On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Vice-President Kamala Harris spoke remotely for about five minutes with congregants from the reverend’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. It was part of an apparently hopeless effort to convince the U.S. Senate to pass voting rights legislation. The White House released a brief speech by President Biden as well. Passing voting legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes because of the filibuster rule, and Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona had made it clear that that will not countenance any substantial change to the rule that would overcome Republican opposition.
The goal is to pass two bills: the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. They have been packaged together and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer used some procedural jujitsu to overcome the Republicans’ refusal to open debate. But that won’t allow him to end the debate so they can conduct an up-or-down vote on final passage.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has pledged to begin debate on the legislation on Tuesday. At some point, the Senate will need to vote to end debate, which requires 60 senators to vote to proceed. It’s at this stage that Republicans can filibuster the legislation, preventing it from moving on to a full vote. Only one Republican senator — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — has supported the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and no Republicans have supported the second bill. But Democrats would need 10 conservatives to join them to overcome a blockade.
Schumer could try various maneuvers or signal a vote to change Senate rules to end the filibuster, but without Sinema and Manchin onboard, the latter effort is all but guaranteed to fail.
In a letter Schumer sent to the Democratic caucus on January 3, he stated that a Republican filibuster would result in a vote on changing the rule no later than January 17.
Over the coming weeks, the Senate will once again consider how to perfect this union and confront the historic challenges facing our democracy. We hope our Republican colleagues change course and work with us. But if they do not, the Senate will debate and consider changes to Senate rules on or before January 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to protect the foundation of our democracy: free and fair elections.
However, that date was pushed back and it now appears that the debate on voting rights will only begin on Tuesday, January 18.
The New York Democrat said late Thursday that the chamber would not take up the legislation until Tuesday, citing “the circumstances regarding Covid and another potentially hazardous winter storm” approaching Washington, D.C. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, announced a positive Covid-19 test on Thursday. Democrats will lack a simple majority until he can return to the evenly split Senate.
“Make no mistake, the United States Senate will — for the first time this Congress — debate voting rights legislation beginning on Tuesday,” Schumer said Thursday night. “Members of this chamber were elected to debate and to vote, particularly on an issue as vital to the beating heart of our democracy as this one. And we will proceed.”
At some point, Schumer will try to end the debate, some Republican will object, and a roll call will be held to overcome the objection. This will most likely be a completely partisan 50-50 vote, ten votes shy of what is required. Then Schumer will try to change the filibuster rule, and he will fall short of the 50 votes needed.
This is how things are queued up, and it should make for very depressing theater. Let us pray that something happens in the next 24 hours to prevent the failure and demoralization this spectacle is ready to produce.
What, in your view, would be a better course of action?
That’s the beauty of it. There are no solutions. So it kind of frees you up to do whatever you want. Schumer can’t drop it, so he will put on a show of trying. The show will impress no one. Giving up would not impress anyone either.
We did well to defeat Trump but we didn’t regain power.
Yes, we keep falling short.
It would be better if there were votes to pass those bills (now combined?).
But it is important to put people on record. All of those who say the support Voting rights were given a chance to prove it. They failed–and now need to be called out. Every Republican bill to restrict voting, e.g. the Texas bill that is now leading to a lot of rejections of absentee ballot requests, need to be laid at the feet of everyone who voted against the bill or steps needed to see that the bill passed.
There is a difference between a show vote solely meant to rile up the base, and a vote to highlight corruption and inequalities in our system.
5pm Democratic caucus meeting scheduled.
Martin Luther King Jr told us that moderates would disappoint us and of misguided Senators who supported the filibuster. Nothing has changed. Democracy will fail with the help of the Democratic Party.
Look at Longman’s description of the situation below.
Sinema and Manchin had no problem throwing Black voters under the bus.
There is no beauty in this pile of bovine feces.
Sinema gets censured by her state party
A poll of Blacks in South Carolina shows they are fed up with Democrats
Democrats are still dumb enough to think Manchin will work with them on a watered down Build Back Better plan.
Gotta love the Moderates.