This Is A Do-or-Die Moment To Save American Democracy: The Senate Must Pass Voting Rights Legislation In January

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to return to work the first week of January, a week earlier than the House.

The Hill reports, Democrats set for showdown over filibuster, voting rights:

Democrats are barreling toward a showdown over voting rights and changes to the Senate rules, after months of growing frustration from within the caucus.

The party is under pressure, from both outside groups and lawmakers, to pass federal election legislation as GOP-run state legislatures enact new voting rules and as the start of the 2022 midterm election is fast-approaching.

After watching Senate Republicans block election and voting bills via the filibuster, which requires 60 votes for most legislation to advance, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is vowing to bring the fight to a head in January.

“The Senate will consider voting rights legislation, as early as the first week back. … If Senate Republicans continue to abuse the filibuster and prevent the body from considering this bill, the Senate will then consider changes to any rules which prevent us from debating and reaching final conclusion on important legislation,” Schumer wrote in a letter to his caucus.

But forcing a vote could highlight division within the caucus, where both Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) support the 60-vote threshold. Democrats need both of them to ultimately vote to change the rules.

Vichy Democrat Collaborators Appeasing GQP Fascism.

Voting rights legislation and potential changes to the Senate’s legislative filibuster are linked because Republicans have used the 60-vote hurdle to block bills that would overhaul federal elections or strengthen the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Democrats are having behind-the-scenes talks to try to come up with ways to change the Senate’s rules to break the logjam and a group of Democrats — including Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with the party — was tapped by Schumer to lead the discussions and come up with options.

“We’ve got to get this done. … We are having a robust conversation,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who has publicly and privately pushed his colleagues to be more aggressive in coming up with a plan to pass voting rights legislation.

Kaine added that “there’s ideas on the table now that people are attracted to.”

“We’re looking at reforms to restore the Senate. It’s not just filibuster reforms,” he added.

Democrats haven’t settled on a plan, but instead are discussing a range of options aimed at winning over the 50 votes needed to invoke the “nuclear option” and change the Senate’s rules with a simple majority.

Though the Senate is evenly split, Democrats would be able to change the rules on their own because Vice President Harris can break a tie.

One option, backed by some in the caucus, would be to revert to a talking filibuster where opponents to a bill could delay it for as long as they could hold the floor, but that legislation would then only need 51 votes to clear the Senate.

Another would create a carveout from the 60-vote requirement for voting rights or election legislation. Though that would leave the hurdle in place for other legislation, Republicans warn that it would pave the way for the legislative filibuster to be neutered altogether.

The carveout idea has picked up support from within the Democratic caucus. [But not from the two GQP appeasers.]

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who is up for reelection in 2022, announced that she supported letting voting rights legislation pass the Senate by a simple majority.

“A set of arcane Senate rules are being used as an excuse not to act. This cannot stand,” Hassan said.

Smaller options include changing the number of votes from 60 “yes” votes needed to break a filibuster to 41 “no” votes needed to sustain it. [The Norm Ornstein/Al Franken proposal.] Supporters argue that it would put the onus on senators blocking the bill, rather than on supporters who want to advance a piece of legislation.

Senators have also discussed getting rid of the 60-vote hurdle to start debate on a piece of legislation combined with a deal that guarantees a certain number of amendment votes for both sides.

That is unlikely to satisfy reform advocates because it would leave in place the 60-vote hurdle needed to end debate on legislation and ultimately move it to a final vote. But it would make it easier to debate bills in the Senate, where opponents are currently able to prevent a bill from being brought up, and gets around a current rule that allows any senator to block amendment votes unless leadership is willing to eat up days of time.

To change the rules through so-called normal order, Democrats would need the support of at least 17 GOP senators, in addition to all their members.

Though Manchin has talked with a group of GOP senators about ideas including getting rid of the 60-vote hurdle needed to start debate combined with a guarantee on amendment votes, [obstructionist] Republicans are unlikely to support any rules change that gets rid of the 60-vote hurdle needed to end debate on the bill.

That means Democrats will need to use the “nuclear option” to change the legislative filibuster on their own.

But they don’t yet have the votes to do that, and it’s not clear how they get there on the two changes — a talking filibuster or a carveout — that would be needed for Democrats to be able to pass voting rights legislation on their own.

Both Manchin and Sinema have made clear recently that they remain adamant in their support for the 60-vote hurdle.

“If you can make the Senate work better, the rules are something we’ve changed over the years; 232 years, there’s been rule changes. But there’s never been a change with the filibuster, the rights of the minority,” Manchin said during a “Fox News Sunday” interview Dec. 19.

WRONG! Sen Amy Klobuchar: “I would abolish the filibuster, but even if you keep the filibuster in place, over time there have been 160-some carve-outs to the filibuster,” Klobuchar said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Dec. 5. “The rules have changed over and over.” Fact-check: Have there been about 160 carve-outs to the filibuster? (Yes):

As support for the statistic she offered on “Meet the Press,” Klobuchar’s office pointed to research by Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. Specifically, Klobuchar’s office pointed to data from a chapter in Reynolds’ 2017 book, “Exceptions to the Rule: The Politics of Filibuster Limitations in the U.S. Senate.”

In the book, Reynolds collected 161 examples of the Senate establishing work-arounds to the ordinary 60-vote requirement to push past a filibuster.

Reynolds confirmed to PolitiFact that the number Klobuchar cited accurately reflects the research. However, she and other experts on Senate procedure noted some caveats. Not all carve-outs are equal.

[T]he statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.

Sen. Sinema has also been skeptical of a carveout for voting legislation, raising concerns about what types of legislation a Republican majority could enact under the same rules change.

Once again, Senator, the very first thing Mitch McConnell will do if Republicans regain control of the Senate will be to eliminate the Senate filibuster in order to pass the “enabling acts” of GQP authoritarianism tyranny. If you do not understand the gravity of this threat, you are not fit to serve in the Senate. You are failing your oath of office.

In addition to talking to Republicans, Manchin has been in talks with Kaine, King and Tester. Though Manchin hasn’t publicly committed to supporting any change, and continues to say that rules reforms need to be bipartisan, senators believe that they are making progress with the key holdout.

“He’s ain’t there yet, but he’s open,” Tester said about Manchin, noting that they had given language on potential changes.

Manchin added during the Fox News interview that he had made “no commitments” on what changes he could potentially support. [He will never give specifics on anything. His goal is to keep the media playing a guessing game. This prim donna diva only cares about being the center of media attention.]

“I am working on trying to make the Senate work better, bringing bills to the floor, amending them, having debates, understanding, being transparent to the public, what you agree or disagree,” he said.

Sinema, meanwhile, is calling for a public debate in the Senate on the rules, a similar position she staked out during a July Washington Post op-ed. [She wants to debate it, then vote to preserve the 60-vote filibuster – so essentially do nothing – what she excels at.]

Failing to change the Senate’s rules and pass voting rights legislation would be a significant blow to both the White House — which has signaled its a top priority — and outside civil rights and progressive groups, which see passing legislation as fundamental to protecting democracy.

It seals the fate for the end of American democracy, let’s not sugar coat it.

Sen. Schumer, during an interview with the “Joe Madison Show,” [Joe Madison has been on a weeks-long hunger strike for voting rights legislation] urged advocates to keep up the pressure heading toward the Senate action—including on his own members.

“Keep up the drumbeat,” Schumer said. “We need all the anger and the protests, etc., that have occurred here.”

“So now we’re in the final stages,” he added, “and we’re asking people to keep up the pressure.”

President Joe Biden, a creature of the U.S. Senate, has dithered for a full year on whether the Senate should change its filibuster rule for voting rights legislation. He is an eternal optimist and believed that bipartisanship for fundamental voting rights should be attainable. This was unrealistic, and wasted a whole year we did not have to waste. He is now clear-eyed about the challenge American democracy faces from the radicalized GQP war on democracy. Biden backs exception to filibuster for voting rights bills:

President Biden says he supports creating an exception to the legislative filibuster in the Senate in order to pass voting rights legislation over Republican opposition.

Biden told ABC News’s David Muir in a portion of an interview that aired Thursday that he would support fundamental changes to Senate rules in order to pass election reform legislation. [See, Biden tells Muir on filibuster exception for voting rights: ‘whatever it takes’.]

“That means whatever it takes. Change the Senate rules to accommodate major pieces of legislation without requiring 60 votes,” Biden said.

When asked to clarify that he supported a carveout for voting rights legislation from the 60-vote threshold needed to pass most bills in the Senate, Biden said that he did.

“The only thing standing between getting voting rights legislation passed and not getting passed is the filibuster, I support making an exception on voting rights of the filibuster,” Biden said.

The remarks are similar to those that Biden made during a CNN town hall in October, when he opened the door to “fundamentally” altering or eliminating the filibuster to advance voting rights legislation.

The Washington Post editorializes today, U.S. democracy frayed over the past year. Senate Democrats must repair the damage.

American democracy frayed in 2021, as Republicans in states such as Georgia and Texas passed laws making it harder to vote, premised on the lie that fraud tipped the 2020 presidential election. As GOP-controlled state legislatures forced through these antidemocratic policies on party-line votes, the U.S. Senate was silent, the Democratic majority unable to respond because Republicans filibustered bill after bill to ease access to the ballot box. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced last week that he intends to change this dynamic early next year, bringing up voting rights legislation once again and taking more assertive procedural moves to advance it.

Good. Voting is not an issue like health-care policy or tax rates, on which there is reasonable debate. No senator should cheer any move to weaken minority rights in the chamber, but these specific circumstances should compel even the most traditionalist of senators to contemplate change. President Biden says he supports suspending the filibuster rules to get it done.

Neither voting bill that Democrats seek to pass should be controversial. One, the Freedom to Vote Act, would permit all voters to cast mail-in ballots in federal elections and require drop boxes. Led by former president Donald Trump, Republicans have trashed these voting methods as fraud-prone; in fact, absentee voting has a long record of convenience and security. The act would make Election Day a holiday, mandate early-voting periods, create automatic voter registration systems and provide same-day registration. It would also curb partisan gerrymandering and limit the extent to which politicians could pressure local election officials. There is no credible argument against any of these provisions, yet every Senate Republican has united against the legislation.

The other bill Democrats want to pass, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, has bipartisan buy-in — if you count that a single GOP senator, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, supports it. This bill would repair the 1965 Voting Rights Act, after the Supreme Court declared in 2013 that Congress would have to revise the law for its strongest provisions to once again apply. Crucially, it would reimpose “pre-clearance” on states with a history of racially discriminatory voting laws, obligating such states to submit proposed election rule changes for federal review before phasing them in. Pre-clearance for decades discouraged state and local officials from seeking to tilt the playing field against racial minorities, recognizing that discrimination could be as obvious as a poll tax or as subtle as a seemingly small shift in polling place locations. Immediately after the court’s 2013 ruling, Republican-controlled states began passing anti-voting laws.

Reimposing pre-clearance would make them think twice, which helps explain why nearly all Senate Republicans oppose the John Lewis bill, too. The underlying principle is that voting should be easy, convenient and fair, enabling all Americans to cast ballots without unnecessary difficulties. Over the past year, Republicans have proved that they oppose this principle, raising barriers that discourage people from voting because some calculate that more Democrats than Republicans will be suppressed. Not only is their position morally indefensible; it is not even clear it is politically sound. Republicans just claimed big victories in this year’s Virginia gubernatorial and legislative elections, amid massive turnout. Instead of seeking to depress voting, Republicans should be running more popular candidates and campaigning on more attractive policies.

Mr. Schumer should push hard to advance both voting bills. And if Republicans continue to fight them, Senate Democrats should look at reforming the filibuster.

This is a do-or-die moment to save American democracy in January. Get it done now, or it will be too late. The GQP fascist barbarians are at the gate, and only the Democratic Party can save American democracy from the GQP war on democracy. Loyal American patriots will remember who the fascist collaborators and appeasers, and traitors to American democracy are. It will not end well for you. (At the close of World War II, France punished many Nazi collaborators: 9,000 were summarily executed during the liberation campaign, 1,500 were executed after a trial, and 40,000 were sentenced to prison. Vichy on Trial.)