The 2009 elections offered up mixed results for progressives.

While some would claim otherwise, the 2009 elections were hardly a landslide for either party. Both Congressional races were won by Democrats — one in a district that hasn’t elected a Democrat in a lifetime — while both gubernatorial races, in states won last year by Obama, went to Republicans. A rich Democratic incumbent lost a governorship, but a rich independent incumbent right across the river kept the mayoralty of a city more populous than most states. Voters in one state rejected same-sex marriage but reaffirmed their approval of medical marijuana, while those in another seem likely to have approved “marriage-like” unions for same-sex couples, but only barely. And as much as Republicans would like it to be the case, the successful Republicans don’t seem to owe their wins to anti-Obama sentiment; on the other hand, neither did the “Obama factor” help the Democrats he campaigned for in high-profile, high-stakes races, even in the most Democratic part of the country.

But that doesn’t mean there are no greater implications for the races that took place yesterday. There’s something to learn from every election. And wonks like me just love analyzing elections. So let’s take a look at some of this year’s big ones:

Republicans Take Governorships in New Jersey and Virginia

The gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia were undoubtedly the most talked-about races across the nation yesterday. And here, the news for Democrats was terrible: Republicans won both races in states whose governorships had been held by Democrats for eight years, and which President Obama won last year.

Both races had some things in common: lackluster Democratic candidates and Republicans who stayed away from hot-button, culture-war social issues and crafted campaigns carefully designed to win independents. But the two losing Democrats were as different as the two states.

Virginia is a state that would vote solidly Republican were it not for urban and suburban voters in the state’s north, part of the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Essentially, northern Virginia is the northeast, while the rest of the state is the south. Northern Virginians propelled Obama to victory in the state last year, but most couldn’t get enthused about “country lawyer” Creigh Deeds, a conservative Democrat from the ultra-rural west of the state whose down-home style would mostly have appealed to conservative rural voters who would never vote for a Democrat anyway. Meanwhile, Republican Bob McDonnell, who grew up in northern Virginia, campaigned largely on economic issues, casting himself as a moderate and staying away from social issues that would alienate independents. The result: McDonnell won some of the northern Virginian counties that had been the state’s Democratic strongholds in recent years, and came away from the race with a commanding win over Deeds, garnering 58.7% of the vote to Deeds’ 41.3%.

Like McDonnell, New Jersey’s Governor-Elect Chris Christie tried his best not to touch social issues, focusing instead on the economy, taxes and corruption. In liberal, highly urban and suburban New Jersey, strongly articulated conservative stances on issues like abortion and gay rights would have alienated even more voters than in Virginia, at least part of which is still in the conservative south. But his opponent, Governor Jon Corzine, was very different from Creigh Deeds. Despite his origins in small-town Illinois, the one-time Goldman Sachs chairman certainly lacked Deeds’ “country bumpkin” image. Unfortunately, Corzine came off as distant and uninspiring. The terrible state of the economy and New Jersey’s chronic problems of astronomical taxes and rampant corruption combined with Corzine’s lack of personal likability to make him a very easy target for voters’ anger about the terrible state of the state, and his attempts to portray Christie as a dangerous ideologue with close ties to George W. Bush seemed not to stick. (This was a typically dirty New Jersey campaign, with allegations flying that Corzine’s campaign even made fun of the weight of his corpulent opponent.) Even the very public support of President Obama in this reliably Democratic state could not save the incumbent, whose campaign seemed to consist of, “I’m not doing as bad a job as you think — really! And that other guy will be even worse!” It was still a close race, Christie taking 48.8% of the vote to Corzine’s 44.5% and independent Chris Daggett’s 5.8%, but ultimately New Jersey voters decided to axe an incumbent seen by many as disconnected, ineffective and even duplicitous in favor of someone who at least might do better.

Republicans, of course, would like to portray these races as manifestations of a backlash against President Obama, but polls show that voters were largely focused on local issues and that for most President was not a major factor in their decisions. What they do show is that Republicans can still win, at least on a state level, if they stay away from controversial social issues and stick to economics, where their message still resonates with many.

Bloomberg Wins in NYC — Barely

For many (certainly, for me) the surprise of the night was the slimness of the margin by which Mike Bloomberg won his third term as Mayor of New York City. In an election with low turnout, Bloomberg took only 50.6% of the vote to Comptroller Bill Thompson’s 46%.

Given the dynamics of the campaign, Thompson did better than anyone could have reasonably expected. The billionaire Bloomberg had essentially unlimited resources, and did not hesitate to use them, setting spending records. Against the huge financial resources and impressive organization of the Bloomberg campaign, Thompson, an earnest but bland candidate who largely criticized Bloomberg rather than advancing his own agenda, and who seemed to have little coherent vision for how the city should change, should have fared terribly. But no small number of voters were angry with Bloomberg for getting the City Council to overturn term limit laws that the voters themselves had enacted in referenda, and the enormous amounts of his personal wealth left a bitter taste with many as well. According to exit polls, those for whom these two factors had an effect went overwhelmingly for Thompson, perhaps helping to account for his surprisingly good performance. But while a substantial minority did care about these issues, most New Yorkers did not — and those voters by and large went for Bloomberg.

That said, it may perplex many that New York, a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a huge margin, will not have had a Democratic mayor in two decades by the time Bloomberg’s third term expires in 2014. Bloomberg is an independent now, but he ran on the Republican ballot line and was formerly a Republican (and, to be fair, a Democrat before that). But while most voters who considered Bloomberg a Republican voted for Thompson, the largest number of voters considered him an independent, and that group broke overwhelmingly for Bloomberg.

Ultimately, the main reason that Bloomberg won is that most New Yorkers are fairly satisfied with him. An astounding 70% of voters polled said they approved of the job Bloomberg was doing, even though 25% of those voters went for Thompson. Thompson won voters whose biggest issue was housing, but Bloomberg won on the three issues the largest numbers of voters identified as most important to them: the economy, education and crime. The economy in New York, as with most everywhere, is not good (and most voters said so), but it seems voters didn’t blame Bloomberg, and had little confidence that Thompson could do better or even as well. And Bloomberg won big on education and especially crime (though a small majority of parents of public-school students went for Thompson).

But perhaps most importantly of all, those who said they voted in favor of a candidate for mayor mostly voted for Bloomberg. Those who said they voted against the other candidate went overwhelmingly for Thompson. Thompson, perhaps, was unable to win because he didn’t convince New Yorkers why he should be mayor, and while his relatively strong performance indicates that many are not happy with Bloomberg, that discontent simply did not run deep enough for New Yorkers to jump ship en masse to a candidate who did not give them enough reasons to favor him.

NY-23: Conservatives Reach Too Far

Parts of New York’s 23rd Congressional District, in the very rural far north of the state, haven’t elected a Democrat since 1851. (No, that’s not a typo; the district’s largest city, Watertown, hasn’t been represented by a Democrat for 158 years. The Republican Party didn’t even exist in 1851; back then, the Democrats were opposed by the Whigs!) But the Republican nominee for this seat’s special election, Dede Scozzafava, chosen by New York Republicans for her broad appeal, was deemed by many national Republicans to be “too liberal.” Enough national Republicans, lead by Sarah Palin, endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and attacked Scozzafava that the Republican dropped out of the race, allowing the Democrat, Bill Owens, to win what should have been a very safe Republican seat.

The lesson here is pretty simple: those who demand absolute ideological purity should be prepared to lose often. Imagine if the Republican candidates for governor in Virginia and New Jersey ran explicitly ideological, hard-right campaigns….

Maine Voters Like Pot Better than Gays; Washington Voters Seem to Have Approved “Marriage-Like” Partnerships

I like Maine. Or at least I used to. It’s got a nice coastline, produces some really nice boats and mail-order clothing, and McDonald’s sells lobster there, which is at least good for a laugh. Unfortunately, 52.8% of Maine’s voters decided their gay and lesbian neighbors just don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else, which is no laughing matter and doesn’t leave me with very warm feelings toward the state. This continues same-sex marriage’s unbroken record of being rejected every time it has come up for a popular referendum — now in 31 states. Worse, this scourge has now entered the northeast, the region hitherto most friendly to same-sex marriage, and for the first time, voters have overturned their elected legislators’ decision to grant equality. (On the other hand, unlike the other 30 referenda, Maine’s didn’t take the form of a constitutional amendment. But that is not much consolation.)

On the other hand, 58.7% of Maine voters did decide to expand the legal usage of medical marijuana. That’s nice; maybe I can get some to make me feel less depressed about the bigotry of the majority of Maine voters and its absurd political system that makes the rights of minorities subject to the whims of the majority.

Meanwhile, voters in the State of Washington appear to have likely approved, by a slim margin, a measure establishing domestic partnerships that would be like marriages, except not. Right now it’s still too close to call, but while I hope the measure does pass, the fact that the voting is so close (currently 51.6% in favor), and that if it does pass, it will still create a “separate and unequal” status for same-sex couples means that still wouldn’t be much of an occasion for celebration.

Long Island: No Real Winners

And at last, we turn to the dull but important business of local Long Island politics. Or this year, maybe not so dull.

Long Island, where high taxes and corruption are chronic problems, looks very similar politically to that other home of NYC’s inner suburbs, New Jersey, but its voters don’t have an entire state government to play with. Instead, similar politics play out on a local level. (New York’s Westchester County, where most of the remaining inner suburbs are located, has similar problems and politics to those of Long Island and New Jersey, and Republicans made big gains there this year.)

Nearly every office in Nassau County was up for election this year, and here voters seemed evenly split on who they want to run the county — or at least those who cared enough to vote, with low turnout signaling a general feeling of apathetic discontent. In spite of, or perhaps because of this low turnout, Election 2009 has turned out to be quite a spectacle in Nassau: more than 24 hours after polls closed, Democratic County Executive Tom Suozzi still doesn’t know whether he’ll keep his job! Right now he appears to have defeated Republican challenger Ed Mangano by an astonishing 237 votes out of more than 245,000, but it could be weeks before a winner is declared. It’s Bush-Gore, Long Island Edition.

It’s not just Suozzi on whom voters were evenly divided; Democratic Comptroller Howard Weitzman lost to Republican challenger George Maragos by 576 votes out of over 230,000 cast. And the County Legislature has been re-taken by Republicans, raising the prospect of governmental gridlock with the Executive and Legislature constantly at odds. Yet District Attorney Kathleen Rice, a Democrat, won by a respectable margin; so did County Clerk Maureen O’Connell, a Republican. Town and city races were mostly won by incumbents of both parties. If anything, Nassau voters don’t seem to care, and those who do are divided astonishingly evenly in what was, when I was growing up there (and my parents before me!), an impenetrable Republican fortress.

Things in Suffolk County were not so edge-of-the-seat exciting. There were no contested county-wide offices; the incumbent District Attorney and Sheriff (Democrats) and Treasurer (a Republican) all ran uncontested. Democrats will keep control of the County Legislature. But town elections show that, like their neighbors in Nassau, Suffolk’s voters are mostly apathetic, and those who aren’t are divided. In the largest town, Brookhaven (home of Stony Brook), Democratic incumbent Mark Lesko, who in March won a special election to replace fellow Democrat and now State Senator Brian Foley, won his first full term as Town Supervisor. But every incumbent on the Town Council will remain, giving Republicans a majority that will continue to encumber Lesko’s ability to carry out his agenda. In other towns the picture is much the same with, as in Nassau County, incumbents largely winning in this low-turnout election, though Democrats picked up the position of Town Supervisor in Southampton, and lost it to Republicans in East Hampton and Riverhead.

So the picture on Long Island is pretty glum: Democrats’ headway in taking over this one-time Republican stronghold seems to have ended in a stalemate with many residents just sitting on the sidelines.

Maybe off-year elections aren’t that boring after all.

Congratulations. The Republicans have finally taken control of the New York State Senate after the evil Democrats’ long tyrannical reign over New York State. The new Republicans promise a bipartisan effort to move forward and eliminate the old corrupt ways of Democrats doing business behind closed doors and keeping certain people out of the process. After a long and terrifying period of the democrats’ old stagnation politics and back-door deals, we are free at last, free at last.

If this doesn’t sound familiar, then you haven’t been living in New York at any point in the last 70 years.Republicans finally get a taste of their own medicine and suddenly they are the party of reform and bipartisanship. I’m not buying it, and neither should any liberal. Democrats gain control for a few months, and immediately the Republicans are up in arms as if they haven’t been playing the same games for decades.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any Democrat; we are just as much to blame for the coup as they are. What have Democrats really accomplished in their short time? I’ve heard a lot of bickering, not a lot of transparency, and very little progress on important civil rights issues or health care. I am talking to you Mr. Brian Foley. We didn’t elect you to put up with this nonsense. What happened to change and progress? You let them distract you, just like we always do. Democrats never fail to fall apart when it counts, and this late attempt to stop the coup is just the epitome of their attitude towards getting things done.

But, maybe giving the minority party more power will be a good thing in the long run. I think it was certainly a good thing to give the long-standing Republicans a scare. Now they know New York is liberal enough to beat them and they may have changed their attitude as a result. The current rhetoric is nonsense, but I hope Democrats can learn something from this. Keep the bickering behind closed doors, and make unified decisions in a transparent manner. Republicans will continue to do whatever they can to hold on to power. Appreciate it as part of the democratic process and never stop pushing back.

Courtesy: NY Daily News

Talk about sore loser.

Barely five months after Democrats regained control of the New York State Senate, two conservative city Democrats have apparently jumped ship and launched what is being described as a political coup in Albany.

A vote was called on the senate floor to proclaim Republicans as the majority once again, with Queens Senator Hiram Monserrate and Bronx Senator Pedro Espada Jr. voting with the 30 Republicans for a motion that would oust the Democrats from power.

The move caught politicos and pundits off guard and unsure of what the whole thing means, including current (former?) House Speaker Malcolm Smith (D., Queens). He issued a forceful statement following the vote:

“This was an illegal and unlawful attempt to gain control of the Senate and reverse the will of the people who voted for a Democratic Majority. Nothing has changed, Senator Malcolm A. Smith remains the duly elected Temporary President and Majority Leader.  The real Senate Majority is anxious to get back to governing, and will take immediate steps to get us back to work.”

The legality of the decision will likely be key in determining what exactly transpired on the senate floor, and what that will mean for the state.

Even if it is determined that the move was illegal or unconstitutional, it is still unclear what Monserrate and Espada will do if Democrats retain control. Party leadership will likely have a hard time dealing with them after what they consider an act of betrayal, but they will need their support if they are to retain control of the senate and move forward with key legislation.

Monserrate is in a particularly poor negotiating position, since he faces criminal charges for assaulting his girlfriend back in November. He was indicted in March, and if convicted faces up to seven years in prison. Many have called on him to resign, and if he does, a special election would be held to fill his senate seat.

It also remains unclear how the decision made by Monserrate and Espada will be received by their constituents. They both come from boroughs that break heavily for Democrats (Barack Obama received over 74% of the vote in Queens, and over 88% in the Bronx, John Kerry 71% and 82%), so they both likely received a significant boost from being on the same ticket as President Obama. If they run for reelection as Republicans, they would face stiff opposition.

The outcome of the coup could be significant for Stony Brook University, as Senator Kenneth LaValle (R., Port Jefferson) had previously served as chair of the higher education committee and was considered a friend of University President Shirley Strum Kenny.

Republicans have also been critical of Governor Paterson’s decision to raise tuition on SUNY students and simultaneously continue to cut SUNY’s budget, although Republican leadership has yet to propose how they would solve the state’s increasingly worrisome deficit.

THiNK Magazine will keep a close eye on this story as it develops, including what it will mean for Stony Brook University.

More from THiNK Magazine

Bipartisanship or Bullshit?

More from around the net

Buried beneath the fluff of the story however is this little nugget:

The practice of holding voter registration drives on campus, where most of the students registered to vote are not “permanent” residents of Brookhaven, is something that does not sit well with local Republicans.

“It’s been a problem for a long time,” said Sen. Ken LaValle (R-Port Jefferson), who until this month served as the chairman of the State Senate higher education committee.

     That’s Ken LaValle of LaValle Stadium notoriety. He and State Senator Flanagan, who represents, among other areas, Stony Brook University in Albany, are arguing that Stony Brook students shouldn’t be given the right to vote.

     Of course, they don’t say it in those terms. Instead, they take the much less controversial route by questioning the legitimacy of registrations done on campus. Students who are registered at home, they argue, shouldn’t get to register at school.

     But they both know full well that when you register someplace new, any old registrations are voided, for the very reason that LaValle and Flanagan cite: voting twice would constitute voter fraud.

     But that’s not stopping them from sounding the false alarm. Senator Flanagan believes that people can have only one permanent address and can therefore only register in one place. New York State law disagrees, though. You can register to vote anywhere in New York so long as you have resided at the address given for at least 30 days before the election. The law was passed for the benefit of college students, most of whom are at school during November elections. It makes no sense to force students away at college to either travel home to vote in the middle of the week (Tuesdays, don’t forget) or cast absentee ballots.

     The reason that Flanagan and LaValle (and Jeff Garcia, the chair of the Brookhaven Republican Committee) are lobbying hard against voting at the SAC is that students tend to vote for the other guys. All it takes is a look at the 2008 elections, where Obama beat John McCain by a margin of 8-1 on campus. And in his concession speech, former Republican State Senator Caesar Trunzo blamed college students mobilizing for Democrat Brian Foley for his loss.

     In the end, what Flanagan and LaValle are advocating for is just a subtle case of voter suppression. And while we certainly don’t support it, Republicans shaking in their boots are what we live for.

This article is reprinted from campusprogress.org

Coors Light may be the official beer sponsor of the National Football League at this year’s Super Bowl, but for years it has been the unofficial sponsor of right-wing causes across America. The company has a shady past, from the owners offering grants to rightwing organizations to policies of screening potential employees for communist sympathies. Lately Coors has been trying to make up for its checkered past, but it’s time for a trip down memory lane.

The Coors Brewing Company was founded in 1873 in Colorado and produces American favorites like Coors, Coors Light, Blue Moon, Killian’s Irish Red, and several refined Keystone varieties. Coors merged with Canadian brewer Molson in 2005, in hopes that both companies could boost their sales in the United States and Canada. In 2007, Molson Coors merged again, this time with beer behemoth SABMiller’s operations in the United States and Puerto Rico. Today, Coors Brewing Company is the third largest brewer in America.

Coors’ works hard to maintain a pearly, progressive sheen to hide its deep, conservative pockets. It was one of the first corporations in America to offer same-sex partner benefits, and it makes corporate donations to a variety of African American, Asian American and Hispanic organizations. This makeover, however, does not obscure Coors’s union-busting, minority-hating past. In addition to unleashing Zima on the world, the company grappled with a crippling boycott of its products after the union at the company’s flagship facility in Colorado went on strike and was subsequently broken by the company. As then-president of Adolph Coors Co. Jeff Coors said in a Los Angeles Times article agreeing to union demands is like “inviting the Russians in to take over America.” Until 1986, prospective Coors employees were sometimes required to take lie detector tests, answering questions about their sexual orientation, communist leanings, and how often they changed their underwear. (Yeah, really.) Hardly best business practices.

While the corporation itself doesn’t directly fund the massive right-wing infrastructure, Coors family members make donations with their beer-fed fortunes. The Adolph Coors Foundation, named for the brewery’s founding patriarch, was established in 1975 to help divvy up the family riches. Since some assets in that family trust can only be used within Colorado, Adolph Coors Foundation board members set up a new organization in 1994 that could spend unrestricted assets across the country. Through the Castle Rock Foundation, otherwise unspecified Coors family funds are used to finance national conservative organizations like Independent Women’s Forum and Young America’s Foundation.

The Coors family tree reads like a who’s who of conservative philanthropy—nearly all the men in the family work for the company, and nearly all share the same right-wing ideology. Adolph Coors, the founder of Coors Brewing Company, passed it down to his grandsons, brothers Joseph and William Coors. Joseph’s five sons—Joe Jr., Pete, Jeff, Grover, and John—all work in the Coors empire, and all of them are self-described born-again Christian fundamentalists. William’s son Scott also works for the family business.

In both the extremity of his conservatism and high levels of funding for conservative organizations, Joseph Coors set a precedent for the family. William affectionately called him “a little bit right of Attila the Hun.” Joseph was an active member on Reagan’s kitchen cabinet, funding the Gipper’s campaigns and providing him with unofficial counsel. Joseph gave right-wing godfather Paul Weyrich the founding grant for the Heritage Foundation, paving the way for decades of research, spin, and messaging by the country’s preeminent conservative think tank. And because one conservative think tank is never enough, Joe also gave a founding grant to Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation, which on its Web site asks the eternal question of our generation: “Will America return to the culture that made it great, our traditional, Judeo-Christian, Western culture?” If not, the organization asserts, the United States will become “no less than a third world country.”

Joseph Coors also funded the Council for National Policy, a secretive enclave in which influential conservatives discuss the future of conservatism in the United States. Several members of the Coors family regularly attend CNP’s meetings, rubbing elbows with the likes of Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly. He donated an airplane worth $65,000 to the Nicaraguan Contras. In fact, it’s hard to avoid Coors money in the conservative movement: The foundation funds the John Birch Society, the Landmark Legal Foundation (aka the Ronald Reagan Legal Center), and Pat Robertson’s Regent University, among many others. Despite his legacy of supporting socially conservative causes, Joseph had a fairly public mistress throughout the late 1980s—an indiscretion that eventually led him and his wife to separate, according to his son Jeff Coors. So much for family values.

Though it didn’t bring familial bliss, Joseph’s conservative political advocacy inspired his son Pete Coors to join the fight. In 2004, Pete ran for an open U.S. Senate seat in Colorado against state attorney general Ken Salazar, whose popularity and progressive politics contrasted sharply with Coors family history. During the campaign, he battled the Coors’ family’s ultra-conservative legacy almost as much as his Democratic opponent, and tried to slap the same friendly face on his candidacy that the brewing company used to repair its image decades before. While his family and its various foundations continued to pour money into, for instance, litigation against environmental regulation, Pete tried to sell himself as a conservationist, leveraging his former presidency of Ducks Unlimited. Ultimately, Colorado voters didn’t buy Pete’s Coors Light image, and he lost the race. After election Salazar refused to support Bush’s proposed federal ban on gay marriage, and even became the target of one of Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family ads that asked, “Why doesn’t Senator Salazar believe every child needs a mother and a father?”

But Joseph and Pete aren’t the only family members getting in on the game. Joseph’s brother William infamously told a group of minority business leaders that the best thing slave traders did was “to drag your ancestors here in chains,” as recorded in a 1985 New York Times article. Not incendiary enough? He went on to note that Africans “lack the intellectual capacity to succeed.” He went on to sue the Rocky Mountain News for publishing his remarks, claiming they were taken out of context. In a later interview, though, he clarified his position, remarking that slaves came out on top by being brought to America—after all, he said in a 1988 Los Angeles Times article, “you don’t see Jesse Jackson, or any of these other blacks, making any mass exodus back to Africa, do you?” The company donated upwards of $750 million to African American and Latino groups after William’s tirade—so it’s no wonder he got shunted from the company to the Castle Rock Foundation shortly thereafter.

William’s son Scott is in on the act, too. He did a stint as Coors Brewing Company’s ambassador to gay consumers, traveling across the country shaking hands and donating to GLBTQ nonprofits. Does Scott see any conflict between him family’s socially conservative legacy and the equal rights organizations he visits? Apparently not: His father told him that if any of the organizations Coors’ foundations support “are blatantly contrary to the rights of gay and lesbian people, I want to know about it, I will investigate it and put a stop to it.” Such an effort would probably require shutting down major portions of the Heritage Foundation—not to mention the rest of the right-wing organizations sponsored by Coors—but it doesn’t seem that William’s made much progress in that area.

So when cracking open a cold one, remember to toast the things that make the Coors family great: union-busting, lie-detecting, Heritage-funding, double-talking and, of course, its beer.

Recently there has been much talk about ACORN, the community organization that dedicates much of its time in election years to registering new voters, especially minorities. Claims of voter fraud have already been made against the organization in key battleground states like Ohio, where there have been reports of registrations under names like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

The claims, unsurprisingly, are being made by the McCain campaign, half looking for a boogeyman with which to associate Barack Obama (especially since the Bill Ayers thing isn’t resonating with the public) and half looking for something to blame when John McCain loses the election, which is looking more and more likely every passing day.

Unfortunately, as with every facetious charge made by the McCain campaign, the ACORN argument has quite a few holes.

First, this notion of voter fraud. There is no fraud unless Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck actually show up at their local polling place and try to cast a vote. The likely explanation for faulty registrations is that ACORN, like many other organizations, pays their volunteers based on how many registration forms they have filled out. There is no willful deceit taking place, just individuals looking for a shortcut. Reprehensible? Sure. But it is certainly not the high crime against democracy that John McCain is making it out to be.

Second, John McCain himself was singing a very different tune about ACORN just two years ago. In fact, McCain was one of the most vocal supporters of ACORN, describing the group as “patriotic” and “heroic.” It is just another example of the shameless abandonment of his own morals and beliefs to satisfy the base of the Republican Party.

And thirdly, has nobody stepped back and looked at the bigger picture here? Yes, ACORN has taken in several faulty registrations but an overwhelming majority of the forms collected by ACORN have been legitimate voters looking to participate, likely for the first time, in an election. What the McCain campaign and the GOP are trying to do is not discredit Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, but discredit minority voters from turning out in the numbers they are expected to on election day. Why? Because minorities tend to vote for the other party. ACORN is not a threat to American democracy; it’s a threat to Karl Rove’s “permanent majority.”

And its not just ACORN the GOP is focusing on. In almost every swing state, the GOP has tried every voter suppression technique imaginable to keep voters, usually minorities, away from the polls. In Virginia, the local Republican Party sent mailers falsely telling voters that they could vote on Nov. 5 if it were to rain on Election Day. In Michigan, the GOP threatened to use recently foreclosed addresses to crosscheck the validity of new registrations, even though they know full well that foreclosure does not disqualify voters from registering there. Elsewhere, the GOP has warned voters, incorrectly, that creditors looking to collect on unpaid debt could apprehend them at the polling places on Election Day.

So when John McCain said in the last debate that ACORN’s democratic practice of registering as many voters as possible for the upcoming election was “possibly the greatest threat to our democracy,” what he meant was that it posed the greatest threat to his campaign and the GOP. Which in the end says a lot about Republican strategy in elections these last few years: The only way to stay in power is to silence the voice of the people.