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Democrats Whip Up Fear Of ‘Rigged’ Midterm Elections


Reported by MICHAEL GINSBERG | CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER | January 17, 2022

Read more at https://dailycaller.com/2022/01/17/democrats-republicans-election-laws-jim-crow-midterms-whip-up-subversion/

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(Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images)

With Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona refusing to eliminate the filibuster and pass a pair of election reform bills, Democratic politicians are claiming that Republicans will prevent fair midterm elections in November.

The two bills, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, would effectively nationalize elections by preventing states and locales from setting limits on absentee ballots, prohibiting ballot harvesting and changing polling locations without federal approval, among other changes. Democrats claim that these changes are necessary to prevent local Republicans from engaging in voter suppression and throwing out validly cast ballots.

President Joe Biden cast opponents of the bills as the heirs of segregationists, and laws requiring voter ID and banning line-warming as “Jim Crow 2.0.” He also claimed that individuals who support the stricter ID standards “plan to subvert the election.”

“History has never been kind to those who’ve sided with voter suppression over voters’ rights, and it will be even less kind for those who side with election subversion,” the commander-in-chief said. “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? The side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? The side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” he asked.

ATLANTA, GA – JANUARY 11: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to a crowd at the Atlanta University Center Consortium, part of both Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University on January 11, 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris delivered remarks on voting rights legislation. Georgia has been a focus point for voting legislation after the state voted Democratic for the first time in almost 30 years in the 2020 election. As a result, the Georgia House passed House Bill 531 to limit voting hours, drop boxes, and require a government ID when voting by mail. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina defended Biden’s remarks, while questioning whether Biden’s critics had the personal experience necessary to understand his comments.

“This is Jim Crow 2.0. That was one of the strongest points of the president’s speech that I agree with. So, this whole notion, when you walk around and no one has ever discriminated against you because of your skin color or you have never had to worry about having your vote counted, you can have those kinds of statements,” he said. 

During her Martin Luther King Jr. Day address, Vice President Kamala Harris asserted that opponents of the legislation wish “to interfere with our elections, to get the outcomes they want and to discredit those they do not.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer added that Republicans want to “rig the game and rig the count,” when it comes to elections, so a compromise position such as reforming the Electoral Count Act would be unacceptable to his caucus.

“If you’re going to rig the game and then say, ‘count the rigged game accurately,’ what good is that?” he asked during a Jan. 4 press conference.

Top Democrats have made these claims as polls and analysts suggest that Republicans are likely to take back the House and Senate by wide margins in the November midterms. A poll released Monday by Gallup found that Americans were more likely to support the Republican Party than the Democratic Party towards the end of 2021 than at any point since 1995, a year after the GOP netted 54 House and eight Senate seats.

Other polls have indicated that voters prefer generic Republican candidates to generic Democratic ones by as many as eight percentage points, with independents breaking sharply for Republicans.

Republicans need to pick up only five House seats and one Senate seat to win back both chambers, while the president’s party has on average lost 26 seats in the midterm elections conducted since the end of World War II, according to FiveThirtyEight. The only midterm elections in which the president’s party did not lose seats were 1998, as Republicans impeached former President Bill Clinton, and 2002, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Many Democrats assailed Republicans for equally baseless claims about the 2020 elections, while saying that Americans should not question the security and fairness of elections.

After Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley cited “allegations of voter fraud” in his announcement that he would object to the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s victory, Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar accused him of “join[ing] a coup attempt.”

Biden accused Hawley and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz of being “part of the big lie” after they objected to the Electoral College certification.

“Goebbels and the great lie, you keep repeating the law, repeating the lie,” Biden said, name-checking Adolf Hitler’s chief propagandist.

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Dems want climate change, tax hikes in infrastructure deal


Reported By Scott Wong – 04/29/19 12:49 PM EDT

The top two Democratic leaders on Monday told President Trump that any bipartisan infrastructure package needs to take into consideration climate change and include “substantial, new and real revenue” — a preview of the coming fight over tax hikes.

Trump will host Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) at the White House on Tuesday for discussions on a major infrastructure bill, one of the few policy areas that could see action amid divided government and as the 2020 race heats up.

Democrats want the measure for roads, bridges, waterways and other projects to be paid for with tax increases, and with a final price tag of at least $1 trillion over 10 years. Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget calls for $200 billion in federal spending on infrastructure, which White House officials say will leverage an additional $800 billion in investment through public-private partnerships over the next decade.

“America’s unmet infrastructure needs are massive, and a bipartisan infrastructure package must meet those needs with substantial, new and real revenue,” Pelosi and Schumer wrote in a letter to Trump on Monday. “We look forward to hearing your ideas on how to pay for this package to ensure that it is big and bold enough to meet our country’s needs.”

The leaders laid out other Democratic priorities: Any deal must extend beyond traditional infrastructure projects, take into account climate change, include “Buy America” provisions and provide jobs for a broad swath of workers.

“A big and bold infrastructure package must be comprehensive and include clean energy and resiliency priorities,” Pelosi and Schumer wrote. “To truly be a gamechanger for the American people, we should go beyond transportation and into broadband, water, energy, schools, housing and other initiatives. We must also invest in resiliency and risk mitigation of our current infrastructure to deal with climate change.”

“A big and bold infrastructure plan must have strong Buy America, labor, and women, veteran and minority-owned business protections in any package,” they added. “This bill can and should be a major jobs and ownership boost for the American people – manufacturers, labor contractors, and women, veteran and minority-owned businesses.”

Pelosi told reporters earlier this month that an infrastructure package “has to be at least $1 trillion. I’d like it to be closer to $2 trillion.”

Trump last year reportedly told lawmakers and senior White House officials that he was in favor of a 25-cent gas tax hike to help pay for an infrastructure overhaul. The gas tax, which supports the Highway Trust Fund and pays for road projects, has not been raised in more than two decades. But on Monday, a source familiar with Schumer’s thinking said the senator would not entertain any gas-tax proposal unless Trump also rolled back some tax cuts from his 2017 landmark tax law.

“Unless President Trump considers undoing some of the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy, Schumer won’t even consider a proposal from the president to raise the gas tax, of which the poor and working people would bear the brunt,” the Democratic source said.

Tuesday’s gathering marks the first meeting between Trump and the top Democratic leaders since the report from special counsel Robert Mueller was made public. It comes as multiple Democratic-led committees in the House have launched investigations into Trump, his administration, his business dealings and whether he obstructed justice.

A handful of other House Democrats will be attending Tuesday’s meeting: Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (S.C.), Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján (N.M.), Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (Mass.) and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (Ore.).

On the Senate side, Democratic attendees will include Minority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), Assistant Democratic Leader Patty Murray (Wash.), Democratic Policy Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), and Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Tom Carper (Del.), the ranking members of the Finance and Environment and Public Works committees, respectively.

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