The fight against Voter ID tells you everything you need to know about the Democratic Party.
The biggest issue you see here is the fact that Bexar County hasn’t updated their posters? Really? I find it so telling that liberals and progressives are more concerned with getting votes from people who lack photo ID than helping them get photo IDs.
In the case against Texas’ voter ID law Democrats insisted that up to 25% of African-Americans do not have a government issued identification card and as a result laws requiring an ID to vote are racist and unconstitutional. Over the past decade the Democrats have fought voter ID laws in 33 states spending more than $200M in the process — this figure doesn’t count the costs incurred by the states forced to fight these legal challenges. By framing the laws as racist the Democrats have created yet another way to solidify their hold over African-American voters. What African-Americans fail to realize is that the Voter ID fight is really about preserving their dependance on Democrat politicians.
Ten years ago Democrats realized that a HUGE percentage of their constituencies didn’t have the necessary identification to vote and their solution was to challenge Voter ID laws in the media and in the court. I contend that their concern wasn’t for the welfare of African-American voters, instead their concern was about keeping their jobs, staying in power, and creating a new issue to use against Republicans. The sad reality is that their strategy worked — African Americans are even more dependent on Democrats and their programs than anytime in history. It doesn’t have to be this way.
To function, much less get ahead, in the United States you need an ID. To start, we spend almost a trillion dollars a year on social safety nets for the poor and if you don’t have an ID you can’t access most of these programs. If you don’t have an ID you can’t access the traditional banking system and instead you have to rely on check cashing, payday lending, and other non-traditional money services — services that cost the poor billions of dollars per year. Legitimate employers are required by law to check your ID — if you don’t have an ID you’re going to have to work on the fringes without any of the protections the rest of us enjoy including: minimum wage, working conditions, exploitation, benefits, and unemployment. Finally, law abiding landlords require ID for housing — the only housing options for those without ID are typically dangerous and unhealthy. Not having an ID means you’re treated as subhuman — you are relegated to an underclass without any hope or opportunity.
If the Democrats really cared about the African-American community they would have spent their time, resources, and capital helping their constituents obtain IDs. By the Democrats own account, the 25% of African-Americans without IDs are all but excluded from the American experience. They have no chance at the American Dream because they lack the basic tools to participate in our society. The sad reality is that the Democrats want to keep it this way because they are acutely aware that as more and more African-Americans move up the economic ladder the more conservative they become.
What if the Republican Party’s brand was all about creating a society where prosperity was possible for every American? We lost African-Americans because we failed to help them participate in our society — their failure is our fault. If we are truly the party of Lincoln we owe it to his legacy and to our fellow Americans to make amends. The fact that a quarter of African-Americans don’t have the basic tools everyone needs to participate in our country provides the perfect opportunity for Republicans to bring them back into the fold. We MUST ensure that EVERY American, regardless of color or creed, has an ID so they can economically and politically participate in our society. But we can’t stop there. Once we’ve helped everyone get an ID we need to ensure that all Americans are financially literate — giving them the rest of the tools they need to move up the economic ladder. Prosperous voters are Republican voters. It is our duty to help all Americans — regardless of their political affiliation.
At the end of the day we need to realize that it won’t be easy to break the cycle of dependency African-Americans face today. The Democrats won’t give up control without a fight. Remember, the last time African-Americans joined the Republican Party en masse the Democrats formed the KKK — resulting in the murder of more than 3,000 African-American Republicans. Today the Democrats have created institutional structures of control in African American communities that result in violence — violence that perpetuates dependence and makes prosperity all but impossible. Today more than 3,000 African-Americans (almost all Democrats) are killed each year by other African-Americans — the Democrats have outsourced the violence to the same community they’re holding down. We can’t give up on an entire segment of our society just because it is hard — like JFK said we must do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
