Talking Points Memo: The Calamity of Jeff Sessions

By Josh Marshall:

[T]he single most distinguishing feature of Sessions public career is his hostility to African-American voting and the laws put in place to protect African-American voting rights. That stretches from bringing predatory voter fraud indictments with the fairly obvious aim of discouraging efforts to mobilize black voters in Alabama. You can see it in his long-running hostility to the Voting Rights Act. You can see it in his opposition to laws intended to end or the reduce the practice of permanently disenfranchising felons. Again, read Tierney's article. The list goes on and on.

I would say there is much, much more evidence that Jeff Sessions is a racist than that Steve Bannon is anti-Semite. But it's the same difference in both cases. Their actions are what matter, not their personal feelings and prejudices.

The Justice Department has been the historic ally of minority voting around the country. Much less during Republican administrations than Democratic ones, of course. But the raison d'etre of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division has held up that commitment to a significant degree even under administrations that were generally indifferent to voting rights. Again, the backstory of the Bush-era US Attorney scandal is an instructive one here.

Reducing minority voting has been a major part of the Republican policy agenda at the state level since 2011. I don't think it led to Hillary Clinton's defeat. But I don't think there's any question that it contributed to reduced minority voting in several key states. So it was a contributor to her defeat - in addition to numerous other factors.

Over the last eight years, the Obama Justice Department has been an aggressive defender of voting rights. Under Jeff Sessions, the federal government will unquestionably abandon that battle and join sides with GOP controlled states to further limit voting rights. They will most likely also use the power of the DOJ to attack voting rights in states where Democrats are in power. They will almost certainly reorient the DOJ's focus to trumped up voter fraud investigations.

The Full Story (November 18, 2016)