I know, I know. This is the 10 o'clock shout box where we normally holler and release our frustration about the relative dumbassery of the day. (Or at least, that's what we've been doing lately.) But this situation is murky and we need to establish some clarity first.

So before we resume our regularly scheduled caterwauling, let's take a few moments to explore the major questions that I've heard surrounding the ACORN controversy.

What does ACORN do?

According to their website, ACORN - which stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - is "the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities. "

While I generally use Wikipedia cautiously, in this case, they summarized ACORN a bit better than ACORN's actual site:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a community-based organization in the USA that advocates for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. ACORN has over 400,000 members and more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the United States,[1] as well as in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Peru. ACORN was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado.[2] Maude Hurd has been National President of ACORN since 1990.

ACORN's priorities have included: better housing and wages for the poor, more community development investment from banks and governments, better public schools, and other social justice issues.[3] ACORN pursues these goals through demonstration, negotiation, lobbying for legislation, and voter participation.[3] ACORN is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that typically champions liberal and labor-oriented causes. It is made up of numerous legally distinct parts including local non-profits, a national lobbying organization, and the ACORN Housing Corporation.

ACORN has been the subject of public controversy over embezzlement, management fights, voter registration fraud and other misconduct committed by its workers.

Why did they come up in the 2008 election?

During the course of the elections, a link repeatedly emerged between Barack Obama and ACORN, specifically in reference to voter fraud. According to FighttheSmears.com (Obama's campaign site) he was never a community organizer for ACORN, nor did they help with Project Vote efforts. However, FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan site, notes that while the McCain campaign oversold the charges as "voter fraud," Obama was downplaying his involvement with ACORN:

Here's what is true: In recent years, ACORN employees have been investigated multiple times for voter registration fraud. ACORN workers have been convicted of submitting false voter registration forms in Colorado Springs in 2005, Kansas City, Mo., in 2006 and King County, Wash., in 2007. ACORN's Las Vegas office was raided by a state criminal investigator on Oct. 7, 2008. ACORN workers are also the subjects of ongoing investigations in Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. The Indiana investigation started in early October and may involve thousands of fraudulent registration forms. [...]

In 1995, Obama helped represent ACORN in a successful lawsuit to require the state of Illinois to offer "motor voter" registration at DMV offices. Obama has said that this is his only association with ACORN, but that's not the case – he has had other, though less direct, interactions with the organization.

When Obama was on the board of directors of the Woods Fund, the foundation gave grants of $75,000 in 2001 and $70,000 in 2002 to ACORN's Chicago office. The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee cite an additional grant of $45,000 in 2000. The Woods Fund has not responded to our calls about their 2000 grants.

The Obama campaign also paid Citizens Services Inc., a group affiliated with ACORN, more than $800,000 for get-out-the-vote (not voter registration) efforts during the primary election. The nature of CSI's services was initially misrepresented on the Obama campaign's disclosures to the Federal Election Commission, which the campaign describes as an oversight. The Obama campaign says it has not been involved with ACORN during the general election.

In addition, after law school, Obama may have had contact with ACORN when he directed a Chicago registration drive for Project Vote in 1992. According to Sanford Newman, who was the program's national director at the time, ACORN may have been one of dozens of organizations that participated in registration drives that year with Project Vote personnel like Obama. But Project Vote didn't begin contracting exclusively with ACORN until after Obama worked for the group in 1992. "Working for Project Vote at the time was by no means working for ACORN," Newman told us. ACORN had no influence on Project Vote policy and no representation on its board.

In sum, the GOP tried to say that ACORN was guilty of voter fraud and that Obama was a key person in their organization. Obama tried to play down his ties to the organization. ACORN has used problematic tactics, particularly in reference to voter registration that were deemed fraudulent (but that is a different beast than voter fraud) and Obama was not a key leader in the organization (he didn't even work there), but had more ties with ACORN than he was wiling to admit.

What's happening with the current controversy?

ACORN is back in the news after having a series of damning videos posted on BigGovernment.com. James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles went into various ACORN offices posing as a pimp and a prostitute and drilled ACORN with various questions. Most areas were asked about getting a home, about how to verify her Giles' income as a prostitute, and how best to set up a brothel in a home. Some ACORN offices complied. The New York Times notes:

Mr. O'Keefe, 25, a filmmaker and conservative activist, was dressed so outlandishly that he might have been playing in a risqué high school play. But in the footage made public - initially by a new Web site, BigGovernment.com - Acorn employees raised no objections to the criminal plans. Instead, they eagerly counseled the couple on how to hide their activities from the authorities, avoid taxes and make the brothel scheme work.

On one of the videos, an unidentified Acorn employee in Washington, told that the pair were engaging in prostitution, explained how to disguise their activities in dealing with bankers and the government. "You don't put down ‘I'm a prostitute' or ‘I'm a lady of the night, and this is where I'm getting my income,' " the Acorn worker said.

At the Baltimore office, a helpful worker suggested describing the prostitute on a loan application as a "freelance performing artist" and said she and the pimp might want to claim some of the young Salvadoran prostitutes as dependents and collect the child tax credit for them.

ACORN protests this characterization, even putting up a video from one of their staffers (Katherine Conway Russell) who encountered O'Keefe and Giles and called the police after their ruse became suspicious:

Where have we seen James O'Keefe before?

Interestingly enough, James O'Keefe was also behind the 2008 scandal with Planned Parenthood where he posed as a caller trying to donate money to specifically fund abortions for African Americans:

O'Keefe told Cybercast News Service it was his voice on the recording and that the recording has not been doctored. "Nothing was done to change the content," he said. "I think the audio clearly speaks for itself."

O' Keefe explained that part of his motivation for placing the call was to fight the racism he perceives in Planned Parenthood.

"African-Americans today are targeted by the abortion industry and suffer deeply because of it," he said. "Planned Parenthood makes a profit off of their operations. We wanted to reveal their racist past - and the practical racism of their policies today - reflected in their other operations. Planned Parenthood must be held accountable for their actions, both past and present."

What are the mitigating/aggravating factors here?

On the mitigating side, the ACORN employee caught on film says she was "playing" - she felt the stunt was ridiculous, and responded with silly, over the top answers. She notes that at the beginning of the interaction, she asked if the duo were reporters, and they answered no.

In addition, looking at O'Keefe's past history, it's fairly clear he has an agenda in mind, and he will keep calling around/approaching branches of organizations until he gets the type of answer he is looking for.

But, on the aggravating side you have the horrifying reality that someone who is supposedly an advocate for the community would advise anyone on how to conceal (and profit from) sex trafficking. Juan Carlos Vera, one of the ACORN employees who dispensed such advice, was fired. But this is a serious issue. Atlasien quickly penned a piece for Racialicious, saying:

A lot of people on the left don't want to talk about this issue. I get a feeling of closing ranks. After all, ACORN has done many, many good things for low-income communities. They work with people on the margins of society that no one else will work with. It's a difficult balance. Low-income people who work in illegal activities should NOT be cut off and isolated… but activities that savagely victimize other people shouldn't be supported, either. I would never say that drug-dealing and sex work are "victimless" crimes; that would be a stupid statement because there are very few activities that are truly victimless, either legal or illegal. Selling cigarettes is legal, for example, but not victimless.

But I refuse to believe that there is any kind of gray area when it comes to child prostitution. [...]

This is a horrendous problem, and the statistics here show that children of color are the most affected and most victimized. There are many contributing factors and many, many people to blame. The pimps, to start off with. Everyone who enables the pimps, including their friends and relatives and money launderers. The criminal justice system that treats the victims as criminals. Self-righteous prostitute-haters that believe impoverished, abused children should be punished for their "choices" instead of helped… and vote to keep the current system going. Regular bystanders, like me, that don't contribute to the victimization but don't know how to stand against it effectively.

The right-wing anger around the ACORN sting comes from a place of racism more than a place of sympathy. A huge theme in their commentary is that "their tax money" would be hypothetically going to "illegal immigrant prostitutes". But I'm not a right-winger, and I'm angry too, not about my tax money, but about a cultural habit spread through all levels of American society that includes enabling victimizers and rapists.

Please feel free to discuss amongst yourselves - leave any further questions/clarifications in the comments.

House votes to defund ACORN [AP]
ACORN announces new training, review after 'prostitution' videos [CNN]
Official Site [ACORN]
ACORN [Wikipedia]
Barack Obama Never Organized with ACORN [FighttheSmears.com]
ACORN Accusations [FactCheck.org]
Official Site [BigGovernment.com]
Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn [NY Times]
ACORN Housing responds to recent allegations [ACORN]
Planned Parenthood Agreed to Accept Race-Motivated Donations [CNS News]
ACORN Employee Says She Thought Couple Was Part of a Stunt [Washington Post]
San Diego ACORN employee fired over video [MSNBC]
ACORN Pimp Sting, Child Prostitution and Accountability [Racialicious]

Community Organizers [The Daily Show]

MEGAN: It's good to have the old gang back together! We should make it a point to talk about ass fucking.

JIM: Please. Please no ass fucking. What a disgusting act. But yes, hello, Megan and friends here at the Jezebel.

MEGAN: I'm sorry that the bad man did that to you that time. But that doesn't mean no one likes it.

JIM: HAHAHA WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?? Tell me a political story.

MEGAN: Sort of like I'm sorry that that Michelle had to submit to The Chin last night. Or the fact that "no one really knows how often electronic voting machines fail. The Election Assistance Commission—an independent governmental agency charged with establishing election standards—doesn't collect comprehensive statistics on failure rates".

JIM: Hmm, is J. Crew a "good" political brand for Michelle Obama to sport, or does it make her seem fancy? Here's my answer: no one cares.

MEGAN: That's because a dude tells us it's sexist to care. Which I guess makes all women sexist. Because I was like, what happened to White House Black Market?

JIM: All this talk about voter irregularities. I'm led to believe that if I vote for Obama (btw, I'm not voting because I live in DC which will go 143% for Obama; sue me) a robot will jump out of a broken computer screen and chop off my head with acorns. There's way too much of this conspiratorial malarkey going around. Everyone knows that people will vote and whatever happens, George Bush will somehow win again.

MEGAN: And we will all thank our robot overlords, bowing and scraping to their king, Dick Cheneybot 9000.

JIM: This is never an auspicious start: "Republican [figure] called the media 'sexist' Monday..."

MEGAN: But that is how everything starts now! Republicans care about us laydeez and how sexism affects our daily lives, like when we read media stories about Sarah Palin's clothes. Just not, you know, when we want insurance to cover our birth control or our bosses to pay us the same as our male colleagues doing the same work. That's just silly. Also, did you know that the head of the RNC was some guy named Mike Duncan? Didn't it used to be, like, famous Republicans and shit? No wonder their brand sucks.

JIM: Yes, Ed Gillespie was the most famous person alive when he ran that little chop shop. I have no idea what this "Duncan" looks like. Maybe he is unattractive.

MEGAN: Not to be sexist again but yes.

JIM: Oh he's kind of cute. Hey so let's talk about abortion, specifically, how all Liberal ladies like to have them, all the time, for fun. This is why Liberals hate Sarah Palin, according to the National Review, in one of my favorite articles ever. Some loser argues that since Palin didn't abort her "Trigger," Liberals all RESENT HER FOR BEING MORAL. All I do now is read the National Review all day long.

MEGAN: They are bringing the crazy like no one else this election year, it's true.

JIM:

Seeing the Palin family, in a very visible public forum, with an uncompromising and public pro life philosophy arouses deeply repressed feelings in post abortive parents, as well as media members, counselors, health care professionals, politicians and others who promote abortion rights, especially the abortion of children with challenges such as Down Syndrome. These powerful repressed feelings of grief, guilt and shame can be deflected from the source of the wound (i.e., abortion) and projected onto an often uncharitable focus upon the trigger of these painful emotions…the Palin family.

Is this true, gals?

MEGAN: I mean, obviously I'm just a quivering mass of grief, guilt and shame from the abortion I never had nor needed to have because my school saw fit to teach me about birth control, I have seen fit to use it even when insurance didn't cover it but did cover my colleagues' Viagra and because I've been damn lucky. Yes, deep quivering mass of shame, that's why everything I write is about how Sarah Palin is an annoying slag. I mean, if we're going to talk about misdirected anger, methinks some sort of National Review writer knows a little too much about what it feels like for a girl.

JIM: I hope National Review goes under next, since we now have a magazine or newspaper imploding two or three times a day. Ha ha, "jobs," there are none.

MEGAN: Well, Christopher Buckley "left" to save all those angry Republicans from canceling their subscriptions after his apostasy. So I guess that means it will survive or something. Sadly.

JIM: Yeah, and now obviously he is the greatest person in Political History according to the liberal media. It's reminiscent also of how he "left" his bastard child son by disowning him and how WFB Jr. "left" the same bastard child no money in his will by claiming that the kid was DEAD TO HIM.

MEGAN: Wow, it's obviously the kid's fault that his dad likes doinking publicists. Also, Anna just sent this to me as "breaking" news, but apparently a "top McCain adviser" — you know, one of the ones that convinced McCain to choose her — thinks that Palin is a "whack job". Good to know that they're not completely out of touch with reality.

JIM: Ha ha, surely this person would say the exact same thing if McCain was winning the election. This is just more Mormon space espionage from the Romney loyalists.

MEGAN: Well, if anyone knows about whack jobs from personal experience, it would be Mormons. And Romney loyalists.

JIM: Hmm, well let's guess who this could be. My guess is: John McCain.

MEGAN: OMG, that would be the best thing ever. Like, fuck my advisers shutting me off from the press, I'm going to sneak into the Straight Talk Potty and engage in some straight talk.

JIM: My guess is: Michael Goldfarb.

MEGAN: Anyone that likes Abba as much as Michael Goldfarb has no place calling Sarah Palin a whack job. Besides, he couldn't go back to his old job "writing" because love for Palin is the new litmus test. I'm betting it's a lobbyist. We're all wicked backstabbers.

JIM: Well she wouldn't be such a whack job if they would LET HER FREE. Let's talk about the electoral map or something, speaking of whacking off.

MEGAN: The electoral map? Man, I would've had more coffee if we were going to get down with The Math this early. And by "more" I mean "some."

JIM: Ha ha I have had none! Anyway. Ahem: KERRY STATES +IA+NM+CO OR +FL OR +VA+NV+... Oh I can't do this either. But there are new shocking states at least make-believe "coming into play" every day. Arizona (angry Mexican spill over from NM/CA/CO)

MEGAN: Dude, I suddenly live in a swing state.

JIM: And the funny thing about that bad boy is that John McCain pretends to live there!

MEGAN: When he really actually lives here! There's a reason that his campaign office is located in Arlington and not, say, Sedona, and that's because it makes it easy for him to walk to work, not that he does because his entourage drives the 3 blocks in their armored SUVs that get 8 mpg.

JIM: Ha ha you live in the Racist Confederacy, this is true. You should come up to DC for Election Night though, to participate in the Race Riots!

MEGAN: I'll head over to Rosslyn and live blog it burning from a safe distance. Luckily, everyone in D.C. is too gephyrophobic to come across the river.

JIM: What is that fancy $50 Georgetown master's degree word you're throwing at me?

MEGAN: Phobic of bridges.

JIM: Oh. I could've guess that from context! I did poorly on the SAT.

MEGAN: Bullshit, Mr. Ivy Grad.

JIM: Tut tut now!

MEGAN: Where's your monocle?

JIM: Sssshhh I WILL PURCHASE YOU. And SELL YOU to THE ACORNS.

MEGAN: Noes! not the ACORNS! Did they give you a cane with which to hit other staffers with at graduation?

JIM: YES, that was the best story ever! How do you wake up this early, every morning. I would vote for that Republican, Wolf, because why not, that little twerp deserved a caning.

MEGAN: Dude, I wake up at 7:30, curse the world, and try not to die of sleep deprivation.

JIM: You grown-ups are weird.

MEGAN: Is it just me, or is your mind blown that David Letterman managed to beat journalists and political strategists to the whole McCain pals around with a dude that liked to bomb crap, too thing?

SPENCER: Remember, it's not the ASSOCIATION, it's the LYING.

MEGAN: Oh, you mean like how McCain did initially when asked about it?

SPENCER: And when McCain pauses for a moment, apparently unable to remember whether he attended any fundraisers thrown by G Gordon Liddy.

MEGAN: Actually, we can just go to the tape, where it's 3 minutes in. After that, he cops to more than just "knowing" the guy.

SPENCER: Well, let's give credit to the ChicTrib's Steve Chapman, who did write "McCain Has His Own Ayers" on Oct. 7

Liddy has contributed thousands of dollars to his campaigns, held a fundraiser for McCain at his home and hosted the senator on his radio show, where McCain said, "I'm proud of you." Exactly which part of Liddy's record is McCain proud of?

MEGAN: Maybe this part?

After the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, he endorsed the shooting of federal agents: "Kill the sons of bitches."

SPENCER: But this is the interesting part. You've seen exactly one liberal, Tom Frank, defend Ayers, in the WSJ, and that was on the grounds of pure friendship. Meanwhile, Liddy emerged unrepentant from Watergate, which Chapman reminds us was "-part of a broader plot to steal the 1972 election through sabotage, illegal spying and other dirty tricks," to become a widely beloved right-wing talk radio host. To answer Chapman's rhetorical question, that's the part McCain is "proud of," or at least has to display fealty toward.

MEGAN: Also, by the way, let's not forget how Liddy plotted a fucking POLITICAL ASSASSINATION. Or the bombing he wanted to do at the Brookings Institute. The guy is a fucking psycho, that's probably why he and McCain are all BFF.

SPENCER: But they're not, really. It's a transactional relationship — McCain needs to kiss a ring to stay in the good graces of Fever Swamp America. That's why the whole thing is so tawdry and contempt-inducing.

MEGAN: But, back to stealing elections and voter intimidation. So, ACORN. Former Republican US attorney David Iglesias admits they were the target in 2004 and 2006 and they didn't do anything illegal but he was asked to gun for them.

SPENCER: Yes ABOUT that attempted election theft.

MEGAN: Oh, well, it's not really theft if they can keep voters from the polls in the first place!

SPENCER: Here's something that consumed my former TPM colleague Paul Kiel, the hardest working muckraker in the business, while we were there. Everyone remember that Alberto Gonzales fired nine US attorneys, most of them Republicans, because, among other things, they wouldn't accede to pressure to prosecute Democrats or bring bogus election-fraud cases ahead of the vote, a longstanding tradition of countries that aren't, say, Venezuela.

MEGAN: I mean, if you can't bring political prosecutions to solidify your grip on power, what's the point of packing the Justice Department with underqualified political hacks? Duh.

SPENCER: And Gonzo, thanks to the intrepid work of Paul and Justin Rood and Josh Marshall (with some help from Pat Leahy and John Conyers), resigned in disgrace last year. But before he left, Gonzo changed the rules in the DOJ voter manual precisely so his legacy would live on. F'rinstance:

The new version (pdf), which replaced the 1995 manual, lowers the bar in terms of voter fraud prosecutions — no longer cautioning against pursuing isolated, individual cases of fraud and softening language that had all but prohibited pursuing such cases before an election.

This is what's behind this apparent federal investigation of ACORN. Now, ACORN says that despite a leak from the FBI (!) it's not under investigation.

MEGAN: It's so tawdry, even the FBI feels used by Republicans. Their assholes haven't hurt this bad since J. Edgar died. Plus, yeah, what happened to conducting an investigation in secret and not leaking stupid shit? Did they learn nothing from having to pay out the ass to Stephen Hatfill?

SPENCER: But whoever leaked this shit — Lara Jakes Jordan of the AP (she got the Santorum "man on dog" interview, fun fact) says it's two "senior law enforcement officials" —- is obviously trying to spread the smear that there is a widespread voter-fraud effort underway on the left. FBI best practices are not the point. This is what Nixon's operatives — like Liddy! — called a "ratfuck": you politicize and smear and introduce toxins into the news bloodstream, all in the interest of creating a Big Lie

MEGAN: Or an alternate truth. A truthiness.

SPENCER: The vote-fraud manual changes are designed to build corruption into the system. And I wonder I wonder I wonder how the right will appreciate a vigorous Feingold Justice Department effort at disenfranchising conservative voters in September or October of 2012.

MEGAN: I do have to say, I actually think Republican efforts to keep people from voting are a little ironic, because I really think everyone should vote, but I'm actually concerned what would happen in they did. I like that Republicans think the country would move left, and I'm scared it would head far, far to the right. Does that mean Republicans are actually less misanthropic than me? Or just that I've spent more time talking to Real Americans(TM) than them?

SPENCER: It strikes me that that's a bit besides the point of the effort. Winning elections through designed-in fraud is only one part of it. The larger part — if I can use a Nixonland term — is to persecute, confuse and weaken the left and its constituent parts. Everything else is academic. They recognize that you could probably build a center-right coalition that could win honest elections — with some hiccups or interregnum periods of Democratic revival — but you can't build a far-right governing coalition of any durability. The last time that was attempted... why, we're living through it, and it ends in multiple quagmire-y wars and global financial catastrophe and a 90-percent wrong-track poll rating. So you get shit like this:

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday, after the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 9-6 on Tuesday that Ms. Brunner must notify election boards of all voter records containing information that doesn't match driver's license or Social Security databases.

Ms. Brunner's appeal said many mismatches will appear for trivial reasons, such as typographical errors. She said Wednesday that as many as 200,000 of Ohio's 660,000 new registrants this year could be affected. The order — stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Republican Party — gave her until Friday to either provide lists of mismatches to election officials or give them an easy way to search a state database. In her court filing, she said early efforts to reprogram state computers have turned up glitches in the matching process.

I don't want to be hysterical about this, but liberal circles are starting to wonder whether Ohio could be stolen for real this time, with 2004 as a warm-up act.

MEGAN: And what's worse is most of those 200,000 disenfranchised people might never vote again. Fuck "might," they won't.

SPENCER: Explain that please

MEGAN: I mean, most people in this country don't vote. And if your first voting experience is to show up at the polls only to be told to fuck off, why would you? It takes at least two and usually 3 elections to solidify the voter participation habit among people that aren't fucked out of voting by a corrupt system.

SPENCER: ... and this indeed would be three.

MEGAN: So, in theory, the Republicans aren't just stealing this election, they're insuring Democratic voters don't show up for years to come.

SPENCER: And here's where I'm tied in knots: on the one hand, you have the good-government, pro-democracy position that retaliation by a liberal administration would be an unalloyed evil, a net loss for the country. But on the other. If the Republican Party is going to act like a criminal cartel, then persecution — and I'm not going to whitewash this through euphemism; let's be clear about this — makes sense. What's to stop them from doing this if they don't pay a price? And I don't mean just an electoral price, because in January 2009 they'll just start preparing for the next round of fraud. What do you think?

MEGAN: I mean, do you have to persecute when/if you can prosecute? In addition, they continue to justify these voter-fraud "initiatives" (a.k.a., voter disenfranchisement efforts) by raising the specter of fucking 1960 and the then-Mayor Daley and dead people voting. that's almost 50 years ago, but that's what they'll argue every single fucking time In fact, I had that argument with a Republican friend of mine this weekend, that they're just doing it to "make sure" things are fair because Democrats "have a history" of this. That's my concern with persecution, that it'll just become this century-long tit-for-tat game that makes the electoral process even more fucked up than it has to be and discourages even more people from participating. That said, yes, I would love to see some asses kicked and some heads fucking roll.

SPENCER: OH SHIT CNN is saying that ACORN's Boston offices were broken into. Does G Gordon Liddy have an alibi?

MEGAN: Fuck Gordon Libby, check the Romneys. And Kevin Madden, who I think I should really be forced to strip search. Those are, like, the only Republicans in the area.

John McCain is now calling for a investigation into the "voter fraud going on" in battleground states, and he doesn't mean the tens of thousands of people thrown off the voter rolls this year already. He's talking about the registration fraud perpetrated by some ACORN employees more interested in their own bottom lines than the work they were hired to do. McCain's interest in prosecuting ACORN, naturally, has nothing to do with the 1.3 million perfectly legal voters ACORN has registered since the 2006 elections.

Now, although the McCain campaign has been screaming "ACORN! Obama! Fraud! Look!" for more than a wee — charges repeated rather often by the media with little reflection — the LA Times and other sources have finally started reporting what everyone — including the McCain campaign — knows is true: ACORN is required by law to submit all the registration forms it receives, even if it suspects fraud. So they routinely flag registrations they think are fraudulent and turn them over as questionable to authorities, whose job it is to investigate these things. Some Republicans like to bitch that ACORN is costing them by turning over the fake registrations they're required to turn over, or by registering people without fixed addresses (who are, you know, allowed to fucking vote) and forcing poor election boards to investigate, which is, after all, the job of an election board or office.

Well, you know what? Boo fucking hoo. Ben Franklin didn't think that property ownership should be the bar for franchise and, by 1850, there wasn't a state that disagreed with him. It is, however, pretty easy to find conservatives who'd like to go back to those supposedly halcyon days when the vast legions of unwashed renters and liberals were barred from civic participation based on their lack of property ownership. Oh, wait, I think my history class had a word for that... serfdom, right? Although, it is a little ironic that while some in the conservative movement are arguing that property ownership should be considered when talking about voting rights, others are arguing that groups like ACORN helped "too many" minority citizens get home loans and thus supposedly collapse the economy. Shoot, Alanis Morissette messed me up again. That's not irony so much as the point for too many conservatives.

So, let's call this what it is. It's not just an effort to smear ACORN or get it prosecuted in the hopes that it won't be able to continue with its voter registration activities — though it is that. It is also, as other people have already noted, an effort to de-legitimize Obama's presumptive victory. Republicans are hoping it's a cost-free way of saying to their core constituency on November 5th, "It wasn't our fault! It was those people! They stole the election." I guess in some parts of this country, since they have to count every vote as a full person, they'd just prefer to count as few of them as possible. God damn ACORN for helping get people involved in the democratic process! Don't they know it works better when fewer people do?

McCain Calls For 'Voter Fraud' Inquiry [LA Times]
Acorn Replies to Questions About Role With Voters [NY Times]
ACORN Exposed In Cleveland [Politico]
Voting In America [Google Books]
U.S. Voting Rights [infoplease]
On Voting Rights and Requisites [Modern Conservative]
How McCain Will Steal the Election from Obama (Sort Of) [Huffington Post]
ACORN, McCain, Obama: Cracking The Politics Code [Marc Ambinder]

SPENCER: So it turns out Sarah Palin read CH yesterday, because a few hours later she sent me an email.

The left-wing activist group, ACORN, is now under investigation for voter registration fraud in a number of battleground states. ACORN's political action committee has endorsed Barack Obama and Senator Obama himself has said, "I have been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career." The Obama Campaign even paid more than $800,000 to an ACORN affiliate for "get out the vote activity." And now we find out that ACORN is suspected of voter registration fraud.
But, the Obama-Biden Democrats would rather sweep these facts under the rug and use their mainstream media allies to bury this story. But we can't let that happen. We can't allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election.

(I took out all the personal stuff.)

MEGAN: Well, sure, I mean, Todd doesn't need to know the rest of it.

SPENCER: She might have missed our point, but it looks like today will be a Part II to yesterday: return of the race-based GOP. ACORN, of course, is a civil-rights group that, among other things, registers minority voters. In other words THOSE PEOPLE.

MEGAN: Oh, Spencer, now, let's be fair, I'm sure they register white people who won't vote Republican, too. Nah, fuck that, we can be honest. The Republicans are mostly scared of the African-American ones.

SPENCER: As this Washington Post piece makes clear, the charges against ACORN are bullshit, marginal, and part of a campaign to make white people afraid of Obama. Look at, for instance, this aspect of a McCain ad:

The McCain campaign also has sought to link ACORN to the financial crisis. One of the campaign's online ads says the Chicago chapter of the group was engaged in "bullying banks" to issue "risky" mortgages — "the same type of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today," the ad's narrator says.

MEGAN: Well, I think this Guardian piece goes even further, accusing Republican officials of staging a fake raid, which they did.

SPENCER: Message: don't let those n****** steal the election like they stole the economy..

MEGAN: Oooh, ooh, back to Ann Coulter's meme that black people brought this economic crisis down on White America. I can't believe Republicans are actually using that.

SPENCER: A fake raid? Explain. That is pure Nixonland right there. Next they'll bus in Arabs to their rallies to chant about getting out of Iraq.

MEGAN: Wait, it gets better, the Guardian points out that it's vintage GWB!

As luck would have it, the Democrats have a man who, as an attorney years ago, actually had the temerity to join the US department of justice in representing Acorn in a successful lawsuit, forcing the state of Illinois to follow the law by allowing citizens to register to vote at the department of motor vehicles. What a scoundrel.

That, of course, was before the department of justice, under George Bush's corrupt command, would itself become politicised by the very Republicans so desperate to keep low-income voters from voting, that they were willing to fire their own US attorneys for failing to bring phoney charges of voter fraud in key swing states like Nevada and Missouri.

SPENCER: (Nixon used to ensure that unruly hippies would be at his rallies in order to stoke the silent-majority sense of besiegement and make himself look heroic. It's all in this book you should read.)

MEGAN: Well, we could try a little truth, too:

Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ("fraudulent", "incomplete", et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law.. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers.

Emphasis mine, obviously.

SPENCER: My God, this is a story tailor-made for ex-boss JMM. And, sure enough, Josh has cheat-sheet on the bullshitness of the ACORN smears. Yes, exactly. ACORN points out the errors that come with voter registration. Going after ACORN is a method of disenfranchisement. Perhaps — perhaps — that's why so many on the right have a problem with John Lewis:

Because of his civil-rights record, Mr. Lewis gets a pass from the media and his fellow politicians even when he makes incendiary comments. But with remarks like those on Saturday, he deserves to be seen less as a racial healer and more like any other politician who uses race as a sword.

MEGAN: Also, I love how Jonah Goldberg is accusing the wrong John of selling off his reputation. Ahem.

SPENCER: That's the Wall Street Journal, shitting on the reputation of the one man who has done more for the actual freedom, prosperity and access to justice than any other living American.

MEGAN: Right, obviously, John Lewis was totally the first one to notice anything racial going on. Well, except for me, but I am obviously out to incite racial tensions by commenting on what's obvious to most non-white people and white people who have noticed that (gasp) racism still exists in this country.

SPENCER: We should push back on the idea that what Lewis said was somehow more "incendiary" than Palin saying Obama is "palling around with terrorists." Somehow it remains a greater sin to observe the racism of white people than for white people to engage in such racism. Which is where the ACORN stuff is all going: toward a narrative where YOUR election, YOUR economy, YOUR country was taken from you by by by by by those people!

MEGAN: Right, because accusing someone of treason is much less incendiary than suggesting that a climate of violent words can lead to one of violent action. But it's okay, because John McCain will whip him in the debate. Yup. He's gonna whip that boyuh.

SPENCER: A key aspect of that campaign is equivalence, and so McCain tells Dana Bash, absent any evidence or even an attempt at justification, that "I've heard the same things... said about me at Senator Obama's rallies." So this is the long game, the twisted process that passes for a coping mechanism from the American right, heartache and sore over losing an election just because it spent eight years plunging the country into deeper depths of chaos.

MEGAN: And let's put to rest the meme that they are stopping the Ayers based attacks, while they are actually stepping them up To whit, here is the script from the original ad, which is crappy and whatever.

SPENCER: Is this two ads or one?

MEGAN: Amusingly, it was one ad. And here is the new ad which I had to good fortune to hear on the radio this morning, in which they have edited the script.

SPENCER: "Blind Ambition." A projection?

MEGAN: Totally. The new ad, though, doesn't just call him a "terrorist" they call him a "domestic terrorist." They also outright accused Obama of lying AND they call the Annenburg Foundation a "radical" group on which they served together.

SPENCER: right. He lives among usssssss

MEGAN: Do you think they can actually get away with calling him a viper in the grass or some such? Because, really, that was some pretty radical shit trying to help low-income schools in Chicago.

SPENCER: Okay let me say something: I went to summer camp with Bill Ayers' sons. And to Zayd, Malik and Chesa, I'm really really sorry and appalled by the what the right is doing, and your revenge will come in about 20-something days.

MEGAN: Well, and not to go totally off-topic, but there may be plenty of revenge to spread around. The GOP is pulling money from challengers to fund safe incumbents in House races. Including one, Lee Terry, who is running ads tying him to Obama. The GOP is paying for ads in Nebraska that portray Obama positively.

SPENCER: Yes, look at the diminishing returns of Nixonland. JMart at Politico also had another telling story along those lines:

With party strategists fearing a bloodbath at the polls, GOP officials are shifting to triage mode, determining who can be saved and where to best spend their money.
The Republican National Committee, growing nervous over the prospect of Democrats’ winning a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, is considering tapping into a $5 million line of credit this week to aid an increasing number of vulnerable incumbents, top Republicans say.

MEGAN: Also, let us not forget, the RSCC is forced to rely on this line of credit before their own former Treasurer swindled them out of several million dollars they have yet to recover. Oh, and the anti-regulation Club For Growth that most famously tried to unseat Arlen Specter in the 2004 primary is now a successful talking point against the right-wing candidates they backed — so much so that the moderate Republican they unseated in Maryland is campaigning for the Democrat against them. They're not just eating their young anymore, they're straight up devouring each other.

SPENCER: Dear Rick Perlstein, the country needs you to interpret this. Megan, you and I considered yesterday whether the GOP bottom-floor will hit when white people start voting for the party in significant numbers. But Yglesias had yesterday(ish) that white people still lean McCain, so we're clearly not there yet if so. But what about when the GOP can't get its most-promising recruits elected? Not the bottom floor, certainly, but closer to the foundation than the antenna.

MEGAN: Um, was that maybe Ezra who said it?

SPENCER: Ahhhh no this is Ezra riffing off Yglz.

MEGAN: Ah, okay. As I said yesterday, the Republican Party has been wholly conflicted since they built the unholy coalition of the religious right and the fiscal conservatives. They built a tower on a conflicted ideological foundation, and now it's crumbling with the shifts.

SPENCER: But that's been a durable coalition for many many years. I want the fracturing. We know the fault lines, but when is the earthquake? And how many more metaphors can we scramble up?

MEGAN: I think we can scramble many more metaphors! But this is no Leaning Tower of Pisa, this is, in my opinion, the slow decline and they know it. The religious right wants to spend money — tons of money — on social programs and foreign wars (how many neocons do you know that can rightly claim the mantle of fiscal conservatism)? And the fiscal conservatives are supposed to want lower taxes to get less government. Bush, and the Republican Presidents before him, were able to successfully split the difference by lowering taxes and increasing spending. How can John McCain do that in this climate? How can Congressional Republicans? And independent voters are starting to finally recognize that, I think. Hell, I think fucking Republican voters aren't escaping that.

SPENCER: Sure sure sure it's just that these tensions have been widely predicted to lead to the Fall Of The House Of Reagan — cf "The Conservative Crackup," The American Prospect, Fall 1990 — since before we were in junior high. I'm just saying I'll believe it when I see it happen, and I've lost all predictive capability for when it'll occur. There's something to the idea that the GOP's electoral success is predicated on the idea that it picked really strong currents in the American body politic to serve as the basis for its admittedly-idiosyncratic coalition, but the mortar here — the mayonnaise in the egg salad, since we're scrambling metaphors — is RACE. And it seems most likely to crack when the mortar loses its adhesive qualities, and I want to believe extremely badly that that will occur in a month, but my life is predicated on the sturdy principal that hopelessness is a better bet than hope, but fuck it, right?

MEGAN: Well, geneticists have been saying for years that there is more variation within so-called races than between them. It looks like the same might be true with politics this year, at least for one race.