Why Isn't Alison Lundergan Grimes Pounding the Voter Suppression Issue?

Because the Democratic establishment - the ones with the big money to spend on advertising - thinks minorities and the young will vote Democratic no matter what, especially in retaliation for repugs trying to deny them the right to vote.

But what if those reliable Democratic voters find out that voter suppression is succeeding because the Democratic establishment takes them for granted and can't be bothered to educate the public about voter suppression?

When Democrats lose the Senate next year, that will be why.

Steve M:

This is where the Republicans use what I've previously called "ignorance arbitrage."

Republicans know that hardly anyone ever commits classic voter fraud -- casting a vote illegally based on fraudulent self-identification. But Republicans also know that the vast majority of voters don't know that. It sure sounds like a problem that might be widespread, and there sure seem to be a lot of government officials and TV pundits upset about the problem, so it really must be a problem, right?

States are passing these laws everywhere governments are controlled by Republicans. Fox pundits are talking about this all the time. That's a lot of GOP messaging. What do Democrats do in return? Once in a great while a few Democrats talk about combating the GOP drive to suppress votes -- but it's never explained. Maybe it's explained on MSNBC or by left-leaning magazines and Web sites, but that's preaching to the choir, because the viewers and readers already get it. Any other messaging is predicated on the assumption that the audience already knows what the problem with these laws is. Black voters, in particular, already do know, to a large extent.

But no one's explaining the problem to persuadable white voters in the middle.

Texas repugs are outright admitting that blatant gerrymandering is aimed not at minorities and young people, but directly at Democratic voters.

This should be the easiest anti-repug case to make to white voters, but dems are blowing it.

Steve M concludes:

It seems as if Democrats are counting on demographics, Republican extremism, and Hillary Clinton to ensure that the GOP never gets into a position to implement restrictive voter laws across the country. I just hope that's a safe bet, because if Republicans ever can pull that off, they'll have the public behind them. And that scares me.

 If only there were a Democratic candidate in a big Senate race, one that's getting daily national media attention, a candidate who has some actual job experience dealing with elections and voter ID, a candidate with a platform to make the anti-voter-suppression case to white voters across the country ....

Alison Lundergan Grimes: do you know where we might find such a candidate?