The Last Chance Democracy Cafe

I’ve already railed once against the Clinton campaign’s vote suppression lawsuit in Nevada.  In yesterday’s post, I argued that winning Nevada in this way might actually damage Clinton’s campaign more than it would help, at least over the long haul.  John Kerry, in a post at TPM Cafe today, makes the same point, noting:

Here’s the bottom line. I understand people gut it out to win on Election Day. But certain tactics make victory pyrrhic – empty – hollow – and it’s not worth winning if you lose what really counts in the process. And you know what, if the Culinary Workers had backed someone besides my choice in this race - Barack Obama - I’d still say it’s right for every candidate to make sure these workers get to vote.

Kerry’s right on the money here, of course.  But in addition to his principle based arguments today (and my more practical “watch out you may turn a lot of Democrats against you” argument in yesterday’s post), there’s another overriding reason why this lawsuit stinks: It creates a precedent for GOP vote suppression during the general election.

Can anyone doubt for a nanosecond that the Republicans, now finding their political backs up against the wall, will hesitate for even a micro-nanosecond before pulling every dirty trick in the book to disenfranchise minorities and other potential Democratic voters?  Of course, they’ll do it.  They’ve demonstrated their willingness — eagerness even — to do so time after time.

So let’s assume Hillary Clinton ends up being the Democratic nominee.  Can you guess what’s going to happen when she tries going to the mat to fight such Republican vote suppression, accusing the GOP of unconscionable conduct?  You’ve got it.  All they’ll have to do in response is to say: “Yeah, right, if it’s so awful why’d you pull the same crap in Nevada?”

Point, set, match. 

No, as Josh Marshall says today, “This is a critically important issue that is about no less than keeping Democrats on the right side of the right to vote.”

This anti-democratic (and anti-Democratic) gambit by Clinton’s forces must fail, or if it succeeds it must be punished at the polls by other Democratic voters.  Otherwise, it’s the GOP and its vote suppressers who will win in the end.

Update: A little bird just whispered into my ear the suggestion that I may be guilty of a false equivalency here.  Can it honestly be said that the lawsuit by Clinton’s supporters is the moral equivalent of GOP efforts to “cleanse” voter rolls of “undesirables,” intimidate minority voters and the like?

To which I would answer: Probably not, but it doesn’t matter.  The bottom line here is that the Clinton campaign is using legal technicalities to try to suppress votes, and that’s not a Democratic Party value.  It might be a more arguable point if the plaintiffs in the lawsuit had complained about the “super caucuses” from the start: but they didn’t.  Four of the plaintiffs were present when the rule was unanimously adopted.  To wait until a labor union endorsement goes against your candidate before suddenly discovering “one man one vote” concerns is disingenuous.

Besides, while there probably is not moral equivalency here in fact, in appearance there is.  And that’s all the GOP will need to use this as a precedent.

No, this is one point on which the Democrats need to be squeaky-clean.

This entry was posted by Steve on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 11:16 am and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.