Learning not to trust the All-In podcast

If one them sees this, I hope they take it kindly. The podcast has gone downhill drastically. The level of discourse has dropped considerably. They make all sorts of claims with very little evidence.

Recently they have all agreed that voter ID laws "just make sense." But they don't even bring up any of the unpleasant history around IDs.

When DeSantis was running, they didn't ever talk about him flying immigrant around as a horrible political stunt.

They've been leaning closer and closer to anti vax stances.

I still listen.. but I'll probably stop soon. It's becoming a bro podcast.

David Friedberg has the best mind for evidence, and he speaks less and less.

This year is the 80th anniversary of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, do they really need to go through the history of IDs? We need to rebuild confidence in the integrity of elections, Voter ID, which most democratic countries require, seems like an incredibly modest step.

The states that historically had the worst race issues all have voter id anyway, it is the Northeast and West coast that are refusing.

As always, you should ask "what purpose does this serve?" Do we need voter ID laws? Well, is there a widespread voter fraud problem? No [1].

When you declare something to be "common sense", you betray either a lack of knowledge of why something is the way it is, you know why it's like that but you're willing to lie about it to push an agenda or you have a position of privilege where something doesn't affect you so you just don't care.

So if voter fraud isn't a widespread problem, you should then ask who is pushing for this and why? Also, why are things the way they are?

A big part is that as many as 7% of Americans don't have the documents required to prove their birth or citizenship [2]. So Voter ID laws disenfranchise a right (voting) to millions of people.

Voter ID is really about voter suppression. Why? Because you need ID to register and vote. If you don't have it, you lose that right. If you think those people are more likely to vote against your interests, you do what you can do make sure they can't vote.

As a real example, Alabama has Voter ID laws but in certain counties that have a large black population, the DMV (where you would have to go to get a valid ID) was only open one day a month [3].

That's entirely intentional. Make it difficult to get an ID then it's less likely you'll vote.

[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-c...

[2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/mill...

[3]: https://www.governing.com/archive/drivers-license-offices-wi...