Helen Butler, a voting rights activist in Georgia, is disappointed in Joe Biden:
After Biden was inaugurated, Butler and many others expected that voting rights would be one of the first things the president and Democrats addressed. Instead, during the president’s first year in office, Butler has watched with dismay as Biden and Democrats have failed to pass any voting rights legislation.
....“[It] makes voters say ‘Did I vote for the right people? … you haven’t fought for me. Why should I fight to keep you in office in 2022?’”
I get the disappointment, but why do we keep going through this? The situation now is exactly the same as it's been from the start. There are two alternatives:
- Get support from ten Republicans so that the bill can pass with 60 votes.
- Persuade Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to kill the filibuster so it can be passed with 51 votes.
Neither of these things is going to happen. Neither of them was ever going to happen. This has nothing to do with how hard Joe Biden or the Democratic Party tried. It is solely the fault of either (a) the Republican Party or (b) two specific recalcitrant Democratic senators. That's it. Take your pick.
you haven’t fought for me ...
I'm reminded of the inane cry of the Trump cultists that "At least he fights!" Even if he loses. The longer I observe American politics, the more convinced I become that they defy rational explanation.
Does he fight, though? He promised he would be at the Capitol with them, but I did not see El Jefe going Leroy Jenkins on the Capitol Police serving as human shields for Neoliberal Nancy's embrace of autocracy under the unelected joebiden.
He hurt a lot of dems which is what matters. I wish Biden would hurt more republicans.
Don't worry, ken mate, they defy rational explanation because they are practised by people who completely lack rationality. But that isn't only the US, of course, it's a world-wide phenomenon.
A bit like KD's query the other day about 'bad guys who have done some good or good guys who have done some bad' when the reality is 'a few good guys and quite a few bad guys and the great majority who can't recognize which us which so they just stumble along after the crowd'.
Yes, but Biden needs to use the bully pulpit!
/s
What if you just change the filibuster to exempt voting rights bills from it?
Could you find two Republicans to do it?
Apparently, you could also have the Vice President overrule the parliamentarian and combine the voting rights bill with a reconciliation bill, or, you could just fire the parliamentarian and hire someone who will rule favorable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/29/opinion/biden-voting-rights.html
But....each of those options for getting around Manchin and Sinema ALSO requires Mancin and Sinema to be onboard.
There's nothing you can do with 48 votes.
Unrelated....is there a way to get jabberwocky to email notification when your comment gets a reply as Disqus did?
Mr. Drum can make this happen if he wants to:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/comment-reply-email-notification/
And what if Joe Manchin had decent public policy views, and a willingness to vote that way.
It was Manchin who assured his comity with the GQP, outside of chambers, could swing 10 GQP Senators to vote for cloture on his & Klobuchar's voting rights bill.
Given this betrayal, I wish the stories of Amy's stapler were true & she bashed him across his brainpan with a Swingline.
Lol!
I'm always confused by folks who want to get rid of the filibuster for just one issue. If it can be done for voting rights, it can be done for anything.
Even if it were left narrow, the next Republican Congress would use it it to ‘protect’ the votes of Real Americans from dilution by the votes of illegals, the dead, and people who just won’t vote for the right(wing) candidates.
Well obviously Biden could have better used the bully pulpit to get it passed. /s
Sadly, this idea that a president has quasi-dictatorial powers in influencing the passage of legislation is widespread. Frankly I'm astonished at what Democrats have been able to achieve so far with their 50+1 majority.
Kevin, although obviously Republicans deserve the majority of the blame, Democrats should mostly be mad at themselves for failing to win more Senate races in 2020. If we had won NC and maybe one other state, the Sinemas and Manchins of the world wouldn't be playing such an outsized role in things now. On the other hand, Democrats should be thrilled (and proud) about the small miracle in Georgia, which has allowed them to get anything done at all.
Yes those giant mountains of money lit on fire in KY and SC. I told anyone who would listen both of them wouldn't come close but small donors refused to hear it. And then to make the loser of SC race (who did a point worse than the average!) DNC head is baffling.
The worst outcome for either party is a tied senate. We are basically at 48 Dems, 2 Independents that caucus with Dems and 50 republicans. Of course the Vice President is a (D) so the majority is technically democrat.
The issue is that a tied senate gives power to anyone within their own party ranks who opposes all, or portions of their party's legislation. In THIS CASE anyone from EITHER side that breaks ranks is vilified within their own party. This goes for D's and R's alike.
The real problem is that DEMs are not cohesive, and do not march in lockstep with their party. They praise independent thought, or taking care of minorities and the helpless within society. This doesn't make them saints but it gives extraordinary power to those who's degree of willingness to help is slightly less than the DEM party as a whole. They may have problems with how certain legislation is funded or they may disagree with the legislation entirely.
Manchin represents a very conservative, historically republican state. He walks a tightrope with the DEM party because of it.
HE IS NOT THE ENEMY.
We need to vote more DEMs in if your are complaining about Manchin and Sinema. U.S. Senate races cannot be gerrymandered, as they are state wide, so Joe represents the feelings of his state. I would take him over my two senators from NC, Richard Burr, and Tom Tillis any day of the week
Elect more Dems. It is that simple. Let "the people" take the power away from Manchin and Sinema by electing a clear majority of DEMs to the senate. THEN see what Joe and Kyrsten do.
So, who is the 48th Democrat: King, Manchin, Sanders, or Sinema?
We have 46 Democrats, four egotists*, & a technophobic** stripper@ pretending to be vice president.
*Even by the inflated sense of self-importance of a Senator, Angus, Joe, Bernie, & Kyrsten are unusually up on themselves.
**In five years, we have gone from lamenting a terminally ill Democrat woman's abject rejection of any information security provisions ("homebrew server") to an always underprepared Democrat woman's irrational fear of Bluetooth hacks.
@The POLITICO writer who compared Kamala Harris to a Gold Club dancer just got a promotion from The POLITICO to NBC News. Can't wait to see Savannah & Hoda fluffing him on Today.
You are absolutely right - the problem is that we didn't elect enough Democratic Senators. And unless/until we do, we are basically screwed.
Yes, and we could use a bigger margin in the House, as well!
Americans simply don't grasp that the Founding Fathers left us with a dysfunctional system with far too many veto points and fundamentally weak political parties. When they say that they hate the system, they don't actually mean that they hate the system.
It’s a system that got us through a civil war and two world wars. I wouldn’t blame the Founding Fathers for one of our major parties becoming an authoritarian cult.
The Founding Fathers did not anticipate political parties and certainly didn't anticipate those parties becoming so polarized around ideology that they would use the very choke points of the system again for their own political benefit. A such a thing as the fillibuster was never a part of the Constitution
But George Washington did warn about the "spirit of the party" ruining the country so you can't say we weren't warned.
The system actually worked when the parties were fluid enough and enough factions that deals could be cut often and broad coalitions could be gathered to make bills into laws. But thanks to polarization what we have right now is a parliamentary system without a parliament and I can't think of a worst form of government.
So when you have this paralysis, it frustrates those who you count on to help win elections because they don't get what they've voted for past Congress. Thus this whole notion of the "bully pulpit" or "Green Lantern Will" theories or "At least he fights" becomes popular with some voters and activists because if a measure can't be passed, the very least one can give an A grade for effort! Because that's really all they have left.
Mr Drum claims one can blame one out of two alternatives for this situation
(a) the Republican Party
or
(b) two specific recalcitrant Democratic senators.
He did forget the third , and to a foreigner accustomed to democracy, most likely alternative
(c) an outdated and nonfunctional Constitution
Greetings from your Swedish friend
(c) is definitely true. Back in the 1700s, the US Constitution was revolutionary, inspiring. But it's the 21st century now, and the nations with newer constitutions, who've learned from our (and other) mistakes have found different ways of running a representative democracy, ways that work significantly better. We could learn from them! ... If we Americans weren't so mired in Constitution-worship and xenophobia.
There's nothing anyone can ever do about C so not really a point to talk about it.
Not even talking about re-writing the Constitution it will definitely ensure sliding every future into misery
You're not wrong, but of the three, that's the one least amenable to change.
The makeup of the Senate can't even be fixed by a constitutional amendment. Removing equal representation of states in the Senate is the one thing that is specifically forbidden in the amendment process.
"According to Brendan Nyhan, the Dartmouth political scientist who coined the term, the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency is "the belief that the president can achieve any political or policy objective if only he tries hard enough or uses the right tactics." In other words, the American president is functionally all-powerful, and whenever he can't get something done, it's because he's not trying hard enough, or not trying smart enough."
https://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theory-of-the-presidency-explained
Green Lanternism it is, thank you for bringing it in here. Very useful term, too bad it got abandoned during the trump misrule era. The phenomenon itself is a bad habit we liberals tend to fall into.
Why do Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema oppose filibuster reform:
1) They have some deep emotional or historic tie to this concept? lol
2) They fear a future world in which the GOP would use the absence of the filibuster to pass 'evil' things? The GOP can always get rid of the filibuster when they are in power.
3) The filibuster keep them from voting on politically tricky legislation/and or give them extra political power. I say BINGO!
Definitely #3 with Manchin.
Biggest problem with Manchin is that he's delusional about his re-election prospects. He's a near-certain goner in 2024, and he should be doing stuff that would give him the best legacy as a Senator rather than trying to eke out an extremely unlikely re-election.
Sinema might actually be more of #1, especially when you contrast her behavior with fellow Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. She apparently has a book where she talks about learning how important it was to do bipartisan stuff after showing up as an ultra-progressive partisan to her state legislature position and getting nowhere.
A lot of Americans treat the President as an elected King, who should be held responsible for everything good and bad that happens.
Best part comes when people realize how irrelevant Republican "voting suppression" laws were. A dead issue that will fade from history.
After reading the comments above, I find the points raised in them are either pretty obvious or not very edifying.
Voting rights legislation IS essential when the opposing Party has gone full anti-democratic, which the Republicans have. I don't believe the fight for it is over. Logically, a decision has likely been made to get the social infrastructure plan passed with 50 votes, and only then exert maximum pressure on getting filibuster reform. Let's at least get Manchin's and Sinema's vote on BBB before we really ruffle their feathers with voting right demands.
I don't know whether this will succeed, but I would like very much to see a vote on an exception to filibuster on voting rights issues, and let S&M be exposed as the people who let democracy fail in the US if they vote against it.
And Kevin, BOO! You may be right that voting rights legislation will never pass, but your absolute conviction that this is so is unjustified. 'There are more things in heaven and Earth, Kevin, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'
I personally hope that your prediction on this is as valid as your predictions last year that Kamala Harris would win the nomination, or....or anybody-but-Biden. I still remember the epitaph you wrote then on Biden's political future.
Kevin is delusional if he thinks Manchin and Sinema are the only two democrats who don't support the filibuster. Even if they somehow persuaded those to to vote to dump the filibuster, they'd still be 10 votes short.
"3) The filibuster keep them from voting on politically tricky legislation/and or give them extra political power. I say BINGO!"
That's true for a lot of politicians on both sides of the Senate, otherwise the fillibuster would have be ended a long time ago.