“The census is not a political tool for hyper-partisan activity” said DNC chairman Tom Perez while arguing for doing that exact thing this week.

Perez and other Democrats are fired up because the Trump administration wants to add the question of U.S. citizenship to the census survey, thereby taking an accurate count of how many American citizens there are. You are probably surprised they don’t ask that already, considering how obvious the question.

But more surprising – or rather not at all surprising – is the insanely over the top response from top Dems on the idea of asking the question. Chairman Perez says this is “voter suppression.” Sens. Diane Feinstein and Kamala Harris said it would “undermine the accuracy of the Census as a whole.”

Here, watch Perez take it to eleven:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A41suJLUSNQ

This is the most telling part:

MSNBC Anchor: “Isn’t the census about citizenship, though? Isn’t representation about citizenship? Shouldn’t it matter who is a citizen and who is not a citizen of this country?”
Chairman Perez: The enumeration requirement, which is what the census comes from, says very clearly ‘count the number of persons in the United States, it doesn’t talk about the number of citizens.”

Wow, compelling. I’ll spare the penumbras and living document arguments and just point out that the census would still be counting the number of persons, even if it specifies whether or not they are citizens. Obviously.

The overall argument, such as it is, is that people who are not citizens won’t want to respond to the census at all, and it’s not just Perez making it. This is party-wide, as streiff outlined in great detail here.

Covering in particular California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s reaction, streiff notes:

The citizenship question was a regular feature of the Census up until 1960. The citizenship question has been a part of the rolling survey, the American Community Survey, for several years and the response rate on that has not suffered.

You should read streiff’s post too, but moving on to the broader point…

This is the hysteria case they’re making this year.
Example 1 is: “The GOP is suppressing voters by asking if they are citizens. (Aside: Ask Perez if non-citizens are allowed to vote. He seems to be confused on that issue.)

Example two should be obvious: The GOP is working with the NRA to murder your children. Elected Democrats, their compliant media, and the various well-funded liberal orgs (in some cases partly funded by you cough Planned Parenthood cough thanks a lot omnibus) are in the midst of a blitz attack designed to make average voters think two things: that the existence of guns means your child could be murdered any second, and that a magical and uplifting grassroots movement led by a Children’s Army are here to end the slaughter.

Hysteria.

It’s all the rage this year. I mean, it’s all the rage every election of course, see: McCain, John – Racist; Bush, George W. – Hitler; Romney, Mitt: Literal Ebenezer Scrooge. You get the picture.

But this year, it’s going to be taken up to and past eleven. Everything is an existential threat. Not just national issues, either. Did your Republican city council member shoot down a zoning change? THEN IT’S BECAUSE HE WANTS BUSINESS TO DIE. Did your dog catcher choose not to accept a raise? HE MUST BE TAKING BRIBES.

It’s going to be all-out drama, all year. It already is. Just you watch how much worse it gets.