A Moral Test Of Our Democracy: Senate Tees Up Filibuster Reform With S. 1, The For The People Act Next Week

The House has already passed H.R. 1,  The For The People Act, now the Senate is preparing to move on its version of the bill, S. 1, The For the People Act, next week.

To do so means having to directly confront the anti-democratic Jim Crow era filibuster rule, which the “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has weaponized into a “weapon of mass obstruction,” turning the Senate into the graveyard where bills go to die.

Certain “moderate” Democrats in the Senate, most notably Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), who have vocally supported the filibuster rule for convoluted reasons that only make sense to them,  must now make a choice with whom they will stand: do they stand with the racist and anti-democratic white Christian Nationalist seditious insurrectionists of the Republican Sedition Party that sought to overthrow American Democracy in January, and is now seeking to legislate the single greatest assault on voting rights in America since the end of Reconstruction in 1876; or will they stand with their Democratic Caucus that overwhelmingly wants to expand and defend voting rights and access for all Americans in defense of American democracy? Are  they for American fascism, or for American democracy? It should be a no-brainer.

ABC News reports, Biden jolts filibuster debate as voting rights clashes approach (excerpt):

[T]he debate about how to end Senate debates has been jolted by President Joe Biden’s support for modifications to the filibuster rule. While his support for a so-called “talking filibuster” wouldn’t change the 60-vote threshold, it’s being interpreted as a step toward something many progressives hope will soon be inevitable.

The future of the filibuster is unlikely to be a hypothetical for long. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed Wednesday to put a major voting rights bill on the Senate floor, after a bill similar to the House-passed legislation gets a Senate committee hearing next week.

“If [Republicans] don’t join us,” Schumer said, “our caucus will come together and decide the appropriate action to take. Everything is on the table; failure is not an option.”

The Washington Post reports, Democrats seize on Biden’s embrace of changing the filibuster:

Democrats favoring a filibuster overhaul moved swiftly Wednesday to seize on President Biden’s new embrace of changing Senate rules to ease the way for his agenda, hoping to inject momentum to alter the long-standing rules even as a handful of Democratic senators continue to resist far-reaching changes.

“We just can’t wait two years to get things done,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a moderate who recently joined the push to make it easier to pass Senate bills. “Rules are blocking us from progress.”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), another centrist, applauded Biden’s notion of forcing senators to speak at length on the Senate floor if they want to block a vote on a popular bill, rather than simply registering their opposition. Such a change is “entirely appropriate,” Tester said.

The impact of Biden’s new position will emerge more definitely in coming weeks when it becomes clearer how hard he will actually push for it. Even with his endorsement Tuesday night, rallying all Democrats behind such a move could take time, warned Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).

“There are some who are skeptical of any change in the rules,” said Durbin, who favors an overhaul. “We have to demonstrate to them how the rules can be used and abused before we go any further.”

Biden’s embrace Tuesday of a return to the “talking filibuster,” a delaying tactic immortalized in movies and some legendary legislative battles that has fallen into disuse, was spurred by a growing conclusion that his ambitious agenda — from climate action to immigration reform to civil rights bills — will otherwise meet a quick death.

“It’s almost getting to the point where . . . democracy is having a hard time functioning,” Biden, who served 36 years in the Senate and long resisted the change, told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. He advocated a return to “what it used to be when I first got to the Senate, back in the old days.”

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“This is not something that just helps Democrats — this is something that helps the Senate,” said Burt Neuborne, the founding legal director at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It makes the Senate an institution that can function again.”

Biden speaks regularly of his affection for the Senate’s traditions, and his comments Tuesday caught even close Senate allies by surprise. Democratic senators interviewed Wednesday said they had no advance warning of Biden’s announcement.

Some centrists, such as Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), said they continued to oppose ending or significantly weakening the filibuster. “You either protect the Senate, you protect the institution and you protect democracy, or you don’t,” Manchin said.

You damn fool! The Senate is an anti-democratic, anti-majoritarian institution. The Republican Sedition Party is led by an authoritarian who just sided with the domestic terrorists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, McConnell vows ‘scorched earth’ if Senate ends filibuster:

“Let me say this very clearly for all 99 of my colleagues: Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin — can even begin to imagine — what a completely scorched earth Senate would look like,” McConnell said in a Senate speech.

This is a terrorist threat, Senator Manchin. Is this the “minority rights” you are so obsessed with defending in the filibuster rule? You are empowering an anti-democratic authoritarian tyrant. That is decidedly not protecting democracy, as you took an oath to defend. You are failing the moral test of democracy.

America does not negotiate with terrorists, foreign or domestic.

Robert Reich: “No person has done more in living memory to undermine the functioning of the US government than the Senate majority minority leader, Mitch McConnell.” Mitch McConnell is destroying the Senate – and American government.

CNBC reports, Schumer says ‘everything is on the table’ to pass voting rights legislation in Senate:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said “everything is on the table” to pass a comprehensive voting reform bill, the For the People Act, during a press conference introducing the legislation Wednesday.

“We will see if our Republican friends join us. If they don’t join us, our caucus will come together and decide the appropriate action to take,” Schumer said. “Failure is not an option.”

The legislation, also known as S.1, includes provisions that aim to make it easier to register and vote, prevent gerrymandering, improve election cybersecurity and reform campaign finance, among other initiatives.

The bill faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where it would require a minimum of 10 Republican votes to defeat a filibuster and move to a final vote on passage.

Or not. Reform or kill the anti-democratic filibuster rule.

“This issue is bigger than the filibuster,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., in his first major floor speech Wednesday. Warnock, in first floor speech, champions federal voting laws to blunt GA’s proposed restrictions:

“I stand before you saying that this issue — access to voting and preempting politicians’ efforts to restrict voting — is so fundamental to our democracy that it is too important to be held hostage by a Senate rule, especially one historically used to restrict the expansion of basic rights,” Warnock said during his first-ever floor speech. “It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in our society.”

“Some politicians did not approve of the choice made by the majority of voters in a hard-fought election in which each side got the chance to make its case to the voters,” he said. “And, rather than adjusting their agenda and changing their message, they are busy trying to change the rules. We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights and voter access unlike anything we have seen since the Jim Crow era.”

“We must find a way to pass voting rights, whether we get rid of the filibuster or not,” said Warnock, who has held onto his role as senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where civil rights icon the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor in the 1960s.

The Senate Rules Committee is set to hold a hearing on the bill March 24.

The introduction of the For the People Act in the Senate comes amid a wave of Republican-backed voter restrictions proposed in state legislatures across the country.

Lawmakers have introduced 253 bills in 43 states with provisions that would restrict voting access as of Feb. 19, according to a Brennan Center for Justice analysis.

Voting rights activists are calling on Congress to pass voting rights legislation such as the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and for Biden to use his political clout to prioritize the bills’ passage.

The Brennan Center for Justice explains, Congress Could Change Everything:

As of February 19, more than 253 bills restricting voting access had been carried over, prefiled, or introduced in 43 states, and the number is rising. Already, two of these bills have passed, and many are moving aggressively through state legislatures. Fueled by the Big Lie of widespread voter fraud and often discriminatory in design, these bills have the potential to dramatically reduce voting access, especially for Black and brown voters.

This legislative campaign to suppress the vote can — and must — be stopped by Congress. The Brennan Center has analyzed each of the restrictive voting bills pending in the states and concludes that The For the People Act (H.R. 1/S. 1) would thwart virtually every single one. The For the People Act, which passed the United States House of Representatives in early March, is a transformative bill that would expand voting rights and strengthen our democracy.

As Senator Schumer said, “Failure is not an option.” To save American democracy from GQP authoritarian fascism, this bill must pass. The anti-democratic filibuster rule must be reformed, or killed.

Time is up: Contact Senator Kyrsten Sinema and tell her to honor her oath of office to defend American democracy. The Senate’s filibuster rule empowers a GQP tyranny bent on destroying American democracy. It is time for her to decide with whom she stands.

Do Sens. Manchin and Sinema really want to step into the shoes of Southern Dixiecrat segregationists who used the Senate filibuster rule in the Jim Crow era to block civil rights and voting rights legislation?

Or as Axios poses, “Do they really want to be remembered as standing in the way of the administration’s ability to enact significant policy when Democrats not only control the White House but both chambers of Congress?”

This guarantees your defeat should you seek reelection. And history will harshly condemn you for failing the moral test of democracy.