Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

A ruling by a federal appellate court returns the “day” to Election Day in at least three states including Texas.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion Friday that federal law requires mail ballots to arrive by Election Day and preempts any state laws to the contrary.

Opinions issued by the Fifth Circuit set precedent for the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, but the court’s ruling is expected to have national impact.

The Republican National Committee and Mississippi Republican Party sued in January to challenge a Mississippi law that counts mail-in ballots that arrive up to five days after Election Day.

Mississippi changed its election laws during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic to extend the acceptance period for absentee ballots.

“Federal law requires voters to take timely steps to vote by Election Day. And federal law does not permit the State of Mississippi to extend the period for voting by one day, five days, or 100 days,” stated Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham, writing on behalf of a three-judge panel:

If only we could get blue states outside the Fifth Circuit to obey those guidelines…

Presently, the Democrat nominee’s presidential bid exemplifies why understanding what a campaign is doing is the best barometer of how a candidate is performing with the electorate—not a poll.

On the micro-level, one can view the Harris campaign’s targeting of individual constituencies, which have traditionally comprised integral parts of the Democrat coalition. From young African-American men to Hispanics to Arab-Americans to Jewish-Americans, the Harris campaign’s assumed, almost unanimous, and necessary support has been lacking. As a result, we see not only an increase in her campaign’s messaging to these constituencies, we see the surreal hectoring of young black males—and males, in general—by surrogates, such as the Obamas. Asking voters to support your candidate indicates your campaign is okay; urging voters to support your candidate indicates your campaign is troubled; criticizing voters as not being “man” enough to vote for your candidate indicates your campaign is cooked. Other targeted messages abound within the Harris campaigns, including the emphasis on increased federal spending within the African-American community (in one of the most patronizingly racist appeals imaginable); abortion (though it is hard to imagine those who believe abortion is the overriding issue not already voting for the vice president); and the big lie about “Project 2025” being Donald Trump’s post-election agenda—all of which are designed to unite and rally a presently eroding and unenthusiastic Democrat voter base.

t wasn’t so long ago that progressives were riding high in the United States. Their radical views set the agenda and tone for the Democratic Party and, especially in cultural areas, dominated discourse. Building in the 2010s and cresting at the start of this decade with the Black Lives Matter protests and the heady early days of the Biden administration, few of their ideas seemed off the table.

Defund the police and empty the jails? Sure! Abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and decriminalise the border? Absolutely! Get rid of fossil fuels and have a Green New Deal? Definitely! Demand trillions of dollars for a “transformational” Build Back Better bill? We’re just getting started! Promote DEI and the struggle for “equity” (not equal opportunity) everywhere? It’s the only way to fight privilege! Insist that a new ideology around race and gender should be accepted by everyone? Only a bigot would resist!

In reality, a lot of these ideas were terrible and most voters outside the precincts of the progressive left itself were never interested in them. That was true from the get-go but now the backlash against these ideas is strong enough that it cannot be ignored. As a result, politics is adjusting and the progressive moment is well and truly over.

Astute observers on the left acknowledge this, albeit with an undertone of sadness. So how did the progressive moment fall apart? It is not hard to think of some reasons.

Loosening restrictions on illegal immigration was a terrible idea and voters hate it. When Joe Biden came into office, he immediately issued a series of executive orders loosening the rules for handling illegal immigrants, a move that was applauded by progressives.

The predictable result was a surge in illegal immigration and the diffusion of these immigrants into overburdened cities, which caused a spike in negative sentiment towards Democrats for letting the situation get out of control. This has resulted in huge advantages for Donald Trump and the Republicans that have continued even as the Biden administration moved in mid-2024 to tighten the border and Kamala Harris runs commercials promising to be tough on border security.

The Democrats should have seen this coming. Polling over the years has consistently shown overwhelming majorities in favour of more emphasis on border security. And now voters are increasingly open to draconian restriction measures. An astonishing 62 per cent of voters in a June CBS News survey supported starting a “new national programme to deport all undocumented immigrants currently living in the US illegally”. Progressives’ failure to understand this reality is a big reason why the progressive moment is over.

Promoting lax law enforcement and tolerance of social disorder was another terrible idea and voters hate it too. In the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the climate for police and criminal justice reform was highly favourable. But Democrats blew the opportunity by allowing the party to be associated with unpopular slogans like “defund the police” that did not appear to take public safety concerns seriously. Democratic non-white and working-class voters tend to live in areas that have more crime and are therefore unlikely to look kindly on any approach that threatens public safety.

A survey conducted for my new report with Yuval Levin, Politics Without Winners: Can Either Party Build a Majority Coalition?, confirmed the strength of these sentiments. By 73 to 25 per cent, voters backed keeping police budgets whole in the interests of public safety over reducing them and transferring money to social services.

Among non-white working-class voters there was a 30-point margin against reducing police budgets, which ballooned to 50 points among moderate to conservative working-class non-whites, the overwhelming majority of this demographic. By contrast, white college-grad liberals favoured reducing police budgets by 20 points. That tells you a lot.

(Hat tip: Instapundit.)

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