You knew it was going to happen. The only question was which member of the right wing pundit class would take issue with what President Obama said in his remarks during the fiftieth anniversary celebration of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama.
First out of the box was “Wall Street Journal” columnist Kimberley Strassel, who chastised the President for bringing up the issue of voter ID laws and voter suppression in states across the country. Here’s exactly what the President said:
?Right now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote.?As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor. If every new voter suppression law was struck down today, we’d still have one of the lowest voting rates among free peoples.?
Looks to me like every word of that statement is true. But Ms. Strassel was highly offended by President Obama’s remarks. While participating in a panel discussion on “Fox News Sunday,” Strassel remarked:
“One of the unfortunate things about the speech he gave in Selma, and most of it was great, he actually made really good points, he was very rousing. But he just felt compelled and he had to throw in this argument that there’s still a big problem because of voter ID laws across the country.?And that feeds another one of these narratives. Which is just simply not true, it’s not a central focus. If you look at 2012, black voter turnout exceeded that of white voter turnout. And in states with the strictest voter ID laws.?
Yes, heaven forbid the President of the United States should dare point out that today, fifty years after the march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge, some states are seeking to prevent minorities from voting as a way of entrenched powers staying in office! Who does he think he is?!
Perhaps Ms. Strassel needs to take another look at the ugly past of the United States and see exactly why what the President said was not only appropriate, it was also entirely in keeping with the spirit of what was being commemorated over the weekend. Because the men and women who bravely crossed that bridge a half-century ago weren’t doing so merely to get to the other side.
Watch the video of what Kimberley Strassel said!.
