On Saturday, taking a page out of the Barack Obama racism playbook, Hillary Clinton accused Alabama Republicans of returning the state to the era of Jim Crow laws, snapping that the state’s closing of 31 driver’s license offices was “discriminatory and demeaning.”
Clinton demanded that Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and the GOP-led legislature leave the offices open, adding snidely, “not just for one day a month.”
Speaking to the Alabama Democratic Conference, originally created in the 1960s to urge black Americans to vote Democratic, and worried that she will not succeed in winning the nearly-unanimous support of the black community that Barack Obama depended on in 2008 and 2012, she pontificated: “Here in Alabama, without the right kind of ID, it’s nearly impossible to vote. It’s hard to believe we are back having this same debate about whether every American gets a chance to vote. This is a blast from the Jim Crow past.”
In August, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency announced that most of the driver’s license offices would close by March 2016; 33 would be closed in the first wave of closures, followed by 12 more in January. By March 2016, only the four offices in Huntsville, Montgomery, Mobile, and Birmingham would remain open.
ALEA Secretary Spencer Collier stated: “Unfortunately, what citizens can expect are longer lines, oftentimes scheduling way in advance to get an opportunity. Probably the worst is that some… are going to have to travel a significant distance to be able to get that driver’s license service.”
Democrats complain that the initial 33 closures were implemented in neighborhoods with populations that are at least 75 percent black.
Their criticism is just short of ludicrous; the presidential election will take place roughly eight months after all the offices but four are closed, and the four offices remaining will be situated in Alabama’s four largest cities.
Clinton also suggested that states implement early voting days, weekend and evening voting, and allow former convicts who have “done their time” to vote. She failed to mention that Jim Crow laws were enforced by Democrats. According to the American Civil Rights Union:
Jim Crow social customs and voter denial were enforced by the Klu Klux Klan. The Klan flogged blacks until they promised not to vote Republican… Democrats were in complete control of the South during the entire Jim Crow era, from 1877 through 1965. Jim Crow’s political purpose was to keep “the white man’s party” in power. The Ku Klux Klan functioned as the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party, and was used to drive Republicans out of the South during the Reconstruction period.
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