No doubt self-interest is playing a part in the willingness of numerous major corporations to speak out against the anti-democracy voting restrictions being moved forward by Republican state legislators around the country. As observers like Josh Marshall have noted, many of these companies understand that the very minority groups targeted by these GOP bills are indistinguishable from growing customer bases that help these companies prosper now, and more importantly, increasingly into the future; as Marshall puts it, “Consumer-facing corporations are most sensitive and responsive to economic dynamism, disposable income and growth.” Alongside this, these companies realize that the relative political power of these groups will continue to increase.
Acknowledging these fact helps us healthily limit our expectations that these companies will somehow save the day and rescue American democracy from its enemies; the same sensitivities to long-term profit and power could very conceivably turn such corporations to a new path of caution and complicity — if, for example, the GOP embarked on a determined effort to punish them for their activism. In fact, we have already seen scattershot attempts at such an effort, including the Georgia legislature’s repeal of a tax law that benefitted Delta Airlines after that company spoke out against voting restrictions in that state, and Mitch McConnell’s absurd declaration that corporations should butt out of politics save for the act of giving money to Republican candidates.
But tempering our expectations does not mean dismissing such corporate stands outright. It is a big deal for major companies to effectively declare voting rights to be beyond the realm of partisan politics; this helps send a message to the citizenry that voting restrictions constitute abnormal, illegitimate actions outside the proper bounds of American politics. The reality is that voting rights are foundational to American democracy.
It’s also notable that the initial impetus and organization of a corporate response to the anti-voting initiatives came from African-American CEOs and business leaders. This feels to me like a glaring demonstration of how important it is for minorities to be fully represented in corporate boardrooms and so be in a position to expand our ideas of the democratic responsibilities of American companies. I don’t want to be too pollyannish about this — but the fact that this corporate movement has been spearheaded by African-Americans makes it hard to dismiss it as simply the cold calculations of hard-headed business leaders.
Crucially, companies vocalizing their opposition to voting restrictions also opens up a window on its opposite: companies that continue to support Republican legislators pushing voting restrictions whose goal is to cement GOP political power at the expense of American democracy , at the same time as these companies rely on the GOP to push for corporate tax cuts and a favorable regulatory environment. The mutual embrace of corporate American and the GOP is long-standing; but when it involves companies donating to politicians who disassemble American democracy to achieve permanent power, so that those companies might continue to increase corporate profits through the legislative favors those politicians bestow, we are beyond misleading talk of companies exercising their right to “free speech” through campaign donations, and into a realm where companies and politicians participate in a fascistic enterprise that should rightly be seen as the antithesis of American democracy.
From this perspective, the willingness of some companies to speak out on voting rights should be taken as an opening to discuss the extreme dangers and basic immorality of companies that continue to donate to anti-voting rights GOP politicians. Such companies make themselves complicit in an attack on democracy, and we need to talk about it in such terms. Conversely, it’s extremely worrisome that the GOP is comfortable targeting companies for retribution for the crime of supporting basic democracy, as happened with Delta in Georgia. This seems to be not just an abuse of power, but an abuse of power in the name of replacing American democracy with an authoritarian governance that sees only GOP rule as legitimate.