He’s got to engage with the woman who says blithely: “If I need to show ID to get cold medicine why shouldn’t I have to show an ID to vote?” He’s got to engage with the man who cries that “voter fraud” is rampant but cannot cite proof that this is so. There is an excellent case to be made against voter suppression, and the president has consistently shown that he knows how to make it, but it has to be directed at the right audience and it has to be made over and over and over again until it seeps through.
John Kennedy stood up to the Protestant ministers in September 1960 and talked about how his Catholic faith would (and would not) affect his work as president. A few years later, Lyndon Johnson stood up to his fellow southern Democrats and told them there would be civil-rights legislation. Barack Obama needs to do something like that for voter suppression.
It could be on Fox News. It could be from the Oval Office. It could be in the form of a “town meeting” on voting rights. It could be in the form of a debate with any one of a dozen Republican senators who wear their backing voter suppression as a badge of honor. It doesn’t matter. If Obama is as serious on the topic as he appears to be, what matters now is that he show the courage to go into hostile venues and work to change hearts and minds until the myths about voter fraud dissipate and the truth about voter suppression emerges.
MORE from Ta-Nehisi Coates.