Elite white liberals think black voters are helpless, incompetent, and stupid. They don’t think too highly of married women and rural Americans, either. Or poor people and Native Americans and the disabled for that matter.
That condescension was on full display again this week as all but one House Democrat voted against a bill that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID at the polls. The measure passed on a party-line vote.
Why would the “Party of the People” be so vehemently opposed to a proposal overwhelmingly supported by the people — black people, brown people, white people, male and female people, even people who identify as Democrats?
Because the SAVE America Act, as the bill is dubbed (and its antecedent, the SAVE Act) is a modern-day “Jim Crow” bill, according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“While the specific policies may have changed since the days of the Jim Crow South, the goal of the SAVE Act is the same: disenfranchising American citizens and making it harder for eligible people to vote, particularly low income Americans and people of color,” the New York Democrat said this week on the Senate floor. Think about that. legislation requiring voter ID is tantamount to the “separate but equal,” segregated South, according to representatives from the party that brought America the Jim Crow era.
Democrat allies like the group Reproductive Freedom For All, the abortion industry lobby formerly known as NARAL Pro-Choice America, echoed the party’s race-baiting talking points.
“This legislation targets Americans who have long faced systemic barriers to the ballot box, including communities of color, people with disabilities, young people, Indigenous voters, and voters in rural and low-income neighborhoods,” the abortion-on-demand champions declared in a press release.
And what are the systemic barriers? Liberals claim — without ever being challenged by a complicit corporate media — that tens of millions of Americans “don’t have proof of citizenship readily available” and don’t know how to or can’t acquire identification. Of course these same “disenfranchised” Americans are daily using IDs to drive, buy booze and cigarettes, apply for government benefits, board an airplane …
‘That’s Just Stupidity’
A lot of black Americans find the Democrats’ anti-voter ID arguments insulting.
Will Martin, who is black and a GOP candidate for lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, has a name for the racially-tainted protective hand of white liberals: Social paternalism. It’s a kind of leftist white privilege, so to speak, in the vein of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
“It’s infuriating. It’s like they think a whole demographic of our country can’t figure out how to get an ID,” Martin told The Federalist Wednesday evening in a phone interview hours after the House’s SAVE America Act vote. “There are elites who think they know better than the individuals they claim to represent on how they should live.”
In an eye-opening video on “How white liberals really view black voters,” Ami Horowitz collects the paternalistic thoughts of some denizens of leftist enclave Berkeley, California, on voter ID laws.
“These type of people don’t live in areas with easy access to DMVs or other places where they can get identification,” one white guy told Horowitz when the documentarian asked whether voter ID suppresses the black vote.
“I feel like they don’t have the knowledge of how it works,” a young white woman said. “For most of the communities, they don’t know what is out there because they’re not aware, or, like, they’re not informed.”
That was news to some black residents of New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood.
“Why would they think we don’t have ID?” one woman incredulously asked after watching the interviews with the privileged Berkeleyites.
Another woman said she didn’t know any black adults who did not carry ID, and that the question itself is “weird.” A black man pulled out his photo ID and asked if he was on “some sort of trick Candid Camera.”
A young man summed up the assertions that poor black voters don’t have access to the internet, another barrier to obtaining an ID to vote, according to leftist “voter rights” groups.
“That’s just stupidity, honestly,” he said. “Even little kids can figure out how to work the internet.”
Those interviewed said they found the assertions Schumer — their own senator — and his fellow congressional Democrats hammered on during the voter ID debate are “ignorant,” prejudiced and “a little racist.” They all said they have no problem showing ID to vote.
‘That’s the Maddening Part’
In fact, congressional Democrats are on the wrong side of the issue. By a lot. Even with fellow Democrats. A Pew Research Center poll last summer found 83 percent of U.S. adults support requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote. The poll also found 71 percent of Dems and 76 percent of black voters favor voter ID in elections.
“You see all of these surveys time and time again with people from all backgrounds in large majorities supporting voter ID,” Martin said. “That’s the maddening part.”
Martin has served on the front lines of the election-integrity battle. As Wisconsin State Director of Americans for Citizen Voting, he helped lead a successful referendum campaign in which 70 percent of Badger State voters backed a constitutional amendment that bars noncitizens from voting in Wisconsin elections. Last April, Wisconsin voters approved an amendment enshrining voter ID in the state constitution. That ballot issue garnered 67 percent support.
Martin said anyone concerned about the SAVE America Act should look to Wisconsin, which has successfully employed voter ID in elections for nearly 15 years.
70 Million? Really?
Married women, too, would be helpless under the power of the election integrity measures, according to some of the bossiest girl bosses in politics.
Squad leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jumped on X Wednesday to warn her followers that House Republicans had passed a bill that “would disenfranchise 70 million married American women.”
“Under the SAVE Act, women who took their spouse’s last name and don’t have an updated passport or birth certificate would be turned away at the polls,” she said.
Wow! Seventy million. That’s a lot. A lot of hyperbole.
Rep. Chip Roy, co-author of the legislation, has said the SAVE Act includes provisions to ensure the “small fraction” of women who have not updated their documentation to note a name change can register to vote despite a name discrepancy.
“The SAVE Act specifically left this to the states because name-change procedures are governed by state law, and the specific requirements, forms, fees, and processes can vary from state to state,” Roy wrote last year in an op-ed published in The Federalist.
A Little Help From Their Friends?
We’ve been down this road before. After Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a package of election reforms in 2021, the Peach State’s race-baiting MVP, Sen. Raphael Warnock, described the changes as “Jim Crow in new clothes,” a “voter suppression law designed to build new barriers between Georgians and the polls.”
Warnock’s assessment didn’t age well. Georgia shattered voter turnout and participation records in 2022’s midterm. Early voter turnout hit new records in 2024, and topped an unprecedented 5.29 million voters total in the hotly contested presidential election, according to the League of Women Voters.
But never fear soft-bigotry leftists. Congressional Democrats, who in truth hate the possibility of blocking noncitizens and other ineligible voters from voting in federal elections, could get a huge assist from some Republicans in the Senate. The SAVE Act has been languishing there for some 300 days, and sources say some Republicans won’t vote for either bill, if actually forced to take action.
