On NBC’s Late Night Thursday, radical leftist host Seth Meyers spewed Democratic Party propaganda for 15 minutes straight during one of his notoriously hackish Closer Look segments, this time preaching the brazen effort by left-wing lawmakers to undermine election integrity. The unfunny shill, who abandoned comedy long ago, desperately argued that “nuking” the filibuster in the Senate was a “moral necessity” in order to help Democrats rig future elections in their favor.
“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised a ‘scorched earth Senate’ if Democrats change the filibuster to pass sweeping and urgently needed democracy reforms as Republicans across the country unleash a tidal wave of draconian new voting restrictions,” Meyers wailed as began his uninterrupted partisan tantrum. He then proceeded to bitterly complain that America’s constitutional system of checks and balances was unfair to Democrats:
Our democracy as currently constituted, is simply, not a level playing field. In fact, it’s arguably never been a level playing field, it’s heavily tilted toward a minority of voters that are predominately white and rural, thanks in large part to anti-majoritarian institutions like the Electoral College and the Senate. Just consider that right now the Senate is evenly split 50/50 and yet the 50 Senate Democrats represent nearly 42 million more Americans than the 50 senate Republicans....I mean, just consider the scope of how heavily tilted our democratic institutions are toward Republicans. They’ve only won the popular vote once in the last 32 years, yet, they’ve appointed a majority of Supreme Court justices...
In other words, Meyers just wants to scrap the Constitution so he and his fellow leftists can create a system that solely works to their political advantage – that’s his warped definition of fairness.
After whining about Democrats having to use budget reconciliation to force through the $1.9 trillion COVID relief boondoggle, Meyers repeated his claim that “the deck is already stacked heavily in the Republicans’ favor” and fearmongered that the GOP was “unleashing an unprecedented tidal wave of voter suppression laws.”
He hailed far-left Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock for giving “an impassioned speech in favor of sweeping voting reforms” on the Senate floor and declaring that “the GOP assault on voting rights is the most ferocious attack on democracy since the era of Jim Crow.” Meyers then lobbied hard for the liberal legislation:
Warnock was on the floor specifically to call for Senate passage of HR-1, a sweeping package of urgent voting reforms passed by the House that are desperately needed to level what is currently a very lopsided playing field. HR-1 would combat virtually every GOP voter suppression tactic by among other things, mandating nationwide early voting and no-excuse mail voting, instituting automatic and same-day voter registration, implementing public financing of elections, and banning congressional gerrymandering, among other things.
Among those “other things” that Meyers forgot to mention were corrupt measures that would force American taxpayers to line the pockets of candidates and campaigns they oppose, unconstitutionally mandate states restore the voting rights of convicted felons released from prison, sabotage voter ID laws in states across the country, compel non-profit organizations to publicly list their donors, and create unaccountable redistricting committees that would have the power to arbitrarily redraw congressional districts nationwide.
Having conveniently skipped such nakedly political aspects of the bill, Meyers demanded that Senate rules be scrapped in order aid the Democrats:
Now because the GOP is stonewalling, there’s obviously no realistic way of passing this bill in the Senate with 60 votes, so in order to make it a law, Democrats would have to kill or make changes to the filibuster....And let’s just remember, the filibuster, as it currently exists, is itself a relic of the Jim Crow era....Republicans tried to steal the last election through the courts. That didn’t work, so now they’re trying to steal the next election through voter suppression. Nuking or changing the filibuster to stop them is a moral necessity. We badly need sweeping reforms to make our democracy a level playing field.
In the mind of left-wing hacks like Meyers, a “level playing field” is one in which the rules are always changed to make sure that Democrats never lose another election. During his clueless tirade, he essentially called for the United States Senate to be disbanded because he deemed it to be “anti-majoritarian.”
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Here are excerpts of Meyers March 18 ranting, aired early on the morning of March 19:
12:47 AM ET
SETH MEYERS: Welcome back, everybody. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised a “scorched earth Senate” if Democrats change the filibuster to pass sweeping and urgently needed democracy reforms as Republicans across the country unleash a tidal wave of draconian new voting restrictions motivated by the big lie that Donald Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election for more on this, it’s time for A Closer Look.
Our democracy as currently constituted, is simply, not a level playing field. In fact, it’s arguably never been a level playing field, it’s heavily tilted toward a minority of voters that are predominately white and rural, thanks in large part to anti-majoritarian institutions like the Electoral College and the Senate. Just consider that right now the Senate is evenly split 50/50 and yet the 50 Senate Democrats represent nearly 42 million more Americans than the 50 senate Republicans. For example, Wyoming with a population of about 580,000 people, has two senators. And New York also has two senators, even though there are 580,000 people just on my co-op board.
(...)
MEYERS: I mean, just consider the scope of how heavily tilted our democratic institutions are toward Republicans. They’ve only won the popular vote once in the last 32 years, yet, they’ve appointed a majority of Supreme Court justices, they’ve lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million in 2016, lost the House by the largest margin since Watergate in 2018, lost two Senate seats in historically red Georgia this year, and yet, Mitch McConnell still basically gets a veto over what the Senate can or cannot pass. The only way the Senate can get anything done right now is through a process called budget reconciliation, which has more rules than a Manhattan parking sign.
(...)
MEYERS: The Democrats were able to pass their massively popular COVID relief bill through reconciliation, but thanks to the Senate parliamentarian, and a bunch of absurd rules no one understands, they had to drop their proposal for a $15 minimum wage. Trying to pass legislation through budget reconciliation is like trying to play some obscure board game your most annoying friend brought back from Europe.
(...)MEYERS: So the deck is already stacked heavily in the Republicans’ favor. And, yet, because they still got swamped in the 2020 elections, they’re trying to make it even harder for Americans to vote. State election officials across the country expanded mail and early voting in 2020 because of the pandemic and, by the way, if you judge the health of a democracy not by the results, but by how many people voted, it was a huge success. Voter fraud was virtually nonexistent, as has been the case for decades, even as turn out was the highest in over a century. You know how everyone’s always complaining about low voter turnout in America, 2020 showed us how the fix it. Just make voting easier. Let people vote at their convenience, either in person or by dropping off a ballot in the mail. Voting should take a few minutes tops, everything else has gotten easier in America, why not voting?
(...)
MEYERS: Anyway the point is, voting should be as easy as possible, and everyone should automatically be enrolled, or have the ability to enroll, on Election Day. Of course, if Republicans had their way, there’d be one ballot box in every state, it would be open for three hours from 2:00 to 5:00 a.m. on National We’re Not Telling You Day, and it would be at the end of a spooky corn maze. “Ooh, no thanks I’ll take my chances with President Ivanka.” And, sure enough, GOP state legislators across the country have responded to their thumping in 2020, by adopting new policies that appeal to a majority of Americans. Sorry, I mean, unleashing an unprecedented tidal wave of voter suppression laws
NICOLLE WALLACE: Across 43 states, more than 250 new voting laws have been proposed. They include efforts that would limit mail-in and early in-person voting. As well as Election Day voting, with constraints such as stricter I.D. requirements, limited voting hours, and narrower qualifications for absentee ballots.
MEYERS: My god, 250 laws in 43 states? Republicans are really not being subtle about it. I mean, wouldn’t it be easier and more honest to propose just one bill that would replace every ballot in a Democratic precinct with a shredder? You know, I have a sinking feeling that when I said that, Mitch McConnell sat up in bed, and chuckled like a battery powered Halloween doll. “Ha, ha, ha, I like that idea. Ha-ha-ha, back to bed.”
(...)
MEYERS: Their initial plan was to have the [Supreme] Court steal election for them, but that didn’t work because Biden won by too much, in too many states. So now they’re under their fallback plan, passing a flurry of new voting restrictions to help them steal the next election. Texas is the latest state to join in with a slate of proposed bills that would, among other things, take some of the most popular voting methods and either eliminate them entirely or make fewer people eligible for them
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN [CNN REPORTER, 3/15/21]: Texas is now the latest state to see Republicans introduce a flurry of bills that could make it even harder to vote. Texas Republicans are calling for measures that would impose new limits on early voting hours, and added requirements on mail voting. Some of the legislation appears to be aimed at Harris County, a Democratic stronghold and home to Houston. Which saw a surge in turnout last year after the county implemented methods during the pandemic, such as 24-hour and drive-thru voting sites
MEYERS: That’s right, Texas wants to ban drive-thru voting. How can you be against drive-thru voting? It combines the two most American things, democracy and drive-thrus.
(...)
MEYERS: Another provision floated by Texas Republicans would shrink the period when voters could return mail ballots. While another bill would ask voters to mail back photo copies of their drivers licenses or other qualifying identification with their mail ballots. And that makes sense, because if there’s one thing every American has, it’s a copy machine at home. We keep ours in the kids’ room. And by the way, it won’t shock you to learn that none of this is supported by any evidence of actual voter fraud, which again, is virtually nonexistent.
(...)
MEYERS: Texas is just the latest state to jump on the anti-voting bandwagon. The same thing is happening in Georgia, where Trump desperately tried to steal the state’s votes after losing to Biden last year. The state GOP has unleashed a flurry of draconian anti-voting restrictions on everything from mail voting to early voting to Sunday voting to offering voters snacks and water. Restrictions that are designed to target black voters in particular, as Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock pointed out on Wednesday.
ALEX WITT [MSNBC, 3/14/21]: There is a move to ban line warming. And what that is, is where volunteers will provide water, some snacks, even chairs to voters that are standing in line for a long time.
SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK [D-GA]: They are the ones making the lines longer through these draconian actions. And then they want to make it a crime to bring grandma some water while she’s waiting in a line that they’re making longer.
MEYERS: That’s right, Republicans want to make it a crime to give grandma water. In fairness, none of their old dudes seem to drink any water. That’s why they look like dried apple dolls.
(...)
MEYERS: Warnock delivered an impassioned speech in favor of sweeping voting reforms, and he noted that the GOP assault on voting rights is the most ferocious attack on democracy since the era of Jim Crow.
WARNOCK: We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights, unlike anything we've ever seen since the Jim Crow era. This is Jim Crow in new clothes.
MEYERS: He’s right. And the clothes aren’t even good. I mean, look at this [picture of Trump], it looks like he was thrown naked in the dumpster behind a Palm Beach pro-shop, and given five minutes to pick an outfit. It’s a good Halloween costume if you want to go as lost grandpa at Disney World. Warnock was on the floor specifically to call for Senate passage of HR-1, a sweeping package of urgent voting reforms passed by the House that are desperately needed to level what is currently a very lopsided playing field. HR-1 would combat virtually every GOP voter suppression tactic by among other things, mandating nationwide early voting and no-excuse mail voting, instituting automatic and same-day voter registration, implementing public financing of elections, and banning congressional gerrymandering, among other things. It’s also incredibly popular in polls, even among the majority of Republican voters. So, naturally, Republican politicians are losing their minds over it. House GOP Whip Steve Scalise began a tweet about the bill early this month by writing, “Every American should be outraged by this.” Oh, I wonder what it’s going to be? Rising poverty, child hunger, surprise medical bills, I can’t wait to find out. Let’s read the rest of the tweet. “Democrats just voted to ban voter ID nationwide and force every state to permanently expand mail-in voting.” Wait, that’s what you want us to be outraged about? A bill that makes it easier to vote that’s also incredibly popular?
(...)
1:00 AM
MEYERS: Now because the GOP is stonewalling, there’s obviously no realistic way of passing this bill in the Senate with 60 votes, so in order to make it a law, Democrats would have to kill or make changes to the filibuster, which is something even President Biden says he now supports. And let’s just remember, the filibuster, as it currently exists, is itself a relic of the Jim Crow era, it’s not in the Constitution and it hasn’t always been like this, it’s a relatively recent invention.
(...)
MEYERS: But Republicans are so terrified of even the prospect of modifying the filibuster rules that allow them to veto popular legislation, so McConnell took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to make a series of threats about what would happen if Democrats reformed the filibuster.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL [R-KY, 3/16/21]: Let me say this very clearly for all 99 of my colleagues. Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, can even begin to imagine what a completely scorched earth Senate would look like. We wouldn’t just erase every liberal change that hurt the country, we’d strengthen America with all kinds of conservative policies, with zero, zero input from the other side
MEYERS: Okay, first of all, we can imagine a scorched earth Senate, it’s scorched. You’ve done more scorching than a motel room iron. You can’t do any more scorching.
(...)
MEYERS: Also, you’re the one who scorched it. You already nuked the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, you bragged during Barack Obama’s presidency that you would you grind the institution to a halt to sabotage his agenda. You rushed to confirm a Supreme Court nominee before the election with no support from Democrats in just 30 days. And you guys passed a tax bill along party lines in the dead of night after scribbling changes in the margins at the last minute like you were making notes on a friend’s screenplay: “I would focus less on the soundtrack, and more on character development. And also the bad guy should get away with it.”
Republicans tried to steal the last election through the courts. That didn’t work, so now they’re trying to steal the next election through voter suppression. Nuking or changing the filibuster to stop them is a moral necessity. We badly need sweeping reforms to make our democracy a level playing field. Make it easy for everyone to vote in person or by mail, and make sure it remains legal to...
WARNOCK: Bring grandma some water.
MEYERS: This has been A Closer Look.
