A Saturday MSNBC panel moderated by Velshi guest host, Voto Latino president and founder, and former Planned Parenthood board member, Maria Teresa Kumar sought to explain all the reasons why Republicans are terrible. For Kumar, one reason is that they seek to “restrict” voting by returning to “the pre-1960s.”
Shermichael Singleton had just finished claiming that being pro-life is costing Republicans elections, when Kumar replied, “Well, I think that's one of the reasons, Shermichael, that they are seeing the youth vote and they are showing that youth votes are turning up in the voting booth, so they're trying to create, now, these draconian laws, bringing back it into the pre-1960s, removing access to [the] voting booth.”
Turning to Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, Kumar continued, “Jennifer, what kind of strategy does that send to the American people as a whole? That, ‘I'm not going to compete with you on policy and ideas, but I have to restrict your voting access instead.’”
Of course, that is not the actual GOP strategy, but Rubin pretended like it was, “Well, I think that’s a loser strategy. That’s [a] confession that the only way we can win is by creating an electorate that is 20 years in the past. Their electorate that they can win with is a 1970s or 80s electorate, but we're in 2023 so if the representative sample of Americans vote, they’re cooked and that’s why you see this intensive effort to restrict voting, to make voting more difficult.”
After going on about mail-in ballots, Rubin circled back to abortion, “So, I think they are floundering around trying to find some strategy and the right strategy, of course, is to get where the American people are. When you have 65% of the American people on a position in a country as polarized as us, that’s not just progressive Democrats who are pro-choice, that’s independents, that’s Republicans, so that is a serious issue problem.”
That number comes from a June 2022 Public Religion Research Institute survey that vaguely asked whether abortion should be legal or illegal in most circumstances. When it got specific and asked about 15-week bans—the same as the Mississippi law before the Supreme Court in Dobbs—the numbers were much closer with 52 percent opposing.
Instead of being pro-abortion, Rubin alleged Republicans are concerned with “phony” issues, “and that's why you see the trying to change the subject to Hunter Biden, to phony scandals, to every sort of cultural issue that they can dream up because they can' talk about the issues, not only young people, women, suburbanites, they will reject them.”
In the real world, governors who sign pro-life laws keep getting re-elected by massive numbers.
This segment was sponsored by CarFax.
Here is a transcript for the April 15 show:
MSNBC Velshi
4/15/2023
10:51 AM ET
MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Well, I think that's one of the reasons, Shermichael, that they are seeing the youth vote and they are showing that youth votes are turning up in the voting booth, so they're trying to create, now, these draconian laws, bringing back it into the pre-1960s, removing access to voting booth. Jennifer, what kind of strategy does that send to the American people as a whole? That, "I'm not going to compete with you on policy and ideas, but I have to restrict your voting access instead."
JENNIFER RUBIN: Well, I think that’s a loser strategy. That’s confession that the only way we can win is by creating an electorate that is 20 years in the past. Their electorate that they can win with is a 1970s or 80s electorate, but we're in 2023 so if the representative sample of Americans vote, they’re cooked and that’s why you see this intensive effort to restrict voting, to make voting more difficult.
Now, the irony of all of this is that it impairs Republican voting just as much as it does a Democrat voting and you now see some very anxious Dem-- Republicans rather who say "listen this complete war we've gone to with mail-in ballots, with pre-Election Day voting has been disastrous for us. We're losing this" and so when they try to do these stunts, when they try to artificially create an electorate that is more in tune with their views, I'm not sure that it even works, it’s malicious, it’s anti-democratic, it’s wrong, but it doesn't necessarily even… to their benefit.
So, I think they are floundering around trying to find some strategy and the right strategy, of course, is to get where the American people are. When you have 65% of the American people on a position in a country as polarized as us, that’s not just progressive Democrats who are pro-choice, that’s independents, that’s Republicans, so that is a serious issue problem and that's why you see the trying to change the subject to Hunter Biden, to phony scandals, to every sort of cultural issue that they can dream up because they can' talk about the issues, not only young people, women, suburbanites, they will reject them.
