Sorry, Joe, that’s no Gettysburg address

In his speech on Tuesday about Republican election laws, Joe Biden said, “We’re are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War.” 

Actually, Joe, that is hyperbole, and offensive hyperbole at that. Black Americans were denied the vote on a vast scale for a century after the Civil War; maybe it is just me, but that seems worse than anything that happened in 2020 or 2021. 

It has never been easier to vote in America. Voter participation has been rising steadily for the past two decades. Americans of every class and color turned out in droves in 2018 and 2020, and they probably will again in 2022 and 2024. 

The Supreme Court recently ruled that judges in Voting Rights Act cases should look at how easy it is to vote overall in a state. Democrats threw a fit. Chuck Schumer called it “one of the darkest days in all of the Supreme Court’s history.”