Will Joe Biden’s Jim Crow lie Boomerang?

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The big lie works — until it doesn’t.

The lie, in this case, is President Joe Biden’s charge that the changes in Georgia’s election law passed by the majority-Republican Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on April 1 are “Jim Crow on steroids.” This was repeating his March 25 press conference statement that the law “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”

This isn’t the first time Biden has charged Republicans with over-the-top manifestations of racism of the sort that haven’t been common in decades or even centuries. During the 2012 campaign, he told a predominantly black audience that Mitt Romney “wants to put y’all back in chains.”

That, of course, was wrong, and so was Biden’s claim that the Georgia law closed off voting after 5 p.m. Even Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler awarded Biden the maximum four Pinocchios.

That didn’t stop Atlanta-based CEOs from gratuitously adding their ignorant voices to the chorus, including Delta Air Lines’s Ed Bastian (total 2019 pay: $17 million) and Coca-Cola’s Britain-born James Quincey (total 2019 pay: $18 million).

Piling on was Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred (total 2019 pay: $11 million), prompted perhaps by Biden’s statement that he would “strongly encourage” moving this summer’s All-Star Game out of Atlanta, who did just that.

Never mind that the Georgia law authorizes 17 days of no-excuse-needed early voting — exactly 17 more days than provided in Biden’s Delaware or Major League Baseball’s home state of New York.

Never mind also that, as Georgia Public Radio’s Stephen Fowler pointed out, some provisions of the Georgia law increase voter ballot access. And ignore the mixed-verdict analysis of Slate’s Will Saletan, and the obvious reasons for some provisions he calls “bad stuff,” such as later mailing of absentee ballots (previously starting in May) and shorter runoffs (the last ones pushed the campaign past the Christmas holidays).

Put aside the New York Times’s Upshot writer Nate Cohn, who concludes that the changes in the Georgia law are “unlikely to significantly alter turnout or Democratic chances” and adds they might increase turnout.

Pause instead and ponder just what you’re talking about when you’re talking about “Jim Crow.” Carl Cannon, a reporter’s reporter, provides a useful guide.

“’Jim Crow,’ originally a minstrel act before the Civil War, came to mean a series of laws and customs that took root in the Deep South during Reconstruction,” Cannon explains. “The civil rights movement was about dismantling them.” Jim Crow was enforced by state and local laws and by force — “at the point of a gun or the end of a rope by armed white mobs.” And by lynching after lynching, as Cannon describes in horrifying detail.

To say that anyone in public life wishes to bring back Jim Crow is a despicable lie. It’s a libel against the public.

One of the great achievements of this country was the dismantling and repudiation of the system of legally and violently enforced racial segregation and subjugation. It was the achievement first of black Americans, famous and obscure, who risked, and in some cases gave, their lives to protest peacefully. This cause came to be embraced by a supermajority of people of all backgrounds and characteristics.

To declare that provisions such as requiring voters to show picture identification and limiting no-excuse early voting to 17 days amount to a return to Jim Crow is disgraceful, whether you’re the president or you’re $46 million worth of CEOs.

It’s also not clear it’s politically helpful. A Morning Consult poll shows 42% to 36% approval of the Georgia law. A CNN poll shows approval on Biden’s “handling racial injustice” standing at just 47%, below his overall job rating.

Stacey Abrams started the attacks on Georgia’s election law as “voter suppression” by charging that she actually won the 2018 governor election (she lost by 54,723 votes). Hillary Clinton and other Democrats collaborated in her charade. Actually, 2018 turnout was up 54% from the previous governor election and up 93% from 2002. Now, Abrams finds herself on the defensive over Atlanta losing the All-Star Game.

Much like Abrams, former President Donald Trump complained that outright fraud and election law changes to accommodate increased absentee deprived him of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes last November (he lost by 11,779 votes). The Jan. 6 rioters collaborated in this charade. Actually, 2020 Georgia turnout was up 21% from 2016 and 93% from 2000. Trump’s protests hurt his ratings and denied him deserved credit for Operation Warp Speed’s vaccines.

Now, Biden is charging that Americans want to return to Jim Crow. He is giving ammunition to adversaries such as the Chinese, who berated his secretary of state and national security adviser in Anchorage last month for America’s race problems.

Big lies sometimes boomerang.

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