Today, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court barred the use of ballot drop boxes and ruled voters could not give their completed absentee ballots to others to return on their behalf.  This is but one of the many new voter suppression moves by the states, especially those that are considered ‘red’ states, but the utter gall of it disgusts me.  Who does it hurt?  Blue collar working people, poor people, elderly and young people, Black people … all those categories that are more likely to vote for a Democrat come election day.  Hell, they might just as well have said that only registered Republicans will be allowed to vote!  Or … why even have an election … why not just let the damn Supreme Court decide who will make the laws?  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

These voter restriction laws are designed with one purpose in mind … to keep people from the polls.  Their efforts can only work if we let them, if we are too lazy or too apathetic to go the extra mile to ensure our voices are heard.  In 2020, we saw the highest percentage of voter turnout in over a century … a whopping 60%!  If that figure doesn’t disgust you, then you aren’t paying attention.  Jonathan Capehart, writing for The Washington Post, sums it up nicely and his final paragraph says it all …

Vote, dang it! It’s your one superpower in our democracy.

Jonathan Capehart, 8 July 2022

Okay, America. Now that the celebration of your 246th birthday is over, you’ve got some work to do. Or, at least the “you” who are Democrats do. Y’all are experts at hair-on-fire complaining and savior hunting, all while ignoring the power of your own vote and growling at anyone who reminds you of it.

There has been story after story after story about how Democrats are mad at President Biden for fill-in-the-blank deficiency. (My colleague Dana Milbank recently did his usual excellent job of cataloging the absurdity of it all.) I’m not saying the White House is perfect or isn’t in need of some messaging improvements. What I am saying is enough with the self-defeating backbiting. Neither Biden nor the party — or the country, for that matter — can afford the consequences.

The mewling and moaning seem to have begun in earnest late last month after Biden’s remarks on the Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to an abortion. “Voters need to make their voices heard,” Biden said. “This fall, we must elect more senators and representatives who will codify a woman’s right to choose into federal law once again, elect more state leaders to protect this right at the local level.”

This “Schoolhouse Rock!” statement of fact was greeted with derision and cries of “Is that the best you’ve got?” The maddening, all-too-typical shortsightedness makes me want to grow my hair out — so I could tear my hair out.

Biden is a president elected by the people, not a king ruling from on high. He needs a House and Senate that will send him legislation he can sign into law. If Biden is to do all the ambitious things today’s complainers (rightly) want, they need to give him a bigger Democratic majority in Congress than the wafer-thin one that exists now.

But here’s what most irksome: Those complainers will claim demoralization because of what they see as Biden’s legislative impotence, and then stay home in November. And if this abdication ends up rolling out the red carpet for Republicans, said complainers will blame Democrats for the ensuing mayhem of the GOP demolishing even more rights.

Before you turn the comments and my mentions into a dumpster fire of invective, let’s walk down memory lane to that time Democrats lost the House and then the Senate in successive midterm elections.

A wave of hope-and-change put President Barack Obama in the White House in the 2008 election. In the 2010 midterms, 26 million fewer Democrats voted for House candidates than in 2008. Tea party-powered Republicans claimed the House majority by gaining 63 seats; the GOP vote fell off, too, as is common in midterms for both parties — but not nearly as sharply.

Yes, Obama won reelection in 2012. But by the time of the 2014 midterms, he was begging the coalition that sent him back to the White House to show up at the polls. Nope. Not only did the GOP increase its House majority to the largest since World War II, but Democrats lost their Senate majority. About 15 million fewer Democrats cast ballots for Senate candidates in 2014 than in 2008 — compared with only about 6 million fewer Republicans.

Democrats are facing a few structural and historical headwinds. The president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterms of its first term; the one exception since World War II is 2002, after the 9/11 attacks. Voter suppression efforts in the states are focused on African Americans and other key Democratic constituencies. Gerrymandering is a problem, of course, and the Senate is built in a way that disadvantages Democrats. Unfair as it may be, voter participation is the one power individuals can wield against those headwinds.

And let me be clear that I understand the urgency of doing something right now to safeguard the lives and health of women and girls post-Roe. But it is imperative we do everything possible to try to prevent what could be a Republican wave and the conservative revanchism that would undoubtedly attend it.

During an interview about her documentary “Aftershock” on Black maternal mortality, I decided to ask Tonya Lewis Lee what she would tell the increasingly vocal “why should we vote again?” crowd now that the right to abortion has been stripped away. She was unequivocal. “Voting matters. You need to vote again and again and again,” Lee said. “Voting is everything.”

Indeed, it is. You can either spend your time griping about nothing getting done or you can vote to help elect people who will do what the American people need. To argue that voting is a waste of time or useless is to participate in your own powerlessness.