Fifty cold civil wars
It's actually red versus blue *counties,* not states. Also: a perennial grifter strikes yet again, and the shocking secrets of the "Mario" universe.
I never got around to writing about the “Tennessee Three,” but HistoryBoomer kindly helped me out by expressing a position remarkably similar to my own:
The Tennessee protest wasn't anything close to January 6, and it's disingenuous for the same Republicans who defended the Beer Gut Putsch to shriek about what an affront to democracy it was.
But it wasn't nothing. Even if you sympathize with their call for sensible gun laws1 - as I do - you can't mess around during a legislative session like this and expect no consequences:
Legislatures have rules of decorum to prevent proceedings from being disrupted. If any member can grab a megaphone to shout at will, calm debate becomes impossible. Many liberals are cheering the three Democrats, but would they feel the same if it was three Republicans who had grabbed a megaphone in a Democratic-controlled chamber and called for more restrictions on abortion or same-sex marriage? The mind boggles.
No elected official should lose their job simply for raising their voice – especially when they’re doing it on behalf of our children.
Barack Obama (April 6 tweet)Obama’s words lay out the source of much of the disagreement. For many Democrats, the lawmakers’ rule-breaking was justified because their cause was good.
The whole point of civil disobedience has been that you break the law expecting to be arrested or punished. In 2023, activists from across the political spectrum get really indignant when told they cannot do whatever they want.
That said, they absolutely did not deserve the consequences meted out by a vengeful GOP majority:
That said, the expulsion was an over-the-top reaction. Only two other members have been expelled from the Tennessee House in the last 100 years: Robert Fisher for seeking a bribe (1980) and Jeremy Durham for allegations of sexual misconduct (2016). In both cases, the votes to expel were bipartisan. By removing Jones and Pearson, Republicans have taken representation away from 150,000 citizens of two Tennessee districts. Rep. Pearson said, “We are losing our democracy. This is not normal. This is not OK.”
Taking away the member’s committee assignments (as was done), and issuing a reprimand and a warning, seems like it would have been sufficient. The gun control debate is heated, and both sides need to talk to each other. This isn’t possible if voices are silenced. Republicans probably weren’t motivated by racism, but their actions did nothing to advance debate.
Most of the commentary around this incident understandably focuses on the racial element, but Ginger Adams Otis in the Wall Street Journal points out the other great and seemingly growing divide behind this controversy: between urban and rural voters and their representatives.
The contentious ouster of Tennessee state lawmakers Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis is the latest skirmish in a longstanding power struggle between Republicans who control the state’s politics and Democrats in charge of its fast-growing cities.
Now, after GOP legislators used their majority power to expel the two representatives last week, Democrats in the metro areas plan to use their authority to send them straight back, with Nashville-area officials voting Monday to return Mr. Jones to the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Republican state leaders in recent years have passed an array of measures that override local policies. A recent law, for example, cut the size of Nashville’s Metropolitan Council from 40 to 20 members.
The city sued, arguing in part that there wasn’t enough time to define the new council districts ahead of the August election. On Monday, a three-judge panel in a state court issued an injunction, blocking enforcement of the law while it continues to consider the city’s suit. The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office was reviewing the ruling on Monday evening, according to spokeswoman Elizabeth Lane.
Democratic city leaders have accused their state counterparts of trampling over the power of locally elected officials. Tennessee’s GOP state leaders are primarily white, while many of the Democratic leaders of the cities and counties are Black.
[…]
Tennessee is an extreme example of a polarized power dynamic playing out in many parts of the U.S. where red states contend with blue cities. In Texas, conservative state lawmakers have enacted laws pre-empting cities from passing prohibitions on fracking within city limits and other local policies that state leaders disagreed with. In Missouri, a former bellwether state that’s been reliably red since 2016, Republican lawmakers and the state’s GOP attorney general this year have pushed plans to oust St. Louis’s top prosecutor, a Democrat.
As I never tire of pointing out, talk of “red” and “blue” states glosses over the substantial political divisions within even reliably Republican and Democratic states. Nashville, like most Southern cities, is a Democratic stronghold. On the other hand, there are very large swathes of California and New York state colored bright red on the last few Presidential electoral maps.
The average person in Los Angeles has much more in common politically, and in some ways culturally, with a resident of Dallas or New Orleans or freaking Salt Lake City than a fellow Californian living near the Oregon border.
In other words, the national divorce isn't happening, regardless of what some LARPers on the internet (and in Congress) insist. You city folk and country folk are stuck with each other for the foreseeable future.
Which is why Tennessee Republicans should think twice (lol) about pressing their rural overrepresentation. In the long term they're swimming against the tide in a rapidly urbanizing country.
Eventually - maybe in a few years, maybe in a few decades - the tide will turn. (It wasn't that long ago Democrats could still get elected statewide in Tennessee - as could Republicans in Illinois.) If and when Democrats get the upper hand, they aren't likely to forget this.
When my kids watch a show like Paw Patrol or Fireman Sam, I always find it funny that the antagonist (Mayor Humdinger in the former, the little shit Norman Price in the latter) always seem to be able to get people to go along with their latest scam or insane scheme, no matter how many times they've been burned.
Real life is not a kids’ show, thankfully, so that's why you never see professional grifters and scam artists suckering the same people over and over again.
(Cough)
Um, anyway, here's Matt Lewis with the latest on Rebekah Jones, a woman I hold at least 5% responsible for getting Ron DeSantis re-elected:
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