Indiana proved to be an outlier. Except for the (predicted) victory by Mike Pence–and the fact that Republican extremists will have pretty much total control of Indiana government for at least the next two years–last night was satisfying. And even here, there were bright spots: Mourdock proved that even in Indiana, crazy doesn’t sell. (He should have taken a page from Pence’s book and refused to talk until after the election). Glenda Ritz defeated Tony Bennett, who never learned to play nice with other children. IPS got three new Commissioners who are likely to take the job of improving the schools seriously–and who are unlikely to rubber-stamp Eugene White’s decisions.
The best news was national. I’m still sifting through results, but I’m no longer waiting to exhale. The President won comfortably–a blowout in the electoral vote and a comfortable margin in the popular vote. The Democrats actually increased their margin in the Senate–something that really shouldn’t have happened, given the seats that were in play. And for the first time ever, marriage equality measures won at the ballot box.
It will be a few days until all the details are available, but Republican strategists should have listened to whoever it was who said “demography is destiny.” Or as Lindsay Graham put it a couple of months ago, there aren’t enough old white men to keep the Republican party afloat.
Richard Mourdock and Mike Pence have been having some problems the past couple of days trying to downplay their enthusiastic participation in the GOP’s War on Women–explaining that they really, truly love female incubators…er, women. (We just need to remember why their God put us on this earth…)
So it may be timely to remind ourselves that the War on Women (and its attendant dishonesty) isn’t limited to matters of reproduction.
For example, I see where the Romney/Ryan ticket is explaining its lack of support for the Lilly Ledbetter Act by claiming the legislation isn’t really about equal pay for equal work. No sireee. It’s just an effort to enrich those awful, terrible, liberal trial lawyers.
A couple of days ago, on ABC, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a leading Romney surrogate, argued, “[J]ust because they call a piece of legislation an equal pay bill doesn’t make it so. In fact, much of this legislation is, in many respects, nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers collect their fees and file lawsuits, which may not contribute at all whatsoever to increasing pay equity in the workplace.”
Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, said something very similar last week, criticizing the proposal as being little more than “opening up the lawsuits and statute of limitations.”
Romney allies have justified their opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Act on these grounds for months. Pete Hoekstra, who is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay law “a nuisance.” Another Romney surrogate said the law is little more than “a handout to trial lawyers.” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) agrees–of course, he approved and signed legislation repealing Wisconsin’s equal pay law, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
There’s just one little problem with this effort to pretend that their problem isn’t with women getting treated equally. As it happens, trial lawyers–no matter how clever–cannot collect a fee unless and until they win the case.
Let me put this in language even non-lawyers will understand. Trial lawyers generally take cases on contingency. That means that unless they win the case, neither they nor the client will see a penny. Contingent fee arrangements, whatever their defects, give people access to the justice system who could not otherwise afford a lawyer. Contingent fee arrangements also provide a powerful incentive to lawyers to take only “meritorious” cases–no lawyer in his right mind wants to spend months or years on a case that’s a likely loser and won’t pay a dime. (Even when the lawyer thinks a case is very solid, there is always a substantial risk of losing. As I used to tell my clients, going to trial is always a crap shoot, no matter how strong a case you think you have.)
So–if we follow the argument being made by the Romney camp, they oppose the Lilly Ledbetter Act because lawyers who win cases–by proving that their clients were denied equal pay for equal work–will make money.
But they aren’t against equal pay for women. No siree. If you want to give all your employees who are doing the same work the same pay, why that’s fine. But if you don’t, you shouldn’t have to worry that the big bad trial lawyer will come after you.
They aren’t against equal pay for us girls. They’re just against providing a remedy to those of us who get shafted.
Just like they aren’t for rape. They’re just against allowing a woman who gets pregnant as a result do anything about it.
They may not be humane (or even human), but you have to give them credit: in this, at least, they’re consistent!
There’s so much fabrication floating around the internet, it’s hard to trust anything you read–especially as the election draws closer. So when a Facebook friend posted an article from a source I didn’t recognize, my first inclination was to categorize it with the various paranoid fantasies of “dirty deeds” and “voter fraud” that have grown thicker than ragweed this election cycle. The article claimed that Mitt Romney’s son Tagg, and other members of the Romney family, are part owners of Ohio’s voting machines–specifically, those supplied by Hart Intercivic.
A search of Snopes turned up nothing, pro or con. Google, however, was more accommodating, as were a few Facebook friends. The story was corroborated by several sources, among them Politifact and that noted left-wing publication, Forbes. Forbes reported that Hart Intercivic is largely owned by H.I.G. Capital, that H.I.G. Capital employees hold two of the five board seats–and both of them have made direct contributions to Romney’s campaign. Tony Tamer, the firm’s founder, is a major bundler for Romney, as are three other directors of H.I.G. In fact, H.I.G. is Romney’s 11th largest contributor. And to top it all off, H.I.G. has shared business interests with Solamere Capital, owned by…Tagg Romney.
Election experts have long warned that electronic voting machines are vulnerable to hacking; that’s one reason many jurisdictions have begun insisting on a paper trail. (I’m told some European countries have recently gone back to paper ballots in order to reassure voters of the legitimacy of election results.) There are all sorts of reasons why this latest bit of news is disquieting: the centrality of Ohio in our electoral vote system, the persistent accusations of irregularities in that state’s vote in 2004, and the increasingly brazen efforts by Republicans to suppress minority votes.
It began with so-called “Voter ID” laws, purportedly aimed at in-person voter fraud, a largely imaginary problem. As some unguarded comments by GOP operatives have confirmed, the real aim of such laws is to suppress the votes of elderly, poor and minority Americans–those most likely to lack the documentation, transportation and/or resources needed to obtain the necessary ID.
The Voter ID efforts have been accompanied by persistent measures to restrict voting–to limit early voting periods, and refuse to authorize satellite voting sites, and generally to make exercising ones franchise as inconvenient as possible, again on the theory that such measures would be most likely to discourage lower-income voters who tend to skew Democratic.
In the past week or so, there have been reports from swing states of other shenanigans: in Florida, Republican operatives were caught trashing registrations; in several other localities, robo-calls have been made to minority voters “reminding” them to vote–on November 8th. (The election, of course, will take place on November 6th.) Then there were the billboards in minority neighborhoods, featuring a judge’s gavel and the text “Voter Fraud is a felony—up to 3 1/2 years and a $10,000 fine.” Those appeared in Cleveland, Columbus and Milwaukee. (Clear Channel has now responded to community outrage and begun taking them down; however, much of the harm has been done.)
I’m sure there must be places where the Democrats are engaging in similar tactics, and they certainly have done so in the past, but reports of Democratic chicanery haven’t surfaced in this election cycle. My sense is that these are the sort of tactics used by folks who smell defeat–who realize that winning will require a bit of “fudging” here and there, and for whom winning is more important than playing fair and square. This year, despite the close national polls, that best describes the Romney/Ryan team.
Their faux concerns about voter fraud are an example of what psychologists call “projection.”
A good friend of mine, one of those thoughtful Republicans from a former era, has decided–after internal struggle–that he will cast his vote for Richard Mourdock–despite his obvious distaste for the man and his positions. His justification is that Mourdock will cast his first vote for leadership of the Senate. My friend, a long-time Republican who has held elective office, is a “team player.” He cites the old adage: “he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”
I understand the reasoning. If you truly believe that your “team” has better ideas, will do better by the country, you can justify swallowing hard and supporting dubious team members.
But what if your whole team is playing dirty? What if the mean-spirited and intellectually limited guy you are holding your nose and voting for is more typical than you want to admit? What if your team has abandoned the ideas and positions that drew you to join in the first place? Where should your loyalties lie–to the team, or the sport? To your party, or the country?
People join political parties for many reasons. Mom and Dad were Democrats or Republicans. You want to get ahead, and you live in one of the increasingly common areas where one party dominates. You identify as union, or management, and that identification trumps other concerns. Or you develop a political philosophy and choose the party with the platform that is most consistent with that ideology. Whatever the reason for that original choice, political scientists tell us that few of us rethink it. Instead, we continue to root for our first “team,” much as sports fans do.
In my own case (being a teenager who read a lot and didn’t date much), I became a Republican because I had formed pretty firm political positions; I was a social liberal and a fiscal conservative (still am), and in the early 1960s, the Democrats were much farther to the left than I was (or than Democrats are today). I was drawn to the libertarian wing of the Republican party, which came closest to my own beliefs. In the years since, both the Democrats and GOP have moved further and further to the right, and I became less and less comfortable with my “team.” George W. Bush was the final straw, and I left the party. I became an apostate. Many of my former political friends understood; others became very chilly, and some very critical opinions of my apostasy have gotten back to me. Fair enough.
But here’s the thing. Politics isn’t football, where who wins and loses doesn’t ultimately make a difference in the lives of real people. Many of my Republican friends from the “old days” recognize how much the party has changed, but they can’t bring themselves to sever the bond. They tell themselves that the Mourdocks and the Pences and Akins and Wests and Bachmanns and Brouns and so many others are just outliers, that the Democrats also have whack jobs (true enough, just not nearly as many and not currently in control of the party). So they justify continuing to support the very people who are destroying the once-respectable Republican brand.
No intellectually honest person will agree with any political party 100% of the time–or even 90%. We all fit imperfectly into those political boxes. But when the party you vote for holds positions you know to be deeply damaging to the body politic, when too many of the people you are nominating are uninformed bloviators and worse, it’s time to consider apostasy.
If we all became “swing voters,” willing to abandon either party when it loses its way–if neither party could depend upon a base of knee-jerk support from people who are cheering for a team rather than voting their policy preferences–I think we’d get better parties.
