Just two thoughts on Hillary Clinton’s voting-rights speech yesterday.
First, it contained the predictable race-baiting demagogy — e.g., “what is happening is a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color . . .” No, what is happening is the usual effort to strike the right balance between facilitating voting by eligible voters and preventing voting by ineligible voters. If there is evidence of racial discrimination, the courts are open for business.
Second, she showed, again predictably, her impatience with constitutional limits on federal power, endorsing federal legislation that would force states to allow felons to vote. Not only is automatic felon reenfranchisment a bad idea, but it is beyond Congress’s authority to pass such a law. And speaking of the Constitution, she also endorsed efforts to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision two years ago in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down as unconstitutional one section of the Voting Rights Act. But that decision was correct, and the bill that has been introduced to overturn it contains its own constitutional infirmities — in addition to being bad policy and unnecessary — as discussed here and here and here and here and here and here and here.