PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor is once again spreading Democratic Party propaganda, appealing this time to the memory of the very Founding Fathers she openly detests.
Senate Republicans this week blocked a Democratic-sponsored bill, the For the People Act, which would centralize election administration, scuttle state-level voter laws, politicize the Federal Election Commission, and put restrictions on political speech. A vote to advance an amended version of the Democratic power grab split solidly along party lines 50-50, 10 votes short of the required 60.
“In the fight for voting rights,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said after the GOP successfully blocked the measure, “this vote was the starting gun, not the finish line.”
Later, during an appearance on MSNBC, White House correspondent and Washington Week host Alcindor lamented we are fast moving away from what the founders would’ve wanted.
PBS’s @Yamiche on HR1: “This is going to be a debate about whether or not we want America to be the place that the Founders — flawed as they may have been — the Founders wanted it to be.” pic.twitter.com/TX1a06MDXb
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 22, 2021
“What is American democracy, and who should have access to it?” she asked. “This is going to be a debate about whether or not we want America to be the place that the founders, flawed as they may have been, the founders wanted it to be, which is a place where people could vote and people could have access to who were the electorate officials.”
It’s maybe a bit too cute that Alcindor, of all people, is pulling the “what would the founders say?” card. Remember, this is the same person who pitched a fit last year after former President Donald Trump delivered a campaign speech at the foot of Mount Rushmore.
“We’re seeing a celebration of America’s independence on land that was stolen from Native Americans,” Alcindor complained at the time, “and it’s over, and it’s being seen and overlooked by two presidents, their figures, rather, that owned slaves and a third president in Roosevelt who — who talked about going westward and oversaw the desecration of Native land.”
She added: “[Trump’s] fitting in this history that is, in some ways, a Republican history about the idea they’re really looking at white resentment … President Trump wants to be on the side of the myth of America.”
Alcindor said later of the address, “The speech at Mount Rushmore, the thing that stuck with me was that he said the protesters, and he was really talking about Black Lives Matter activists who have been in all 50 states, including red states, they were trying to erase our history and erase the values of America and called the Black Lives Matter movement and this protest movement we’re seeing across the country dangerous.”
For the record, Trump never once mentioned Black Lives Matter. He did, however, talk about violent anti-police riots and the racist “anti-racist” movement that cheered them on. That Alcindor heard “Black Lives Matter” when the president talked about riots says more about her than anything else.
“What the president is doing is positing himself as against this idea there should be a rethinking of American history,” she said. “He said in that speech, at Mount Rushmore, under the statue of two slave owners, under Theodore Roosevelt, who was pushing for the expansion in the West, including the desecration of Native lands. He’s saying we can’t see the facts of our founders and seek to do away with this myth of America that everyone on July 4 that everyone was created, treated equally. That’s not true.”
Ah, but now Alcindor is asking: Won’t someone please think of the founders? Speaking of which, it’s likely the founders would’ve taken a dim view of Congress seizing control of federal elections.
Alcindor wasn’t finished. She continued, vomiting forth a litany of Democratic Party talking points, including even the ludicrous claim that the filibuster, which Democrats used approximately 327 times in 2020, is a relic of the Jim Crow era.
“When I talk to activists and civil rights leaders,” she said, “they tell me that not only, of course, are they going to continue to put pressure on lawmakers to put in bills and try to push back on this filibuster issue and try to get the For the People Act passed.”
Alcindor added, “I’ve been talking to officials who say two other things really need to happen. The first is that the [Justice Department] needs to start taking action to figure out whether or not there are ways to stop these state legislatures and these states from trying to take away voting access from Americans.”
Using the DOJ to steamroll voter laws passed at the state level? I am sure the founders would have had some thoughts on that, too, none of which would be positive.
“The second thing they tell me is they want to see now President Biden accelerate nominating judges because they see that as the first line of defense against a lot of these laws,” Alcindor concluded. “So we’re entering a phase now that, of course, is going to be about [the filibuster], President Biden has called it at one point a ‘relic of Jim Crow,’ but we’re also going to really enter into this … world where we really have to ask ourselves whether or not democracy will be protected.”
That there is exactly zero daylight between what Alcindor, who is supposed to be a hard news reporter, says and what the White House press secretary says is a point that can’t be missed.
