Eric Holder: States should let convicted felons vote - otherwise, they're racist.

I'm pretty sure that Eric Holder begins each and every day with a meeting where he and his team sit around brainstorming new ways to call Americans racist. If you support the 2nd Amendment, you're a racist. If you want to enforce the nation's borders, you're a racist. If you favor voter ID laws, you're a racist. If you think it's criminal to run guns to Mexico, you're a racist.

Our most recent accusation of racism comes to us via yesterday's New York Times. Mr. Holder spoke about his renewed focus on fighting injustice as it applies to "voting rights." It seems that our esteemed Attorney General wants to make voting issues the hallmark of his time in office, and he's none too happy that many states rescind your right to vote if you've been convicted of a felony.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday urged states to repeal laws that prohibit felons from voting, a move that would restore the right to vote to millions of people. "Across this country today, an estimated 5.8 million Americans -- 5.8 million of our fellow citizens -- are prohibited from voting because of current or previous felony convictions."

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The call was mostly symbolic -- Mr. Holder has no authority to enact these changes himself -- but it marked the attorney general's latest effort to eliminate laws that he says disproportionately keep minorities from the polls. "It is unwise, it is unjust, and it is not in keeping with our democratic values," Mr. Holder said at civil rights conference at Georgetown University. These laws deserve to be not only reconsidered, but repealed."

The Fast and Furious mastermind claims that laws which "disenfranchise felons" are a remnant of the racist 1800's when Southern states were doing everything they could to keep blacks away from the ballot box. According to Holder, nothing much has changed. Obviously, voting rights are really only revoked as a way for the white majority to keep minorities from speaking their minds.

"Although well over a century has passed since post-Reconstruction states used these measures to strip African-Americans of their most fundamental rights, the impact of felony disenfranchisement on modern communities of color remains both disproportionate and unacceptable," he said.

Clearly, the "racism" argument is hogwash. Whether you lean left or right, you're probably smart enough to see how empty it is. If you're a staunch lefty, you may not be willing to admit it but, deep down, you know the truth. The drive to allow felons at the polls is all about getting votes and swinging elections. Later in their article, the New York Times admits as much:

Studies show that felons who have been denied the right to vote are far more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans. In 2002, scholars at the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University concluded that the 2000 presidential election "would almost certainly have been reversed" had felons been allowed to vote. In Florida, the state that tipped that election, 10 percent of the population is ineligible to vote because of the ban on felons at the polls, Mr. Holder said.

There it is. Holder has replayed the election of George W. Bush and realized that a few convicted felons could have swung it in the Democrats' favor. As Attorney General, Holder should be making the obvious point that it isn't the law that prevents 10% of Floridians from voting - it was their decision to commit a felony in the first place. Alternatively, he could argue that transgressions which currently constitute felonies should be downgraded to misdemeanors. I'll be the first to admit that, as a culture, we're too harsh when doling out punishment for a certain subset of largely innocuous "crimes." Sadly, Holder isn't making either of those arguments because there's no political gain there. Instead, he's playing the race card in the ugliest possible way, suggesting that if you're in jail - and therefore can't vote - it's all because of your skin color. He's telling a large swath of people that their state's racist legal system has placed them behind bars and, once they're out, they should be allowed to vote to change it. Since, as the Times points out, the majority of these people will vote Democrat, Holder knows that he's shepherding a new bloc of easily manipulated left-wing voters. After all, pandering becomes so much simpler when you can claim you're trying to avenge a public that's been wronged by "the system." As President Obama famously said, "voting is the best revenge."