Yes, Trump Got A Special Master Appointed. Don’t Care, Let’s Talk Women And Voter Registration.
Voter registration numbers are skyrocketing, and a lot of it is women.
I am not a lawyer, I follow a few on Twitter and while yes, the Trump appointed judge did his bidding with regards to getting him more delays (and trust me, I am sure DOJ is ready for it) by deciding that he had a right to a Special Master and doing all kinds of insane mental gymnastics and legal malpractice to justify it, I am going to ignore all that and talk about the midterms and voter registration, because that is going to have a much wider impact on things in the country than this BS with Trump.
However @tribelaw on twitter, @MuellerSheWrote on twitter and @AWeissman_ on twitter are all good places to go for deep dives into the utter miscarriage of law that happened today.
So, on to things that are more positive and less pull your hair out with hot tongs frustrating.
Right. Let’s start with Ohio….
As thousands protested across Ohio, many told News 5 they were going to register to vote. And they did. For women like Laila Shaikh, the newly-implemented abortion restriction in the state is why she is hitting the polls for the first time.
“That’s something that’s extremely personal, and it definitely did push me to go to the polls as a young woman, because you never know what type of situation you’re going to be in,” Shaikh said.
She is a Gen-Z voter who is ready to make her voice heard — and she is one of nearly 90,000 people who registered to vote after the decision, according to data from Ohio’s Secretary of State. This led her to vote in the August primary.
“Especially pushing me on being like, ‘Hey, I should even register for the smaller elections, you know, not just the one that’s coming up in November,’” she added.
A study done by the New York Times and verified by News 5 found a 6.4% increase in female voters from before the Dobbs leak to after the decision. This gives Ohio the second highest registration increase by women in the country.
(There are some caveats re: the numbers that are discussed in the article but even taking those into account there is a large surge in voters registering)
Most of Georgia’s 1.6 million new voters registered in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. Roughly 1.2 million people registered from 2018 to 2020, and 400,000 have enrolled since then.
Many of the new voters come from groups that typically support Democrats, including people of color, those under age 35 and people from other states who moved to urban and suburban areas in Georgia, according to an analysis of the state’s registration list by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The number of Hispanic voters grew 49% over the past four years, accounting for 4% of Georgia’s registered voters. Asian American voters rose by 43% and make up 3% of the state’s voters.
Meanwhile, white voters declined from 54% to 52% of the electorate over the past four years. Black voters held steady at 30%. In Georgia, a majority of white voters support Republicans, while Black voters overwhelmingly back Democrats. Voters don’t register by political party in Georgia.
Asian American voters have only recently been seen by candidates as a significant voting bloc that can’t be ignored, said Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, executive director for the Asian American Advocacy Fund. About 69% of Asian American voters supported Biden in 2020, according to voter surveys.
And settling for a moment in KY
The number of people who registered as “other” in July grew at more than double the rate of those registering as either Republican or Democrat, Adams said in a statement.
Although the number of registered Republicans overtook Democrats earlier this year, Adams said the latest numbers show that “any candidate for statewide office needs to not just hold the base, but also reach out to others.”
Overall voter registration increased by 5,995 in July. Republicans added 3,118 for a .19% increase, Democrats lost 2,726 for a .17% decrease and other registration increased by 1,807 for a .52% increase, he said.
There are a whole lot of voter demographic shifts going on, and we all know the GOP doesn’t like change.
But let’s take more of a deep dive here. First, my firm belief is (until it shows otherwise in election results) that higher turnout doesn’t always mean Dems will win. I have learned over the years of following politics to be happy about more voters just because more people are participating but not to expect it to mean a blow out for one side or the other. As a result I, unlike pundits from both sides of the aisle, am not going to get all joyous over possible implications on a wave of red or blue either collapsing or being a tsunami. There is a lot going on right now that will push and pull people across party lines from where they normally would vote, it doesn’t mean that they will completely flip parties or vote all Blue or Red all the way down the ballot.
What it DOES mean however is that people are paying attention, that is important as lack of interest in politics is what has allowed Trump and the GOP to consolidate so much power and pull shit like what just happened with Trump and his judge shopping, or the GOP playing games with SCOTUS nominations, or becoming very freewheeling with overturning precedents both legal and political is because the voters were zombies and just kept pushing the button that said R or D or not even showing up at all.
Now that people, especially women, are being personally impacted by one Supreme Court Decision…one decision that it took the GOP 40 years of political maneuvering to get all the pieces in place for, now these women are energized to vote.
White women have always been a struggle to consolidate as a consistent Dem voter for a long time now, we’ve usually had to rely on women of color to show up and consistently vote for us, but now that white women are feeling the pain they’re taking action, like what happened in Kansas where they voted down making their abortion regulations full on medieval.
The question now turns to, will these women stay single issue voters and say, for instance, Dems somehow magically keep the house and get the Senate in the midterms and codify abortion access, will all these women fade back into apathy now that they feel “safe” again or will they continue to educate themselves and vote?
There are some comments in the linked articles about women, especially naturalized citizens excited to vote in every election. That’s great! But will they truly stay consistent?
There’s an interesting movement happening in the Latino population as well, abortion for the first time is in their top five list of issues that matter to them and shockingly, given their predilection towards Catholicism, the majority of them are fine with being pro choice.
For the first time, abortion has entered the top-five issues concerning Latino voters, according to a new poll from two Latino civil rights organizations which showed Democrats with a 2-to-1 edge in the chase for Latinos’ midterm votes.
More than 70 percent of respondents said the procedure should be legal regardless of their personal beliefs, according to the survey from Hispanic civil rights and advocacy group UnidosUS and civic engagement organization Mi Familia Vota.
Now, this doesn’t bode well for GOP who had been starting to make inroads among this historically Democratic demographic by, well, basically calling Dems evil socialists and choosing language that would remind people of the oppressive socialist regimes they fled to the US from.
Gotta love the GOP, when you have no positions on anything, no plans and no real ideas, just resort to schoolyard name calling and driving the fear. It works, for a little bit anyway.
This could flip some areas in both Texas and Florida, as we saw in 2016 and even 2020 there were historic Dem areas of both those states that flipped to GOP and it’s largely because GOP started doing targeted attack campaigns in those areas.
(sigh Why can’t people just look up all the stuff that is said on attack ads and see if it is valid? Google people…you use it all the damn time anyway..sigh)
Another interesting tidbit I am seeing is that more and more Americans are coming back around to labor unions could be handy things to have about the place. Yes, we all know they will most likely become corrupt in the end, BUT they can serve a lot of good before they do that. Democrats have been friends to Unions and workers for a long time, the unions don’t always seem to recognize that though but after being burned by Trump, they seem to be getting a clue.
I mean, one would think they would have been more than aware that he never paid his contractors buuuuut, okay.
Here’s some links showing how pissed off unions are at him.
Communications Workers of America has quite the list.
San Bernardino Safety Workers..
Oh and the Steelworkers…have a bit to say too
Trump and Republicans have worked to neuter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a watchdog agency that has returned nearly $12 billion to 29 million consumers victimized by fraudulent credit-card, auto, and payday-lender scams. Trump called the CFPB a “total disaster” and made OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, its head, after Mulvaney called the CFPB a “sad, sick joke” and expressed his disapproval of its existence. Mulvaney has stripped its Fair Lending Office of enforcement powers, eliminated its student-loan office, dropped actions against payday lenders, and savaged its budget. The list goes on.
None of this is a surprise — but it directly contradicts Trump’s claim to have kept his promises to working people. Given continued economic growth and low unemployment, voters give Trump his highest approval ratings on the economy. Trump makes his populist economic posturing a centerpiece of his stump speech (along with along with attacks on the media and race-bait dog whistles to distract and divide).
Democrats would do well to puncture the myth and expose the lies. Despite all the posturing, this is an administration and Congress beholden to deep-pocket donors and entrenched corporate interests, that is acting relentlessly and systematically to undermine working people. “Which side are you on?” asks the old workers’ ballad. There should be no doubt about where Trump stands.
Hmm, who was it that just passed major bills to bring manufacturing jobs back? Yeah, Biden and the Dems.
While it remains to be seen how far these facts will penetrate into the skulls of a lot of the people in rural and Midwest America, one has to think that even they will eventually notice there are a lot more union jobs available for them then during the Trump years.
All of this could also shift the other demographic Dems consistently lose out to the GOP, white males. Which would be a massive boost to our chances of keeping the House and Senate until the end of Biden’s term.
The GOP, in their rush to get all of their truly horrendous goals obtained before the demographics completely turned against them may have hastened their own demise.
As I mentioned in my article regarding right wing social media (cough) giants? (cough) Parler and Truth Social their numbers of views and accounts have tanked significantly, and even at their heights weren’t all that impressive. The country may finally be hitting Trump fatigue as a whole, the shift to indies in KY could very much be a sign of GOP voters leaving the party or previously uncaring voters signing up but not wanting to affiliate one way or another. I think a lot of them are quiet quitting as it were, (hehehe see what I did there). They’ll still show up and say they’re GOP in public but in the voting booth? Not so much.
The GOP is struggling, even though it doesn’t seem like it. They are getting money from rich people, but they are losing ground, I think, amongst the “silent majority” as they like to call themselves. Voters that usually don’t care, and wouldn’t normally show up but now they’re pissed off and want to make all the craziness stop.
I have a feeling GOP will lose amongst the military demographic to after this whole Mar-A-Lago betrayal. Even the lowest ranking member of the military knows it is illegal to take TS documents home with you, there is no excuse and they all know they’d not have nearly the gentle treatment Trump has been getting either.
Midterms are in 10 weeks or so, and a lot still could happen. I tend to get pretty focused in on politics around election seasons so I hope you all are ready to enjoy the ride. Let’s just hope the ride ends well and not with all of us getting thrown out of a rollercoaster car headlong into a fiery pit of destruction…(fingers crossed).
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