The response in Washington to the Roberts KKKourt's arbitrary and lawless attack on the Voting Rights Act has been muted, to say the least. President Obama said he was "disappointed" by it, thus once again proving himself as excitable as a koala on quaaludes. Nancy Pelosi was more descriptive than judgmental, saying it "weakens the cause of voting rights in our time," without condemning the apparently partisan motivations for and objectives of the ruling. These two reactions appear to be the norm in the Village among Democratic leaders, where the consensus seems to be that it was just another "wrongheaded" move by the five conservatives on the Court rather than the radical, partisan assault on the Constitution it clearly is. This is potentially a major problem for how the Democratic Party is perceived among minority constituencies if we don't hound our leaders into being more serious on the subject, but also a huge opportunity.
While I can't speak for black voters, if this kind of non-reaction looks cavalier and indifferent to me, I have to wonder what it's advertising to the people who will be directly impacted by the ruling. People who have personally faced racist vote-suppression tactics in recent elections, and are now guaranteed to face them even more intensely due to this ruling. They know what this ruling means for them, so when they hear Democrats in Washington basically yawn and express mild concern over it while totally legitimizing it as a valid legal ruling, that's bound to have some political impact. Why go through the arduous effort of slogging through the GOP voter suppression cordon in order to vote for people who did nothing to protect you from these abuses, and wouldn't even rhetorically condemn the ruling that allowed them?
Now imagine the opposite: Imagine that we as activists hound our leaders into taking stark moral positions on the subject, and they make speeches angrily condemning the VRA ruling as the racist, partisan crime against justice and Constitutional law that it is. Imagine they highlight the self-contradictory hypocrisy of the Roberts KKKourt's rationale, and paint a picture for the public of a Neo-Confederate Republican Party legislating from the bench to reverse the Civil Rights movement and reinstitute Jim Crow. Imagine even that at least some of them call for impeachment investigations into the Supreme Court Justices involved for abuse of power, and that these calls are organized and smash their way into the general media. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a powerful narrative that would energize and mobilize minority voters even in a midterm election where their numbers might otherwise be low.
So it isn't just that the VRA ruling really is a lawless, arbitrary abuse of power by a five-man oligarchy who have repeatedly tried to overthrow our republic from the bench. It isn't just that the ruling really is sickeningly racist, retrograde, and mendacious. It's also that if we treat this as just another thing we "disagree" with rather than a radical departure we cannot tolerate, we may alienate the people whose daily lives make them acutely aware that this really is a massive escalation in the GOP and Roberts Court's war on democracy. And, conversely, we may mobilize those voters more strongly than anyone expects if we are strong in their defense and in condemning this wanton attack on fundamental freedom and the rule of law.
The way to begin is by contacting your Senators, Representatives, and the President to demand they condemn the ruling in the strongest possible terms and reject it as a legally invalid, partisan abuse of power. In fact, contact even the Republican ones so they feel the heat, even though it won't change anything they do. You might also contact state-level representatives and Governors and seek resolutions condemning and rejecting the VRA ruling, or else to warn them not to use this as an opportunity to pass voter-suppression measures. As a humble first step, I've started a petition on Change.org asking the Congress and President to condemn the ruling and seek impeachment inquiries against the Justices responsible:
http://www.change.org/...
If you support and sign it, you may also consider sharing it via social media, Twitter, Facebook, etc., or just telling people about it. Addressing this issue in proper context may be key to drumming up minority voter turnout in 2014, and that is probably an absolute necessity to overcome the voter-suppression moves that will be made. So let's get started.