Madam Secretary hasn’t missed a beat. She knows that the calling card of Democrats in the Barack Obama era is a polarizing politics that seeks to fire up minority voters by stirring fears of fire hoses and police dogs. Its basic vocabulary is imputations of racism; its evidentiary standard is low and dishonest; and its ethic is whatever works — so long as its stirs fear, anger, and resentment.

Get ready for Hope and Change 2.0.

The latest target is the state of North Carolina, which is accused of soiling itself with a new voter ID law, among other changes in its election laws. “The Decline of North Carolina” harrumphs the New York Times. “North Carolina’s Attack on Voting Rights” says the Daily Beast. The state is supposedly part of a tide of disenfranchisement victimizing minority voters in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling…

You can certainly argue that the North Carolina law is unnecessary or imprudent in some respects, or in even in its entirety. You can’t argue it’s a de facto return to Jim Crow and the era of the poll tax. Democrats mock Republicans as perennially stuck in the 1980s. But they are stuck in the 1950s and the 1960s, and in their demagoguery, disgrace the memory of genuine martyrs at a time when state and local officials in the South really did prevent blacks from voting through the most hideous means.