Antidemocratic

July 1, 2024
A cutting analysis of the long-term project to disenfranchise left-leaning voters. "Our country is bitterly divided today in no small part because conservative political strategists have gerrymandered it to be that way," writes political commentator and former Salon editor-in-chief Daley, author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count. Gerrymandering is one of the favorite tools in the GOP toolkit to disenfranchise citizens inclined to vote for a Democratic candidate. The chief weapon, Daley argues convincingly, has been the Supreme Court, seeded with far-right-leaning judges who endorse this antidemocracy movement. At the heart is John Roberts, who conveys himself--and whom the media portrays--as a mild-mannered centrist. Wrong: Roberts, as the author clearly shows, operates by small steps, such that "each landmark decision begins with a smaller case that invites the next big question." This approach disguises Roberts' role as a "patient bulldozer." A case in point is the Roberts-led dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, tenet by tenet, with the redistricting of a majority Black legislative district in Alabama so that the majority of its residents were now white. Daley traces this project to the Nixon-era activism of Lewis Powell and his multipronged assault on democracy, one means for which was to fund right-wing law schools and raise generations of antidemocratic judges, five of whom now populate the Supreme Court. Roberts, who began his career as a counsel to Ronald Reagan, had the VRA in his sights as long ago as 1982, "a young ideologue despite his carefully curated image of scarcely having been touched by ideology at all." The subterfuge means to disguise the complete dismantling of the concept of one person, one vote--and all, Daley proves persuasively and evenhandedly, by careful design. More evidence that today's Supreme Court, antidemocratic by nature with its unelected judges, is an enemy of democracy.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2024
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, forbidding racial discrimination in voting, was one of the most pivotal pieces of legislation passed during the progressive shift of the civil rights era, during which the Supreme Court reaffirmed other crucial rights, such as the rights of defendants. But despite widespread acclaim, not everyone appreciated this progress. In 1971, future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell expressed in a memo his wish for a conservative counterattack to blunt the left's gains. His thoughts gained traction with conservatives on college campuses over the next decade, leading to the founding of the Federalist Society, built on an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. Over time, the Society's membership and influence extended to other future Supreme Court justices--and challenges to the Voting Rights Act. Daley (Unrigged, 2020) comprehensively details an intricate and long-running plot to upend the bedrock of the U.S. democratic process. His belief that the right's tactics are not a conspiracy might undersell his effective point, but this is overall a well-researched and thought-provoking study of the corrupting influences of dark money.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 16, 2024
In this disturbing exposé, journalist Daley (Ratf**ked) recounts conservatives’ decades-long plan to undermine the Voting Rights Act and disenfranchise people of color. His nearly 10-year investigation—which included interviews with attorneys general, federal judges, Justice Department officials, conservative funders and litigators, members of Congress, and other elected officials—traces the Right’s campaign to “refashion the nation in their image” through a “takeover of the courts, the creation of new legal theories, and a carefully curated set of right-wing judges.” Emphasizing that the push to restrict voting rights is—unlike how it is sometimes portrayed—far from a recent development (within a month of the Voting Rights Act’s passage in 1965, there was a case before the Supreme Court relitigating whether it was constitutional), Daley highlights in particular the long-running involvement of current Chief Justice John Roberts. Tracing the arc of Roberts’s career, which, after law school, included work in the 1980s Reagan Justice Department opposing voting rights cases, Daley offers a trenchant analysis that paints Roberts, who has generally been depicted as a “model of judicial restraint,” as in fact at the forefront of a radical and intellectually dishonest approach to precedents that has gutted the Voting Rights Act and increased the Supreme Court’s power, transforming it into an antidemocratic institution. It’s a must-read.