The Daily Beast Podcast - Why SCOTUS’ Shock Voting Rights Call May Be Window Dressing

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

Author David Daley tells The New Abnormal that while the Supreme Court’s Alabama decision is a win for democracy it may be a PR move by conservative justices. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus edition of the new abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with David Daly from Fair Vote, who of course wrote the book Unrigged, how Americans are battling back to save democracy. And he's going to talk to us all about the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court's recent ruling on gerrymandering in Alabama. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some questions?

Clips. Clip it. All right. So, Marjorie Taylor Green. Oh, dear. I know. We're coming in hot. As we know, one of the biggest features of Trumpism is saying the quiet part loud. And here she says what we all know about her staff while grilling CDC head, Rochelle Wollenski. Any adverse event, if you got hit by a truck after you got your vaccine, that was reported to the vaccine adverse event reporting system. We at CDC have a responsibility to comb through every single one of them.

to review the medical charts and to see if they are related. It is the case that the vaccine doesn't prevent being hit. Ms. Walensky, I'll reclaim my time. You did nothing about that and continued to push vaccines. That's what the American people care about. We review all of the things that come into the vaccine adverse event reporting system. I'd be happy to have our staff educate your staff on the work. I don't want my staff educated.

You should educate the American people about what you've done of 1.5 million reports because they feel like you've done. nothing and continue to say safe and effective. Oh, God. That was amazing. I don't want my staff educated. Yeah, yeah. Bravo on that. I'm pretty sure they're not. Oh, that's fantastic. There's nothing, I think, at this point, I hate more than when Marjorie Taylor Green starts talking about the American people as if she speaks for the

American people. Oh, what it does to me is not legal and in a bad way. I don't even know what that means, but it's bad. This reminds me of when her staffer laughed at the idea that fact-checking matters. It really is the thing. Like in that office, they're just like, nope, all propaganda all the time. Yeah, I mean, look, that's MAGA. That's who they are.

Well, speaking of people who really don't represent popular viewpoints, viewpoints that are shared by very many people and are extremely extreme and frankly demented in the brain. This weekend, Charlie Kirk held one of his rally. for people with those views that nearly no one agrees with. And their newest one is that women shouldn't be career-minded or they'll be miserable cat ladies. Good afternoon, Mr. Kirk. My name is Abigail, and I'm one of the co-presidents of the new TPPUSA chapter at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

My other co-president is right there. She's awesome. So like these other women in this room, I am very drivetine. career-wise, and my goals are set on succeeding as an orthopedic surgeon. And I have really rarely thought about even getting married, having children, and even going into dating. Like, it's just something that I never really thought about. Would you be able to give me some advice as somebody who so badly wants to succeed in surgery,

but to get out of residency fellowship? going to be 30 before I can really focus on myself. So what's my advice for really balancing my career as well as venturing into settling down? You're going to have to choose which one matters more, and that will be up to you. So first of all, thank you for being involved with Turning Point USA. So here's my piece of advice. Go try to spend a couple days with babies, and if it doesn't move you to want to have some of your own, then go do the surgeon thing. I mean that.

If you don't get baby fever being around young kids as a young lady, then you kind of have your answer. But if you're around a young child or a young baby or like all of a sudden something greater than yourself gets activated where all of a sudden you feel maybe a prodding by the Holy Spirit, then you got something to think about. But look, you could potentially do both. You could become an orthopedic surgeon and still do that.

But there will be a lot of people that says, oh, just put the family thing on hold and put that on hold. I just want to caution you a reality is that there are a lot of successful 35-year-old orthopedic surgeons that have cats and not kids. And they're very miserable. The radical left is largely being run by childless young ladies, young women that are in their mid-30s that are super miserable in antidepressants because I think they're missing something. I think he's missing something. He's missing a lot of things. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I mean, who's dumber the person who gives dumb advice or the person who asks the dumb person for advice? I think the person that asks the dumb person for advice. I'm going to push back on you guys. Jesse. Oh, here we go. Here we go. This is not one of my usual pushbacks. Younger people are often so deluged with things that they're confused and they just asking a lot of people what to do and they see somebody that they think, like clearly she belongs. to his stupid organization.

She thinks he built something good for some reason. But like, I agree that Charlie Kirk is the last person. I mean, this is a guy who ends up in the hospital hanging out with teenagers all the time. It's a weird guy, but kids don't know better. And that's why they're kids. No. I think these women, these young, these young women that attend these kind of events, I don't know what they are looking for.

You are a part of a party that sees you as nothing more than an incubator. So to stand up before this white man and say, like, I have never even thought about dating, like, he's sizing you up. Yep. And looking at like how many, and I don't know what race this young woman was, but like the Republican Party, they want more white babies. This is, this is all the reasoning behind abortion being overturned because of the demographic shift that is happening. And so it's just like to stand up before that man and say, I'm thinking about. being a successful doctor and he said go hold a baby shut the fuck up the both of you are stupid i look jessie i agree with you that i think it's perfectly okay and natural to be young and to be confused about

things and to have questions about things i'm in my mid-30s and i still have questions about things i'm not faulting her for wanting advice but come on there are people you ask for advice and Charlie Kirk is never, ever one of them. That whole conference turned into like this, you know, women belong in the house thing and it's just amazing. Yeah. Well, the best part is that people laughed at him when he said this. Yeah.

Really. It's amazing. By other thing is it's like ignoring the depressed thing. It's like, buddy, depression is not partisan. This country is filled with depressed people for a bigillion different reasons. I hate to say it here, but I did do some looking up of some studies. and there's a hell of a lot of prescription drugs handed out for depression in red states, buddy.

Yeah. Capital is does not look good for you. I'm depressed because Charlie Kirk is successful. Yeah. It just depresses me for the state of this country. I'm going to end this podcast because I need to go run and hold a baby. I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing here. Spend a couple of days doing that, Danielle.

I am. The new abnormal is suspended until I get back from daycare. Well, I have been. bad news because he's going to show us even more of why he should not be listened to in this next clip and how actually sad his existence is. Show is brought to you by Blackout Coffee. It is powered by Blackout Coffee. Family owned, 100% committed to conservative values from sourcing the beans to the roasting process. Customers support go to blackout coffee.com slash Charlie. That is Blackout Coffee.com slash Charlie.

Super happy to partner with them. 100% endorsement. Check it out. for all your coffee needs. We are now having to, I'm guilty of this. I'm going through my kitchen. I'm going to my refrigerator. And I'm starting to ask the question, well, is this ketchup bottle woke? Is this mustard?

I mean, literally, we're at the place now where we have to go through is the company that makes us. And so, blackout coffee.com slash Charlie, I'm sure many of you are coffee drinkers because you're high energy. Yeah, this clip was amazing. For a couple of reasons, first, it just shows, I think I tweeted. I did tweet this.

These people cannot, they simply cannot function in a society. And that actually makes me laugh. But also, it's just like, that's the kind of thing that you say, as the men in the white coats, take you away. There's a knock on the door and the men come in and you're like, I'm just over here. I'm at the fridge. I'm asking if my ketchup bottle is woke. I'm asking if my mom. And the men are, okay, why don't you come for a nice little roll?

ride with us. We're going to take you to a place where you can rest. And, you know, you'll, you'll stay with us for a little while. They are gone, man. They're just gone. You know, maybe on the upside, this could start a hunger strike by the far right. Maybe they just stop eating, you know, because they don't know. They can't trust the white bread. They think it's white. They think it's white power bread, but they're unclear. So maybe they just stop fucking eating. We all win. I truly knew that we would get stupider than when they were saying the generals were woke and reading Octavia Butler and things like that. But I really didn't know it was going to be the catch-up is woke. Oh, my God.

Danielle, you were talking about the white bread and I was just thinking, what if all the bread is woke except the pumpernickel? They would be so fucking confused. They would not know what to do. Oh, shit. Yeah. Hell yeah, conservative pumpernickel. like Nazi pumpernickel.

I mean, it's, you know, possible. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal author David Daley, who is the author of Ratfucked, Why Your Vote Doesn't Count and Unrigged, how Americans are battling back to save democracy. David, we had a major Supreme Court decision out of Alabama, basically the justices in, I thought it was surprising. So I'm looking forward to your thoughts, said that their redistricting maps were essentially biased. And I will use the word racist. And Alabama had been one of several states that had to have preclearance before the Voting Rights Act was gutted by this Supreme Court by Chief

Justice John Roberts. And he actually sided, along with Brett Kavanaugh, with the more progressive members, the few that are left on the Supreme Court, in pushing back against Alabama's map and now forcing them literally to go back to the drawing board. What do you make of this decision and how it can be utilized in other states across the country that have gerrymandered districts to favor Republicans and favor white voters? It's a great question. And I share your confusion. And, surprise in this moment, right? Whenever this very conservative court that has spent the last decade, perhaps the Doth decade plus really diminishing the power of the Voting Rights Act, hands down a ruling that actually supports it, we all sort of throw our hands in the air. We're like slightly doing a dance,

but it's also slight confusion because gutting, as you say, the Voting Act has in many ways, been the Chief Justice's life project. You can trace his interest in this question all the way back to him coming to Washington as a young aide in the Reagan Department, Department of Justice back in the early 80s. And he's leading the administration's work even back then on trying to limit Section 2 of the VRA. So to have him in a 5-4 majority, along with Brett Kavanaugh and the three progressive justices in determining that these maps in Alabama were, as you say, gerrymandered and racist is a little shocking. The question of where we go from here, I think, is another one entirely. I think that there is good news here for litigation that's already

underway in Louisiana and Georgia, where maps were drawn with the same sort of racially discriminatory intent and where lower courts have already found evidence of that. But there's some warning signs here as well. Let's get into it. You know, because back in February of 2022, you had written out a really clear piece at CNN.com that was illuminating just how ridiculous this map was, particularly in Alabama, that you were driving around. And you're talking about, again, a state that is 27% black. where the white population had been decreasing according to census, and the black and Latino population had been increasing, and the way that the maps were drawn were to incredibly dilute voters of color

in a state that is over a quarter black folks. And so talk to us about how these places get away, essentially, with this. And then also, what was the winning argument in this case that can be used? used in other cases. Sure. And let me tell you, when you drive these gerrymandered districts and you look at what's on one side and what's on the other side, you see the discriminatory intent, you see the partisan intent right in front of you, and it just makes you absolutely gasp. Alabama, as you say, about 27, 28 percent black, those numbers growing, the white numbers decreasing. Alabama has

seven congressional districts. And what the white state legislature in Alabama, who has the power to draw these lines, did, was they drew a map that awarded themselves six of those seven seats. They drew one really large snake-like district

that stretched from Selma over to Montgomery and then all the way north, about 120 miles north, up to Birmingham. collecting as many black voters as they could in packing them into that one district that elects a black member named Terry Sewell from Selma and the other six districts predictably go for white conservatives. And what they did was they cracked the black vote in all of those other districts and they sort of scattered the remaining black voters as narrowly as they could, diluting them across the other six districts. The map here is pretty easy to do, right? Seven districts, 28%. Two of seven, pretty much is 28%. One at seven is 14%. So the dilution and the effectiveness of that gerrymander is really clear, if you look at it algorithmically. But when you drive through these neighborhoods, when you look at the black neighborhoods in Birmingham that were added into the Sewell district and the suburban white districts,

in Birmingham that were not. When you drive through suburban Montgomery and see the neighborhoods with the Whole Foods and the fancy chain restaurants, and those are in the white Republican district, and you drive just a couple of miles away, and the black neighborhoods, much poorer there in Montgomery, are not included. When you look at how these lines were drawn, it was done artfully, it was done obviously, and it was done with great discriminatory intent. So when we look at this, because again, voter suppression and gerrymandering has been nothing new. It is a tool that the Republican Party that the right has used in order to secure power as their numbers shrink, as their policies become less popular. It is not about them trying to reach new voters.

It's about trying to secure the white voters that they already have. We see this time and time again play out. How do you think that this decision, which again is surprised to you, surprised to me, and men, in the legal and political communities. How do you see this being applicable to other places and can it happen before we get into the 2024 cycle? Again, a really good question. I think that what this shows is that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, however it has been narrowed and pinched and cramped by this court, is still alive and kicking and can be used in order to strike down a discriminatory map. Listen, when the ruling here first came down from the lower federal court in

January of 2022 that said that this is a discriminatory map, that there ought to be a second district drawn where black voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their own choosing, it was handed down by a three-judge panel, two Trump appointees on this panel. So this in many ways was a textbook case of applying Section 2 as it existed. What I think it cared a lot of folks was that the U.S. Supreme Court then stayed that decision, and they forced the 2022 election to be run under that old map. And they did so. The Chief Justice talked about how, well, yes, this was a correct application, but it was a correct application of the existing law. So a lot of us worried that they were going to take this opportunity to rework the existing law the same way that

the court eviscerated Section 5 in the Shelby County case, and the same way that the court narrowed Section 2 in Bernovich v. Arizona just a couple of years ago. What this shows is that we can still use Section 2 in order to make a showing that a map has a discriminatory intent and a discriminatory effect. And Alabama wanted to narrow that and only have a map be able to be thrown out if it had discriminatory intent. And then you would have to prove that that was the only way that those lines were drawn. A very, very difficult standard because state legislators don't often leave memos around saying what they intend to do when they intend to draw a discriminatory map. The trouble here, of course, is that if Section 5 had remained in place, if preclearance had not been gutted by the

Chief Justice in the Shelby County case, Alabama would have had to have had those maps pre-approved by the plaintiff justice in January World 2022. They would not have been allowed to go into effect because the DOJ would have in the same way that the lower court and now the Supreme Court did. they would have forced that map to be redrawn. Instead, Republicans got away with an election cycle in 2022 in Alabama, but also in Louisiana and Georgia and all the other states where we're going to see claims brought now in which they were able to run elections on racially discriminatory maps.

They were able to win races in all of these states. They were able to take back the U.S. House by an extraordinarily narrow margin that you can pretty clearly tie back to those handful of seats in Alabama and Georgia and Louisiana and Texas and a couple of other states. And we don't get a do-over on the 22 cycle, right?

So Section 2 lives, but Section 2 takes a lot of time and money and effort and sometimes an election cycle or two goes by, whereas Section 5, that wouldn't have happened. You know what pisses me off? I mean, a lot does. But what pisses me off here is that I personally believe in, you know, and again, my opinion,

is that this decision that Chief Justice John Roberts and then Brett Kavanaugh made, I think was a bone that was thrown out to the public to, you know, deter our outrage at how unethical Chief Justice John Roberts is running this court. and how far right they have become that there are so many stories with regard to Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow and misgivings there and Leonard Leo and the rest of them, that this was like a, oh, look, we still have some integrity. Do you believe that there was some consideration of their current, like, polling and public perception that aided in this decision? because this is the same Chief Justice who has made a career out of trying to destroy the Voting Rights Act. I think that's right. I think the Chief Justice has made it his life's work to try to gut the Voting Rights Act, and you can trace it back for 35 years now. And yet he's also very aware of the court's institutional problems and the court's ethical problems and the very low standing with which the American public a,

political parties currently view this court. They essentially see this court as a bunch of robed politicians, a bunch of ideologues. I don't think that the public is wrong in holding that opinion. The Chief Justice quite well could have looked at this as a pretty easy bone to throw folks. We are, of course, still awaiting decisions in the big affirmative action cases in the independent state legislature case at Morvey Harper. They could have. said, well, not much is going to be lost here. Because if you do the math on this, right, even if Democrats are able to win back a seat in Alabama, seat in Georgia, seat in Louisiana, the two seats in Texas, Republicans will have been able to gain perhaps more seats than that

simply through the mid-decade redistricting that they're going to pull off in North Carolina and Ohio, where they will be doing a really radical mid-decade partisan jericho. So this could all come out sort of in the wash for a partisan balance, but the court could get to have, you know, a brief moment in the sun here for the chief justice. And we'll see what they do in the even bigger cases still to come. It's why I think it's really, really important as you do to view this decision as good news, but to view it as good news in the context of a court that for a decade, has been really radically shrinking these protections. It is baffling to me that we have a weaponized Supreme Court. We have a wayward cult of the Republican Party. And we're kind of, you know, as a democracy holding on by a thread where right now our elections still count ish.

I'm wondering for you, as we're looking forward, David, and. It's a little over a year away. Again, one of the most consequential presidential elections, and we're going to say this time and time again, how do you think that our democracy is faring or going to fare when we have persistent gerrymandering, persistent suppressing of votes, and then on top of that, spreading of disinformation,

on top of that, criminal candidates, how do you see our democracy, surviving or do you? It's a dangerous moment and we're hanging by a thread in so many ways, so many ways you just identified. And listen, Joe Biden won the 2020 election by 7 million votes in the popular vote. He effectively won the election, though, by carrying Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia by about 40,000 votes. If those 40,000 votes in three deeply gerrymandered states go the other way and the radical Republican elements in those state legislatures had had their way, and they had not certified those results. We could have been thrown into even wilder

constitutional chaos than we saw on January 6th. And I think that there's a lot of reason to be concerned about how that would play out in 2024, especially if the U.S. Supreme Court in Morvee Harper authorizes this really a-historic, and wrongheaded and frightening independent state, a legislature theory. But our democracy, when you look at the amount of gerrymandering both of state legislatures as well as the U.S. House, when you look at the way that the U.S. Senate overrepresents white rural, smaller states compared to the rest of the population. It's been said that by 2035, two-thirds of the nation is going to live in 15 states.

that will have about, you know, one-third of the U.S. Senate. You look at the way that the Electoral College distorts that and the way that the Senate helps distort the Electoral College map. You look at the fact that twice now since 2020, you've had a winner of the Electoral College that was not a winner of the popular vote. And then you look at the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices that, with the help of Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, have been appointed by presidents that, lost the popular vote and then confirmed by a Senate that lacks popular a legitimacy, I think it creates a very frightening picture of where we stand in this nation. And we are on the verge of an entrenched one-party minority rule that is going to be very difficult to unnot. Yeah, I always try and have a bit

of faith, a mustard suit of hope, as I like to say. But, you know, the way that the numbers are looking and and how this party and this country is moving, everything is heading in the wrong direction. David Daley, thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal. Really appreciate you and your analysis. Anytime, Danielle. Thanks for having me. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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