No. Not her opportunity to win. That opportunity is long gone. But she has an awesome opportunity right now to make a very important point about voter disenfranchisement.
Voters in Indiana were turned away from the polls today if they didn’t have a valid state ID, thanks to a crappy new law in Indiana. Nuns couldn’t even let other nuns vote if they didn’t have a state ID. Students with an out of state driver’s license? Not good enough to vote in Indiana!
While it’s not the Poll Tax, it’s similar in spirit. It’s an arbitrary barrier to voting which serves no legitimate purpose whatsoever. The Republicans who pushed the law through did so under the guise of preventing voter fraud. The problem with that argument is that there is, nor has there ever been a threat of voter fraud in Indiana. Voter fraud is a red herring. It’s all about making it harder for particular people to vote — specifically the poor and the elderly, both of whom are a lot less likely to have a valid state ID. The elderly don’t drive and the poor, well, they’re poor. And who does it help when the elderly and the poor don’t vote? I’ll give you one guess and it ain’t Democrats.
But! Regarding the Democratic Party’s primaries, who’s core demographic is the elderly and the poor and uneducated? It’s Hillary Clinton. So, I think it’s fair to say that if any candidate was hurt today by the undemocratic voter ID law, it was Hillary.
For all of the fake voter disenfranchisement she’s been whining about in Florida and Michigan, here’s a real case of voter disenfranchisement which actually probably hurt her, and which will be actually relevant in future elections. Will she raise hell about it? I would sure be impressed if she did. But I haven’t been exactly impressed with her behavior over the past eight years, so let’s just say I’m not counting on it.
But nonetheless, right now she has an opportunity to make an argument which both favors democratic ideals and which helps her own case to be the nominee. However, since I never really believed that Hillary Clinton cared about democratic ideals in the first place, I’ll bet she’ll let it pass without even a word.
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