could employ to easily thwart these attempts. An example would be to relentlessly advocate that the national election date be a national holiday. Democrats have advocated this for decades yet their organization around this issue remains weak despite its broad appeal to the majority of the American public.
Another good strategy that Democrats definitely deserve harsh criticism of is their constant failure to reach out to exurban and rural voters. What has the Democratic Party done over the last two decades to do so? They’ve done Jack shit. I’ve attended Democratic Party meetings as a non participant but interested observer and have seen how dismissive of this strategy urban Democrats are. With the end result that Republicans have heavily out maneuvered Democrats at the local level and using that to isolate the Democrats vote to urban areas and as a result losing control of State Houses all over the country. This is particularly egregious in the Great Lakes region where Democrats hold a significant advantage in numbers. In the process this has allowed Republicans to consolidate power at the State House level where they have gerrymandered districts to an extent to where extremist Republican candidates who would normally be unelectable are easily elected for congress. Jim Jordan is a perfect example. His congressional district is so bizarrely convoluted that on a map it looks like a duck. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever geographically or representatively except that it doesn’t have a single urban area in the district in one of the most urbanized States in the country. Thus by gaining political control at the State level Republicans have made the election of extremist candidates by both parties possible (for example the congress lady from Cleveland is every bit as extreme as that moron Jordan).
Yet our State Democratic Party is still hostile to reaching out to moderate exurban and rural voters, particularly in policies that would benefit these regions. Why? Because they are afraid of losing the the post modernist progressive vote despite the fact that center left and moderate voters vastly outnumber them. As such this wing of the Democratic Party are some of the best allies Republicans have as they can constantly be counted on to say stupid shut to alienate voters. It’s an incredibly dumb strategy and Democrats have paid a serious price for it.
Democrats like to think of themselves as the big tent party when in reality they have become a coalition of the educated and diversity and in the process have been ceding the middle ground for two decades. From a political standpoint it’s just plain stupid political strategy.
Now don’t get me wrong. The GOP is far more in lock step with extremist politics than Democrats are and this is eminently exploitable, from a strategic standpoint, for Democrats who consistently fail to grasp this opportunity despite having a significant advantage of numbers and resources. Given this and Republicans success at local and State levels one can only objectively observe that Republicans are playing the game of politics better than Democrats.
Yet that sort of self analysis seems to be an anethma to Democratic Party leaders and thus we have our current situation where the Plutocracy and white working class alliance has been quite successful despite the Plutocracies resistance to do anything that would improve economically the lives of the working class Americans.
Instead Democrats are foolishly engaged in culture war battles in a war they have already fucking won. It’s quite maddening from where I sit watching Democrats just simply watching these opportunities pass on by the .
