Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is at it again. She’s predicting doom and gloom for the state of democracy in our constitutional republic. There is always hope, she says, but she expects a return to Jim Crow in the United States because it’s already happening.
Sandy from the Bronx was asked in an interview published by The New Yorker which nation would mirror her prediction of a return to Jim Crow days. “I think we will look like ourselves,” she said. “I think we will return to Jim Crow.” The ease in which she makes such predictions is breathtaking. Even cutting her some slack for her young age and naive political ideology, her ignorance should make her former teachers hang their heads. AOC conflates election integrity reforms to voter suppression and it’s just plain wrong.
“You have it already happening” in Texas and Florida with disenfranchisement laws, she said. “You have the complete erasure and attack on our own understanding of history, to replace teaching history with institutionalized propaganda from white-nationalist perspectives in our schools. This is what the scaffolding of Jim Crow was.”
“And the question that we’re really facing is: Was the last 50 to 60 years after the Civil Rights Act just a mere flirtation that the United States had with a multiracial democracy that we will then decide was inconvenient for those in power? And we will revert to what we had before, which, by the way, wasn’t just Jim Crow but also the extraordinary economic oppression as well?”
Here’s the thing – I’m living in the epicenter of the need for the voting integrity law reforms made in Texas. As it turned out, the young rookie Harris County Clerk in charge of handling elections decided to go rogue during the 2020 presidential election cycle. He was in his office only a matter of months before the time came for early voting. He decided to use the pandemic as a reason to make up voting law rules as he went. Chris Hollins announced his plan to send mail-in ballot applications to every registered voter in Harris County. He was taken to court and lost that battle. In Texas, there are specific reasons a voter may vote by mail. The state isn’t set up for universal mail-in voting. Hollins also established drive-thru voting, as well as 24 hour polling places. Neither of those actions had ever been done in previous elections. He set up numerous drop-off boxes which are limited in distribution in Texas election law. You get the picture. So, when the Texas legislature met last year, election integrity reform was a top issue because of the shenanigans happening in Harris County in 2020. Here’s an interesting development – Hollins declared his candidacy for Mayor of Houston last week. Imagine that.
AOC is way off base about voter suppression in Texas. There is no such thing. Period. In the new voting law, early voting is increased. The law requires voter identification and that sets the left off. The point is that if you are legally able to vote, you can vote. Democrats are panicked because of their fever dream of turning Texas blue and they realize that it won’t happen any time soon, in no small part to the albatross that Joe Biden is to Democrats. Biden, in his senile way, is also fond of invoking Jim Crow when speaking about passing voting rights laws in Congress. The President of the United States enables young socialists like AOC to spew forth with such dishonest language.
Born and raised by parents from the Midwest in the deep South, I have some vague memories of “whites only” signs, for example. I remember when public schools were desegregated. The days of Jim Crow essentially ended in 1965. For AOC and Joe Biden and the rest of their ilk to cry Jim Crow in today’s America shows a whole lot of willful ignorance. Like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, I wonder if AOC even understands the words she uses.
“As I keep hearing the references to Jim Crow, I ask myself how many Americans understand what Jim Crow was,” said Scott, the Senate’s only Black Republican, last month. He said the comparison was “offensive not just to me or Southern Americans, but offensive to millions of Americans who fought, bled and died for the right to vote.”
Running elections is the duty of local officials. If there are long lines of voters on election day in some parts of town, that is on the officials making decisions on the number of voting booths in any location. The complaints that voters waiting in line can’t receive a bottle of water or food is a lie. The only stipulation is that water and snacks can’t be passed out by campaigns. That falls under electioneering. Has AOC ever worked an election? I’d guess the answer is no.
In 2008, two New Black Panther Party members, Minister King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson, were sued by the Department of Justice on claims of voter intimidation for their conduct outside a polling station in Philadelphia. At the time, there were complaints that they were standing around the doors of a polling place with what one report described as Billy clubs.
AOC parrots what others say when she delivers her hot takes. Joe Biden is the same and he’s known to embellish his opinions for dramatic effect. Remember during the 2012 presidential election when he told a predominantly black audience that if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan won that they would “put you back in chains”? Democrats are using fear to persuade voters that their votes are suppressed if election law is specific and clear in its meaning. It’s against the law in Texas to harvest ballots, a measure that would be acceptable if the voting rights legislation pushed by Democrats in Congress becomes law. We see what they are doing and so far the Republicans in the Senate have stopped the power grab coming from Democrats to establish a permanent majority.
Via Hot Air
