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Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has been the Managing Editor of Ordinary Times since 2018, is a widely published opinion writer, and appears in media, radio, and occasionally as a talking head on TV. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter@four4thefire. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew'sHeard Tell Substack for free here:

Related Post Roulette

9 Responses

  1. Oscar Gordon says:
    March 29, 2021 at 12:27 pm

    Wasting no time. Hopefully they have better legal proofreaders that the various “Stop The Steal” lawsuits.Report

    • JS in reply to Oscar Gordon says:
      March 29, 2021 at 4:25 pm

      Did they crowdsource their legal work, then collate it while drinking toasts to themselves over how much money they just raised off of rubes? No? Then almost certainly.

      (In fact, I think the Democratic party’s point man for the 2020 election lawsuits is involved in at least one of these GA suits. He has a really good record, but then again given what he was facing — you could have propped up a corpse who just stood there and rotted and he’d have probably racked up a great record against the 2020 Trump lawsuits).

      The GA law is so weird. There’s tons of horrible stuff buried in there (including “if we don’t like the results, we’ll just fire and replace all the election boards that kept telling us results we don’t like until we find a bunch of people who WILL tell us what we want to hear”), but the “no food and water” seemed design to aid Democratic messaging on HR1.

      It’s like it was placed there as a way to make sure the casual viewer knew who the villain was, even if they hadn’t watched the rest of the movie.

      On that note, I did read an article saying the GOP’s has decided their only move on HR1 is to bottle it up in the Senate — they have no real messaging against it, as nothing they’ve tested against their base works. A good third to half their own base loves “Get billionaires out of politics” (unsurprising after the GOP spent years demonizing Soros!) so the Democratic messaging is basically pre-written. They couldn’t even get any real traction tying it to AOC, and their base loves to hate her.

      Pretty sure HR1 is going to be the one that tests the filibuster, and that tests how far Biden and Schumer can twist Sinema’s and Manchin’s arms. I have no doubt it’s going to be a full court press. It’s a critical bill for Democrats.Report

      • Philip H in reply to JS says:
        March 29, 2021 at 4:28 pm

        The “no food and water” clause is the closest thing they will come to saying nakedly this is about suppressing black votes. White suburban and rural voters don’t wait in lines long enough to necessitate food or water support.Report

        • North in reply to Philip H says:
          March 29, 2021 at 6:15 pm

          The sheer cynicism the right wing commentators show when they claim that the GA law will eliminate the lines by pointing to the section that says any precinct that is observed to have lines over an hour long MAY have the legislature allocate to have more voting stations etc installed is red hot. Like they think we don’t know what the word MAY means or what legislature would be making that decision.Report

          • JS in reply to North says:
            March 29, 2021 at 8:06 pm

            Because the State Leg is in session on election day, with legions of voting machines and clerks ready to roll out at 5 minutes notice.

            You don’t even have to be cynical to note that’s pointless, in that at best it might fix a problem precinct in time for the NEXT election, but do jack-all for the line currently there.Report

      • DavidTC in reply to JS says:
        March 31, 2021 at 3:58 am

        but the “no food and water” seemed design to aid Democratic messaging on HR1.

        I heard a theory that this section was intended to ‘distract’ Democrats from the other stuff. “Oh, they want us focused on that instead of this other stuff!”

        And I’m like “Uh…the villain running around kicking puppies is not actually a good distraction to stop the villain from being arrested. I mean, arresting them will _also_ stop them from kicking puppies, in addition to foiling their plans, so…we’re still going to want to do that? And also it makes them look really really bad.”

        On that note, I did read an article saying the GOP’s has decided their only move on HR1 is to bottle it up in the Senate — they have no real messaging against it, as nothing they’ve tested against their base works.

        Dems cleverly left out some stuff that _would_ have been a point to hang objections on. We’ll see if Repubs manage to complain about the voter ID thing.Report

  2. Mike Schilling says:
    March 30, 2021 at 12:30 am

    If these suits get to SCOTUS, John Roberts will be like the proverbial atheist in hell, faced with something (in his case, the kind of legal discrimination that makes VRA preclearance necessary) his entire worldview rejects.Report

  3. Michael Cain says:
    March 31, 2021 at 9:21 am

    Related, the NYTimes has a piece up today about election officials in blue states starting to push on their blue Senators about removing some of the provisions in HR1. I have said before that if HR1 makes it through the Senate committee process, it is likely to emerge as a very different bill.Report

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