The GOP who became Trump compadres were all about trying to lie, cheat, and steal to win. The cancer is gone, but if they continue down that path Trump led them on they won't be helping anyone or gaining any more support down the road.
I don't even think that about gun regulation because the second amendment means something. Voting rights is inherent to our Constitution. This is not how you handle vital rights.
The players were pretty much guaranteed to boycott the game, so this is simply MLB avoiding a fiasco and PR nightmare.
That's is extremely costly for voters for essentially no return. But if that's your position, so be it. Let's take that position to the real world. The effect of laws where not everyone but certain demographics has to jump through more hoops to cast a vote is legalize cheating. That, on a scale of impact to millions of people in every election, is cheating with a significant chance of impacting election results. On the principle of fairness, or of non-cheat, we should not be supporting laws that legalize cheating. Based on a stance of non-cheat principle, one ought to be strongly against this GA's election law.
Limiting voting by lawful voters is its own type of cheating. This cheating will cheat more voters than not doing it.
Voting is a basic right. We got 72 amendments saying so. Unlike the cost of actual lives for the right to bear arms, there isn’t a cost to the right to vote. Given essentially no fraud, there is no logical, reasonable, moral, justifiable reasons to farther restrict or made voters jump through more hoops to exercise their basic right. We should be lowering the cost, the burden and make it much easier for voters. HR1 is one step in that direction.
"The Biden Baseball League": https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biden-baseball-league-11617402781?mod=hp_opin_pos_1 excerpt: In the process the league has smeared Georgia’s elected majority as racist and anti-democratic. It has done economic harm to the state, though we suppose Mr. Manfred will have a new friend in the White House. Mr. Biden gives the order, and Mr. Manfred salutes. Welcome to the Democratic Baseball League. Mr. Biden’s lobbying of MLB, and Mr. Manfred’s acquiescence, is every bit as politically divisive as Donald Trump’s stigmatizing of athletes for taking a knee during the national anthem. It furthers the destructive progressive desire to politicize everything. So much for healing and uniting the country.
Turley https://jonathanturley.org/2021/04/...me-part-of-our-alternative-political-reality/ excerpt: Psaki was confronted by Fox News with Biden’s continued false statements about the law and she proceeded to double down. In a remarkably disingenuous moment, Psaki responded “It standardizes the ending of voting every day at five, right? It just gives options. It gives options to expand it, right, but it standardized it at five. It also makes it so that outside groups can’t provide water or food to people in line, right?” The points are ridiculous and Psaki knew it. The law made mandatory the full day of voting to guarantee those hours while allowing the same option of other states to remain open until 7 pm. The change was meant to prevent shorter hours under a prior ambiguity in the law. Yet, there was no hue and cry over “alternative facts.” Biden is supporting a boycott of a state based on false assertions about a law and most of the media is complicit in maintaining that false narrative. There are aspects to this law that may warrant such opposition by not the two primary reasons cited by Biden. Psaki’s alternative facts are now part of an alternative reality being constructed in Washington with the help of an enabling media. Take the push by Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for the MLB to play its All-Star Game in New York. Schumer insists that in New York “we are working to make it easier, not harder, to vote.” However, New York has some harsher rules than those contained in Georgia. For example, there are fewer early voting days than Georgia and a restriction on passing out food and water over $1 in value to voters in line. New York also requires an excuse to request an absentee ballot. So, if Georgia is “Jim Crow on steroids,” what is the New York law? The insistence that this law is worse than the Jim Crow laws is to misrepresent history. The Jim Crow laws involved raw and open racial segregation and discrimination. The defeat of these laws were a defining moment in our struggle against racism. Once again, there are legitimate issues to be discussed on voting systems, including the effort to federalize election laws. However, we need to have that debate with an honest and accurate factual foundation. Law professors and commentators who were vocal in denouncing the false legal claims of the Trump administration are silent today. At the same time, some like former Clinton adviser Marc Elias have been criticized for using offensive arguments to push the campaign against Georgia. When Conway made her comment, a group of law professors led by Georgetown Professor Abbe Smith filed a bar complaint against her. The complaint was in my view completely meritless, but received widespread acclaim. (For the record, Conway is a former student of mine from George Washington University). Psaki is not a lawyer but the silence on her defense of these false representations by the President is deafening. Trump made false claims about the size of his inauguration crowd. This is a false claim about a law being used to support a boycott of an entire state (and a major argument for federalizing state election rules). One would think that the call for accuracy would be even greater in this context. At the same time, the very Georgia officials (who were lionized for their bravery and integrity in the last election by Democrats) are now being accused for pushing through a set of changes that are worse than the Jim Crow laws put into place after the Civil War. The two specific reasons repeatedly cited by the President have been shown to be gross misrepresentations. However, these “alternative facts” fit a narrative that has, once again, found favor in the news. The law is worse than Jim Crow because of the political rather than the historical or legal realities.
This is dishonest framing. Players wanted to move. MLB eventually listens to their player. Biden made a statement that he would strongly supports the move, but it was the players and MLB choice without pressure from the POTUS. All of this 'hurt feeling', claim of 'divisive' talks and attempts at shifting organic and private party actions onto politicians or others are distraction from the actual reasons why players, private parties and companies took actions and made statements against the GA's election law. Deal with the reasons.
Important to note too that MLB is a business and this is a business decision. I highly doubt the ownership and league office of MLB is making this decision because they truly care about voting rights. They are smart enough to know that this issue matters to their talent and to the majority of their consumers. As such not taking steps like this will likely risk their profitability.
Incredibly off-base. It isn't like it is the same as Trump's lies about inauguration crowds. The GA law is for the purpose of disenfranchising voters. That is accurate and true. Biden repeating inaccurate claims is harmful to that argument and shouldn't be done. But it isn't a matter of huge groups of people insisting it is 'worse' than the Jim Crow laws as Turley frames it. He's dishonest in that presentation, so he hurts his own argument. This is bickering over the details, the individual trees rather than looking at the actual law and forest which purposefully seeks to limit certain peoples access to their right to vote.
Surely you can come up with even more posts defending the blatant attempt by Georgia’s Republican Party to suppress the vote. Clearly, they need all the help you can give them.
Of note - MLB fanbase is mostly white. Hardly a liberal, progressive bunch. This reflects a reality that I have wondered about for a while and that I think is reflected in polls. Corporate America is most responsive directly to their Consumers. They know their customer base the best. What they do reflect what they believe is best for them, for their profitability going forward. Corp America: Anti-voter suppression laws. Anti-discriminatory laws. Anti-Congressmen that wouldn't certify the election on Jan 6th. Pro-fairness in elections. Pro-inclusion. Pro-democracy. Maybe their prediction of Consumer buying power moving forward is wrong. I wouldn't bet against that. What this said is Corporate America believes the majority of consumers do not support these policies and by extension, Republican's policies of voter suppression, discrimination toward certain groups, of anti-democracy. Today Republican politicians and leaders not only do not represent mainstream American but have been shifting more toward the extreme of their base. I think this, unfortunately, due to "team sport" mentality or extreme polarization, is pulling many moderate Republican and Conservative toward that extreme. The same applies to the other side. You can also see some of that behavior on the Democrat side, but not anywhere as close because today Democratic politicians and leaders represent mainstream America much more than the extreme of their base.
MLB fanbase might be mostly white but that doesn't mean voting rights is something that there isn't a significant segment that does care about it. As you note today's Republicans don't represent the mainstream. MLB understands that as a major sport it's vital they are seen to be in the mainstream for their own financial success. Even if they are uncertain about their fanbase they also need to consider where their talent is at.
I think the Jim Crow rhetoric has gotten out of hand and I think using that rhetoric against these particular laws is gonna backfire. Republicans are starting to make a strong case against the rhetoric and it will cover up the actual bad things in the law.
Has the Republican rhetoric that the election was stolen gotten out of hand? Has the Republican rhetoric that the January 6th insurrection was an ANTIFA back flag op gotten out of hand? etc. In the end what is worse ... an anti-voting law highly targeted against your opponents ... or ... the mean spiteful words your opponents say about it? The truth is the Republicans behave badly ... all of the ****ing time ... and are totally snowflakes when called out for their bad behavior.
