Friends and Enemies of the Pod
Friends and Enemies of the Pod
Revelations are made. Truths come out. I made a scary Mean Girls meme for a singular and unnecessary joke.
Friends, it has finally happened: I’ve fallen behind in the polls like Bernie after the 2020 South Carolina primaries, and so I am ending my run for president. (Don’t worry: I’ll probably just run for mayor next. NBD!)
Today, I have to concede my title of For President to the president of Emory Democrats and first runner-up of my Bach Bracket league, Alex Chanen. He answered my questions about Georgia’s new voter suppression bill, the current state of Georgia’s Republican party, and the importance of student and grassroots activism.
I am so honored and humbled to have a social media influencer of his level of fame not only join me here at my little newsletter but occasionally tell me I’m funny.
You Can Take the Girl Out of Georgia By Forcing Her to Suddenly Leave Georgia Because of a Worsening Global Pandemic, But You Can’t Take Georgia Out of the Girl
Last Monday, the Georgia House passed a new bill that will restrict voting access across the state. The GOP-led bill proposes eliminating no-excuse absentee voting, reducing polling sites, and getting rid of absentee ballot drop boxes, which are all things that make voting easier for Georgians but are also all things that advantage Democrats during elections.
I asked Alex to gently explain the environment in the state that helped to foster the creation and passing of a bill like this:
Emily: Okay, what the fuck is going on in Georgia right now?
Alex: Well, frankly a lot.
The Georgia GOP, which has run the state for years, is losing power and they are losing power fast. 2018 served as a wake-up call for them when Stacey [Abrams] came an inch from the Governorship and Lucy McBath flipped the 6th District.1 For the first time, Georgia looked like it was seriously in play.
After that, there was a wave of suppression techniques implemented and obviously, Democrats organized around them. Now that Democrats have won here, Republicans are scared and doing what they do best: ignoring organizing and implementing more racist voter suppression laws.
The party is in disarray with the Kemp wing fighting the Marjorie Taylor Greene wing, so they are worried about having an electoral implosion and losing to Stacey and Raphael Warnock in 2022 and having their party crumble. This is all they can do to try to prevent that.2
Alex just name-dropped a lot of major political players in the Georgia game so let’s take a minute to break down who they are as well as the state’s recent political history.
In 2018, Stacey Abrams (D) ran against Brian Kemp (R) for the governorship. Kemp was Georgia’s Secretary of State at the time and was therefore in charge of elections and voter registration… Any sarcastic little joke here would just be too easy.
Not surprisingly, Kemp used his position to suppress the vote in Georgia long before he even went up against Abrams: according to the Associated Press, “Kemp’s office has canceled over 1.4 million voter registrations since 2012. Nearly 670,000 registrations were canceled in 2017 alone.”
Even less surprisingly, Kemp’s voter suppression tactics largely targeted voters of color: his office placed holds on voter registration applications due to his “exact match” policy which states that “information on voter applications must precisely match information on file with the Georgia Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. Election officials can place non-matching applications on hold. An application could be held because of an entry error or a dropped hyphen in a last name, for example.” (Those whose applications are placed on hold are not notified that there was something wrong with their application and in 2018, that resulted in a number of Georgian voters believing they were registered only to find no one has gone by their name in 50 years.)
Notably, 70% of the voter registration applications on hold through the 2018 election were from Black voters. In comparison, Georgia’s population is only 32% Black.
Why is this important? Black voters in Georgia helped decide both the presidential and January runoff elections to turn the state blue.3 When voters of color —most notably Black voters— are enfranchised, Democrats become increasingly favored. Just like the monument at Stone Mountain, voter suppression tactics in the state are not only blatantly racist, they’re also really ugly.
Stacey Abrams lost the 2018 race despite a judge ruling that Kemp violated voting laws before and after the election. However, instead of wallowing or getting resentful in the wake of such a loss, Abrams changed the game instead: she started Fair Fight to help create teams across the country to help protect against future attacks of voter suppression and to help large numbers of unregistered Americans become active registered voters. But more on the power of organizing later.
The Marjorie Taylor Bowling Greene Massacre of It All
Alex mentioned the disunion between the Kemp and Greene wings of the Georgia GOP and I want to draw our attention there next because, and I cannot emphasize this enough, I am a messy bitch who lives for drama.
From what we just learned about 2018, it should not be surprising that Kemp and Trump were two peas in a pod. But then [gasp!!!], Kemp fell out of favor with Trump this past year when Kemp rejected Trump’s requests to overturn the 2020 Presidential Election results in Georgia in which Joe Biden won.
In contrast, Marjorie Taylor Greene and her rah-rah-sis-boom-Qanon faction have continued to support Trump without nuance or the occasional ideology break like Kemp.4 This has attracted Trump’s attention because, politics aside, Donald Trump is nothing if not a two-faced catty bitch. He’ll promise to keep your secrets while he’s really on a three-way call with Rudy Giuliani and Don Jr. and tell you he loves your vintage skirt only to talk shit about it the second you turn around.
As Alex puts it, Trump’s favor has only enabled MTG further. “Usually when someone is kicked off their committees like Greene was back in February, they fade into irrelevancy. However, she has found a way to stay relevant. She has been motioning to adjourn the House multiple times a day, a stall tactic, because due to ancient House rules, it requires everyone to stop what they are doing (committee hearings, constituent meetings, etc.) and come vote on whether to adjourn. Growing numbers of Republicans are getting frustrated with this and are voting against her motions.”
While Marjorie Taylor Greene may be pissing of her Congressional colleagues and exasperating the growing disconnect within the GOP, her extremism is not unfavorable amongst Republican voters in Georgia: Greene won her seat with an overwhelming 74.6% of the vote.
Her increasing prevalence stands at odds with a number of more moderate Georgia Republicans like Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan, who wants to expand voting in the state, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger who has touted “Georgia as a leader in elections thanks to no-excuse absentee voting, generous early voting laws, and automatic voter registration,” which are all things the new bill targets.
Unfortunately for Duncan, Raffensperger, and millions of Georgians, the more en vogue radicalism on the right becomes amongst voters, the more elected Republicans will try to appease their desires. This is how we get more bills like House Bill 531.
Silver Linings Voter Protection Playbook
There’s (a little) hope:
I asked Alex if there any way to stop or mitigate the effects of what is being proposed in the new voting bill, to which he said, “This law and others around the country are going to have a hard time standing up in court under strict scrutiny provisions. And they are going to be challenged pretty extensively.”5
Alex: We also really need to pass the For The People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. We should probably get rid of the filibuster, as that's holding them up from becoming law and passing the Senate.
(The answer is yes, it is hard sometimes to be a trendsetter.)
As the GA GOP factions move further apart, Georgia Democrats seem to be moving past their differences to come together and fight against their large problems. This has led to an incredible increase in grassroots and student-led organizing in the state which has helped to register more than 800,000 new voters.
One group that I personally know is doing an incredible amount of good around the state (and is inspiring compatriots elsewhere in —let’s use a crazy example— Connecticut) is the Emory Democrats.
Unfortunately, it’s time for the truth to finally come out: I’m sad to admit that I was never actually a member during my time at Emory. However (segue), I have been so fired up by the work the organization and individual members like Alex have been doing over the past year that it has led me to become increasingly politically active— active enough to start a particular political newsletter 👉👈.
I asked Alex what it has been like to become a political influencer and, more importantly, what initiatives has his team has implemented that he believes have had the most impact:
Alex: Ha! I wouldn't call myself that.
We've registered thousands of voters over my time at Emory which I really think could have had a huge impact. We also have tried to make politics something people care about, so we've succeeded at that.
I think we've made things easier for people to get involved and get registered. The Georgia process is absurdly tough and we have tried to alleviate that. Emory has put some registration systems in place that don't work very well, so we've tried to alleviate that problem, too.
Emily: What are you most proud of that Emory Dems has accomplished?
Alex: I'm proud that I feel like we've made Emory a slightly more politically active place and seemed to have some tangible impact by registering a ton of people and getting cool people like Raphael Warnock, Billy Eichner, and Ayanna Pressley to come speak!
We’re not going to irradicate voter suppression tactics overnight. They’ve been in play for even longer than this newsletter has been droning on. But there is proof that organizing and mobilizing makes an incredible difference when it comes to protecting the rights of all Americans to vote.
Emily: We saw in this past election the impact student and grassroots organizing can have on elections. What do you recommend to those who want to stay involve in protecting the vote during non-election years?
Alex: Stay involved and stay informed.
There are always elections going on and local elections are so important. While they may not be the flashiest, they can have a direct impact on your life. There are also tons of ways to get involved and volunteer with organizations fighting for different issues, like Planned Parenthood, ACLU, etc.
Also, run for office!
Politics can be bleak, especially after the year we just had (and by that I mean the first two months of 2021). I asked Alex what was one thing that he was hopeful about. “I'm very hopeful about the American Rescue Plan. This has some groundbreaking provisions, including one that will cut child poverty in half. There is a lot of good stuff in here. I'm hopeful that Democrats see the importance of going big and continue to deliver reforms in other areas.”
Technically, that was two things but they gave me a little hit of serotonin so I’ll let it slide.
Before We Go…
I’d like to thank Alex Chanen for not only answering all of my questions here but also for the work he and Emory Dems have done and will no doubt continue to do. To all of you reading: you are some of the coolest people I know and the reason I got over my anxiety of talking to strangers on the phone.
In closing, I’d like to share Alex’s responses to the two most important questions I asked him:
Emily: What's it like to be funny on Twitter? I wouldn't know so I'm curious.
Alex: It's a curse. You send one funny tweet and your screentime goes up by 8 hours forever.
Emily: Did I cause the pandemic by setting "be funnier on Twitter" as my 2020 New Year's Resolution?
Alex: No comment.
If you’re looking to feel good about politics and election outcomes in these tense times, I suggest reading Lucy McBath’s story.
I would like it publicly known that although he exclusively called Ms. Abrams “Stacey” in our chat, Alex attests that he is not on a first-name basis with the organizer and rightful queen of everything.
Do not be fooled: this is not a pro-Brian Kemp production.
As mentioned, the bill has only passed in the Georgia House so far. However, Republicans control the state’s Senate as well as the House, meaning it could very well be passed into law.