Joe blew it on vote law
Dithering Dem didn’t push for reform before MLK Day
Have we no shame? Are we really going to go through with this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday celebration on Monday without a congressional resolution on voting rights? Is that what we’re going to do?
Are we going to hold hands, sing ’60s protest songs, watch black-and-white speeches and reminisce about the March on Washington while some sore-losing Republicans and their filibuster fan clubs are turning back the clock?
Is that what’s happening here?
Is the president of the United States, a long-time filibuster fan club member, going to lay a wreath at the King Memorial knowing full well he was late to the voting rights party?
Oh, he gave a nice speech, and all. Even pounded the lectern a couple of times, but President Biden took forever to come around to the reality that restrictive Senate voting rules are standing in the way of on-the-ground voting rights.
And, despite this epiphany, Biden only went halfway in his effort to fix the problem, offering a temporary halt to the filibuster to get some traction on voting rights.
“I’ve been having these quiet conversations with the members of Congress for the last two months,” Biden said in firebrand speech in Atlanta urging new legislation on voting rights. “I’m tired of being quiet!” Well, dammit, make some noise. Instead of putting the full weight of the presidency behind the initiative, something every other Democratic president in the last 55 years would have done, Biden was acting like he was the senior senator from Delaware.
“I told the president he gave a monumental speech,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, who met with Biden after his address. “And, though I have been challenging him for months to be forthcoming, it was better late than never.”
Maybe too late.
At stake are the Freedom to Vote Act, which would reverse some of the restrictive Republican-backed state laws, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, an update to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Fueled by former President Donald Trump’s lies about fraud in the 2020 election, 19 states passed restrictive voting laws last year, and some legislatures are expected to consider more in 2022.
A majority of the Senate, mostly Democrats and Independents, support the two voting bills, but current Senate rules require a 60-vote threshold — the so-called filibuster —which means 10 Republicans would have to sign off on the measures. That’s not happening.
The only other option is to follow the course that Biden belatedly endorsed, which is to eliminate or at least modify the filibuster. Unlike most Senate legislation, only a simple majority is needed to do that.
But that’s not likely to happen either, not after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) said they would not vote to kill the filibuster.
“History will remember Sen. Sinema unkindly,” Martin Luther King III, the slain civil rights leader’s son, said in a statement.
“While Sen. Sinema remains stubborn in her ‘optimism,’ Black and brown Americans are losing their right to vote. She’s siding with the legacy of Bull Connor and George Wallace instead of the legacy of my father and all those who fought to make real our democracy,” the statement continued.
The filibuster, once an obscure procedure, has been increasingly used to stall legislation of the party in power, most notably on issues relating to race and civil rights. Not even a vote scheduled after a holiday celebrating the life of the greatest voting rights champion ever is enough to move the needle.
So, unless you’re ready to pick up the fallen standard and fight for the most important of civil rights, don’t even bother with a holiday celebration.
Unless you’re ready to do away with Jim Crow-era roadblocks to progressive legislation, don’t say a word to me about Dr. King’s “dream.”
“And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote,” King once said. “We shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.”