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Then why didn't they support the SAVE Act if it was such an own goal? This one doesn't pass the smell test.
I think both Republicans and Democrats have a weak sense that there's a lot of cheating that goes on in the big blue cities and that clamping down would probably help Republicans.
Just because something hurts the other side's supporters more doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt your own supporters, and just because Republicans have lost all pretense that they aren't hacks willing to do anything for partisan advantage doesn't mean Democrats are willing to do the same.
Are you willing to actually defend the view that the Democrats aren't hacks willing to do anything for partisan advantage? It seems pretty trivial to argue that they are.
The Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not willing to risk being called racist by their own supporters in order to secure a partisan advantage. This is sufficient to explain their opposition to the SAVE Act or other dumb Republican voter-suppression proposals.
That doesn't sound like an answer to the question I asked. As to what you said, I'm skeptical of the direction of causality you're pointing to. I don't think there's an objective standard of "racism" that the Democrats fear transgressing, it seems more that anything that goes against the Dems will be called "racist".
To answer the question, most elected Democrats are hacks who are willing to do anything for personal advancement. Elected Democrats believe, rightly or wrongly (I genuinely don't know which) that being called racist will do more damage to their personal career prospects than hurting the party.
To respond to your empirical argument about what gets people called racist, the Great Awokening was all about Democrats and other left elites calling each other racist over intra-coalition political disagreements and personal beefs. And what we saw was that elected Democrats were willing to beclown themselves and the Democratic Party rather than risk being called racist. In addition, enough people have (for reasons which may have been good back in the noughties when they started doing it) pre-committed to calling voter suppression racist that there is no DPUSA Grand Ayatollah who could turn the racism accusations off for partisan advantage. Finally, there are large parts of the Democratic base who are sufficiently rabidly partisan that they will punish elected Democrats (including by calling them racist if the opportunity arises) for voting for any GOP-proposed bill even if they would normally support it.
FTFY
I have met a lot of amateur politicians who genuinely believed in what they were doing. In my youth, I was one. We tended not to get elected. But your basic point is correct.
Among the people doing ward-level politics in the UK in the noughties, I would guess:
Maybe at the low levels, fair enough. But I have a hard time imagining that the true believers manage to reach the very top-level of politics.
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