On Friday's The 11th Hour show on MSNBC, frequent guest and contributor Eddie Glaude made an over the top metaphor comparing the passage of voter ID laws to white supremacists choking a baby with an umbilical cord -- an especially peculiar choice of words given that the liberal network has stridently supported the actual killing of unborn babies by Planned Parenthood.
MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle spurred this nonsense by bringing up Texas: "Eddie, what does it say that Texas, where we are going to see huge voter drives this weekend, the place where Juneteenth was born is the same state that has these huge restrictive voting laws?"
The liberal Princeton professor then made his tortured comparison to choking a baby as he responded:
...that contradiction in Texas suggests that there's a world that's desperately trying to -- an America that's desperately trying to come into being and an America that's clinging to life. And every time a new America has tried to come into existence, Stephanie, the umbilical cord of white supremacy has been wrapped around the baby's neck choking the life out of it. We have to be better midwives if a new America is to be born because what we're experiencing now is an old -- an old and familiar haunt, and we have to acknowledge it as such.
Earlier, Glaude declared that supporters of voter restrictions want the U.S. to remain a "white nation," and then Ruhle went to Time magazine reporter Janell Ross and seemed almost apologetic for bringing up an argument conservatives use to argue for voter ID laws:
RUHLE: Is there -- and just bear with me for a moment, Janell, -- is there any -- and I'm not even saying "middle ground" -- but is there any ground to give when one gives the argument "Why not have to show your ID? Why not show your license when you go to vote? You have to show your license for all sorts of things?" Explain why that's not something that should even be on the table. ... When you go to dinner parties around the country, people will say that.
Ross argued that the right to vote is too important a right to put up any impediment to voting, leading The New Yorker's Jelani Cobb to jump in and claim Republicans have made it harder to get driver's licenses by removing DMVs. It was not mentioned that nearly every country in Europe requires voter ID or that polling shows it is very popular with American voters.
This latest hyperbole on MSNBC was sponsored in part by Allstate and Applebee's. Click on the links to let them know what you think.
A transcript is below. Click "expand" to read more.
MSNBC's The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle
June 17, 2022
STEPHANIE RUHLE: What rationale, Eddie, is given when these restrictive voter laws are put in place in the last five years or so, how do they pass? Publicly, why do they say they're doing it?
EDDIE GLAUDE, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, they're -- it's a feature of these Stop the Steal claims around election fraud, the idea that our election process has been compromised by forces who aim to steal power. It's Freudian projection in so many ways, and it's also an echo of the past when we saw how the disenfranchisement of black men -- remember how women didn't get the vote with the 15th Amendment -- but when we saw the disenfranchisement of black men at the collapse of radical Reconstruction. So the same arguments were being made.
The same arguments were being made. So this -- we need to understand voter suppression -- voter nullification -- all this stuff we're seeing now -- as an extension of Jan 6. Remember, Judge (Michael) Luttig said there's an ongoing revolution within a constitutional crisis that's taking place now. That -- part of that is, in fact, this attack -- this assault on voting. And so we need to see it for what it is. It's part of this claim, Stephanie, that this nation must remain a white nation in the vein of old Europe. These people refuse to embrace the idea that ours is a multiracial democracy. They reject it out of hand.
RUHLE: Is there -- and just bear with me for a moment, Janell, -- is there any -- and I'm not even saying "middle ground" -- but is there any ground to give when one gives the argument "Why not have to show your ID? Why not show your license when you go to vote? You have to show your license for all sorts of things?" Explain why that's not something that should even be on the table.
JANELL ROSS, TIME SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Fundamentally, the --
RUHLE: When you go to dinner parties around the country, people will say that.
ROSS: Sure, sure, and it's certainly something I've heard many times before in my travels as a reporter. Fundamentally, the right to vote is far more important than your ability to get on a plane. At the end of the day, it truly is. The ability to vote and participate fully as a citizen -- and as an equal citizen -- is really what defines whether or not we have a functional democracy or not -- whether or not we really have the multicultural democracy that our country is meant to be. This is who lives in the United States. Anything short of that -- any effort to fundamentally make it more and more difficult for people to participate begins to erode the very idea of democracy. That is not what happens if the TSA tells you you cannot get on a plane.
JELANI COBB, THE NEW YORKER: Can I add something to that, too? One other thing that I think is crucial to point out here is that it hasn't simply been the imposition of voting -- of ID requirements
RUHLE: No, no, of course. It's so much more than that.
COBB: But in addition to that in some places where people have imposed these ID requirements, they've also made it more difficult to get ID.
RUHLE: Ahhh, explain this to us.
COBB: Removing DMVs or the number of DMVs in particular locales where communities of color tend to be in the preponderance. And so you find that pattern again and again and again. So you can say, in theory, "Show your driver's license, but then we're going to make it much more difficult for you to actually get a driver's license and thereby less likely that you'll be able to vote.
(...)
RUHLE: Eddie, what does it say that Texas, where we are going to see huge voter drives this weekend, the place where Juneteenth was born is the same state that has these huge restrictive voting laws?
EDDIE GLAUDE, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: It says how deeply tragic and flawed this experiment actually is. I think, going back to the quote of Senator (Raphael) Warnock, or with Jan 5 or Jan 6 and echoing Dean or future Dean (Jelani) Cobb that were both -- it's certainly the case to me and to my mind -- there's that contradiction in Texas suggests that there's a world that's desperately trying to -- an America that's desperately trying to come into being and an America that's clinging to life.
And every time a new America has tried to come into existence, Stephanie, the umbilical cord of white supremacy has been wrapped around the baby's neck choking the life out of it. We have to be better midwives if a new America is to be born because what we're experiencing now is an old -- an old and familiar haunt, and we have to acknowledge it as such.
RUHLE: All right, and we will.
