Democrats Fiddle While Republicans Stack the Electoral Deck

I am becoming increasingly impatient with the Democratic Party’s leaders and Democratic members of the House and Senate as the days of September slip by with no visible progress on anything. The double-tracked “infrastructure” bills lie dead in the water while Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema play statespersons—not because they are, but because they can.

In the meantime, the voting rights and election protection legislation that effectively meet the real existential threat to our democracy lies similarly dead in the water. The absence of action on these bills will be more costly to our country than a delay in rehabilitating our infrastructure. That is because a Republican majority in Congress and the likely loss of the White House resulting from “rigged elections” in 2022 and 2024 will likely be fatal for our representative democracy.

This year, we are witnessing action by Republican-dominated legislatures from Arizona to Virginia and Florida to Idaho enact state laws that will protect older white Americans’ right to vote while electing barriers for communities of color, poorer and younger voters. What’s more, if the voters rise up and vote contrary to the interests of the party in control, that party’s legislators can invalidate the election results in many of these states. In other words, the voters won’t be able to throw the rascals out because the rascals will have the authority to decide whether the election was “fair and honest” or not.

Two pieces of legislation before Congress will once more provide the tools the federal government formerly had to ensure that states could not arbitrarily legislate barriers to voting and undermine fair and honest elections. That changed in 2014 when the Supreme Court decided by a 5-4 vote that there was no more need to stamp out Jim Crow-style voter suppression practices.

Defeat ‘election integrity laws

The actions of Republican legislators and state officials over the past few years have proven the worthy justices wrong. The provisions of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act will enable the Department of Justice, federal prosecutors, and citizen advocacy groups to take action to defeat voter suppression and “election integrity” state laws. They will need these tools soon if the 2022 elections are to be truly “fair and open.”

It seems clear to me that the only chance for Democrats to enact these bills is to eliminate the Senate filibuster rule entirely or to fashion some kind of work-around to permit their slender majority to enact these bills.

A change of Senate rules can be accomplished with a one-vote majority — the only majority Democrats have. I have no patience with Democratic senators who quake and whine that the Republicans will use the same tactic if they subsequently come into power. Come on! Do you, Senators, really believe for a minute that if the Republicans would not change the filibuster rule in a heartbeat to protect their slim majority? If you do, I have a bridge to sell you.

The Democratic senators need to use their slim majority soon to do what voters sent them to do. They should be reminded that their constituencies are a solid majority of the American people, and that voter rights and fair elections can only promote their party’s goals for a future America. So use your majority wisely, Democrats, or you won’t have it for long!