We begin today’s roundup with The New York Times and its editorial on the right to vote in Kansas:
The right to vote is turning into a tooth-and-claw saga in Kansas, thanks to right-wing ideologues’ determination to force new voters to produce a passport, a birth certificate or naturalization papers as proof of citizenship. [...]
Judge Robinson found that 18,372 qualified voters had been unfairly barred from federal elections — about 8 percent of new applicants. She also found that between 1995 and 2013, there were only three instances in Kansas when noncitizens had voted. This was a humiliating setback for Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has been a major proponent of the Republican fantasy that voter fraud is rampant. [...]
So goes the weakened state of democracy in Kansas. As the courts thrash through the Republicans’ “voter fraud” myth, it is shocking that thousands of qualified Kansans still have no certainty that they will be allowed into the voting booth.
Ryan Cooper at The Week also highlights the continued attack on voting rights:
Given the GOP's other vote suppression measures — like shortening early voting, eliminating night and weekend voting, making it harder to register to vote, and so on, all of which have nothing to do with fraud but disproportionately hit liberal constituencies — undermining Democratic turnout is the obvious motivation behind voter ID and similar policies. [...]
until Congress can re-protect the franchise, the key question for the future will be whether the Supreme Court will revisit its previous view that the Voting Rights Act is largely outdated and unnecessary. Chief Justice John Roberts came to that view through a tremendous effort of willful ignorance — but subsequent events could not possibly have proved him wrong more decisively. The next time voting rights comes before the court, the need to defend the franchise will be difficult to ignore.
Peter Stevenson at The Washington Post lists the “many tortured ways” Republicans are trying to avoid their convention and has video too:
Some of them struggled to endorse Trump, coming up with halfhearted praise and a collective "meh." And now a whole group of party elites won't attend this month's Republican National Convention in Cleveland, thinking that it would devolve into some kind of Trump-infused circus.
Of course, that's not their stated reason for skipping out. No, they have a variety of excuses: They're too busy running their own campaigns, they'd rather watch on television, or they have previous engagements scheduled (like Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, who apparently has to mow his lawn for the entire four-day political extravaganza).
Some didn't even bother with an excuse, like Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. Neither of the living Republican former presidents — George W. Bush, nor his father, George H.W. Bush — will attend. And Jeb Bush, who was once thought to be the 2016 front-runner, certainly won't be asking any of his supporters to "please clap" for Trump.
Ed Kilgore:
While the original nightmare of angry Trump supporters rioting as the nomination is "stolen" has abated, protests against Trump are a certainty. And they could get out of hand.
Local police originally drew up a plan to keep protesters as far away from the convention site as possible. But a federal judge has intervened with an order killing the plan. No telling which restrictions might survive.
And yes, even without a coup, there are going to be pro-Trump demonstrators in the vicinity. A group called Citizens for Trump is expecting 5,000 people to show up under its banner. Worse yet, the Traditionalist Worker Party, a pro-Trump fringe group that recently became embroiled in violent clashes with leftists in Sacramento, is planning to travel to Cleveland to "protect Trump supporters." The convention will be an all-purpose freak magnet. And if that's not scary enough, it's clear Ohio's "open carry" law will be in force in whatever area is eventually made available to the various protesters (it might have been enforced even inside the convention site had the Secret Service not stomped on that possibility).
Bill Schneider at Reuters:
We're about to see a showdown at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, later this month between the Trump movement and the Tea Party. Remember the Tea Party? They were hard-line, anti-government conservatives who took on the Republican Party establishment in 2010.
They won.
The Tea Party’s favorite candidate this year was Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, not Trump. Some conservatives are determined to resist Trump's nomination at the convention. In last month's NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, a majority of conservative Republican voters said they would prefer that the party nominate someone other than Trump. That won't happen. But conservatives are trying to change party rules so that they can regain control of the party in the future. Presumably after Trump loses in November.
Lisa Desjardins at PBS runs down the anticipated “anti-Trump rebellion” at the GOP convention:
The battle to control the GOP convention in Cleveland — and the fate of party — has reached a turning point.
While the “Stop Trump” movement has unleashed a barrage of cross-country phone calls and emails to seek support for their proposals, a group of longtime Republican rule makers, some working with the Trump campaign, have quickly coalesced to try and block them.
Those Republican rule makers are also going on offense by proposing what would be relatively historic changes in order to take some power away from convention delegates this year and close more primaries to non-Republicans the next time around.
Over at The Atlantic, J.D. Vance has an interesting take on Donald Trump’s supporters:
In some ways, Trump’s large, national coalition defies easy characterization. He draws from a broad base of good people: kind folks who open their homes and hearts to people of all colors and creeds, married couples with happy homes and families who live nearby, public servants who put their lives on the line to fight fires in their communities. Not all Trump voters spend their days searching for an analgesic.
Yet a common thread among Trump’s faithful, even among those whose individual circumstances remain unspoiled, is that they hail from broken communities. These are places where good jobs are impossible to come by. Where people have lost their faith and abandoned the churches of their parents and grandparents. Where the death rates of poor white people go up even as the death rates of all other groups go down. Where too many young people spend their days stoned instead of working and learning.
On a final note, Joel Dodge at The Week thinks Hillary Clinton should consider Vice President Joe Biden for her ticket — what do you think?
As America's affable "Uncle Joe," he is viewed positively by 51 percent of the country and unfavorably by just 36 percent. He's absolutely beloved by Democrats, helping to shore up the Sanders-Warren wing of the party. And he has already proven to be an able complement to a candidate who, like Clinton, sometimes struggles to connect viscerally and emotionally with voters. He also appears to absolutely love being vice president, and is good at the job.
Picking a sitting vice president would not be historically unprecedented. Unlike the presidency, there is no constitutional limit on how many terms a vice president can serve. In fact, both George Clinton and John C. Calhoun served as veep for two different presidents: Clinton for Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and Calhoun for John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.