It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the nation’s pro-democracy forces as “the ghost of the Confederacy” rises again in the White House, the Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and in Southern statehouses around the nation. There may be light at the end of the tunnel, but will we have the stomach to do what needs to be done if we get there? Or is that light just another oncoming train? We’ve got a very important discussion about all of that on today’s BradCast. [Audio to full show follows this summary.]
BUT, FIRST TODAY… Results from Tuesday’s primary elections in both West Virginia and Nebraska. Few surprises in either state, though there was some encouraging news on the judicial front in WV, believe it or not, as well as a bullet — in the shape of a Republican plant — dodged in NE’s U.S. Senate race. There, Democrats hope progressive, working class independent candidate Dan Osborn may be able to unseat Trumpy Republican billionaire incumbent U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts this November. But first they had to keep the Republican plant from winning the Democratic primary.
Also today, a bit of encouraging news — as short-lived as it may prove to be — out of South Carolina on Tuesday, where Republican State Senate Leader Shane Massey argued against re-gerrymandering his already gerrymandered state to erase its one remaining majority-minority U.S. House District. That sole Democratic seat is held by well-respected Rep. James Clyburn, the first Black Congressmember from the state in nearly 100 years after Reconstruction. We share a bit of Massey’s impassioned courageous remarks to his caucus which resulted in blocking the shameful voting rigging scheme on Tuesday. That said, SC’s GOP Gov. Henry McMaster is reportedly planning to revive that scheme later this week amid pressure from Donald Trump and his radical, racist supporters. Some ghosts never die.
THEN… In the fallout of the corrupt, activist SCOTUS’ horrific Callais ruling two weeks ago, gutting what was left of the Voting Rights Act and sparking a mid-primary season race to erase Black U.S. House districts in the South… and on the heels of Virginia’s Supreme Court voiding the ballot referendum previously won by 1.6 million voters to effectively add four likely-Democratic U.S. House seats, Dems huddled over the weekend to find a way to reverse the backslide.
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and VA state lawmakers discussed their options. Among them was a hardball effort more akin to what we are used to seeing from Republicans. In short, as the New York Times reported, Democratic lawmakers would cite the reasoning offered by a lower court that invalidated last month’s Constitutional referendum in order to then invalidate the Commonwealth’s Constitutional Amendment that it was meant to overturn — the one that mandates House maps be drawn by an Independent Redistricting Commission. Then, simply adopt the new map by legislative fiat. Ya know, like Republicans do.
But, that’s not even the hardest of the hardballs yet. In order to prevent that effort from also being struck down by the state’s right-leaning Supreme Court, lawmakers would also adopt a new law changing the retirement age for court Justices from 75 to 54, effective immediately, forcing every member off the bench, to be replaced by friendly new judges appointed by Democrats.
There are several potential problems with the scheme, and it appears unlikely to happen, if only because the head of VA’s Election Commission said that it would need to happen by yesterday in order to give election officials time to prepare for their August 4 primary. (Really? Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee just rewrote their entire maps in the middle of their own primaries, after tens of thousands of voters had already voted!)
We’re joined today by KATE RIGA, D.C. reporter at Talking Points Memo and co-host of its Josh Marshall Podcast. This week, she made the case at TPM that this proposal is the type of hardball Democrats need to develop the stomach for before they ever find themselves with enough power again to restore our crippled democracy.
“Republicans and mainstream media will howl, and Democrats will be cornered every day and accused of perpetuating a dictatorial takeover,” she writes. “The public, which will likely get much of their information through this lens, may not like it.”
“It will be wrenching for a party of institutionalists,” she argues. “But any Biden-esque turning of the page, relying on the institutions Trump has corrupted or exposed as rotted, will not work.”
Riga concedes such a plan may ultimately not work in VA either. But taking the shot “is essentially practice, building muscle memory for 2028.” She notes that some Dems may “find this kind of gambit too scary or distasteful while the southern states gleefully stamp out Black voting power.” But, if so, “it’ll be a good data point on how far the party is from one that could salvage democracy in two and a half years.”
As you might imagine, I’ve got a lot of thoughts — and questions — for Riga on all of this today in what I think is a difficult, at times scary, but incredibly necessary conversation to begin.
“Red states are doing this all the time, and reaping the benefits,” she tells me. “I understand that unraveling these institutions is scary, is off-putting. But you come back to what is the alternative? Now Democrats just have to live under these rules that Republicans don’t? And, as a result, be locked out of power? Or make power very hard for them to win? That’s just untenable.”
“What is kind of a comfort to the squeamishness side of things is that Republicans are running roughshod over these norms and ripping apart the institutions in service of entrenching permanent power. That is their ultimate goal. If Democrats, on the other hand, get a trifecta in ’28, reform the Court, get rid of the filibuster, make D.C. a state, their first legislative actions will be instituting nationwide gerrymandering reform. Passing voting rights law. Protecting abortion rights.”
“The ultimate aims of the parties are diametrically different. So if you have to do some of this norm-breaking and act a little Republican-y on the route to restoring civic democracy, I think that has to be worth it. Because again, what is the alternative? Just the authoritarian slide, right?”
Right. As noted, lots to discuss today with Riga on all of those points today…
