All 50 Senate Republicans joined forces Wednesday to block the voting rights and elections reform bill, the Freedom to Vote Act, that Sen. Joe Manchin and fellow Democrats have spent months crafting on the premise that Manchin would be able to find “10 good people” among the GOP to pass it and save our democratic republic. They filibustered the bill without even having to filibuster it. None of them needed to say a word on the floor to block the bill from advancing. They simply voted “no.”
On Thursday, President Joe Biden vowed that the fight would continue. “We have to keep up the fight and get it done. And I know the moment we’re in. I know the stakes. This is far from over,” Biden said. He was speaking at the 10th-anniversary celebration of the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. “[Republicans are] afraid to even just debate the bills in the U.S. Senate, as they did again yesterday, even on a bill that includes provisions as they’ve traditionally supported,” Biden said Thursday. “It’s unfair. It’s unconscionable. It’s un-American.” That’s fine, as far as it goes.
It’s a better message than what the White House delivered earlier in the week, when a White House official presumably cleared to speak on the the issue dismissed the frustrations of voting rights activists to The Atlantic’s Peter Nichols. “Every constituency has their issue,” the official said. “If you ask immigration folks, they’ll tell you their issue is a life-or-death issue too.” Perhaps because it is, as is the sanctity of our elections when it comes right down to it. They are both issues that the president needs to engage in personally, directly.
This was the third attempt by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to pass voting rights in the Senate, the third effort to prove to Manchin (and his partner in obstruction, Kyrsten Sinema) that there are not 10 Republicans who give a good goddamn about “bipartisanship” when it comes to the most critical issues of the day: that Republicans have permanent rule by the minority in sight, and aren’t going to let it go voluntarily.
The vote was 51-49, with Schumer voting no, a procedural vote that allows him to bring the bill to the floor again in the future. Which he vows to do. In a Groundhog Day-worthy statement released Thursday, Schumer bemoaned the Republican obstruction. “Let there be no mistake, Senate Republicans blocking debate yesterday was their implicit endorsement of the horrid new voter suppression and election subversion laws passed in conservative states across the country,” he said. “When they wouldn’t debate, they said these horrid new laws that suppress voters—that subvert our elections—are okay.”
Schumer also promised that Republicans are going to have the opportunity to do the exact same thing again, “as soon as next week,” when he will “bring another proposal to the floor: the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.” This might be an effort to shame one Republican, Lisa Murkowski, who used her work on that bill to justify blocking the Freedom to Vote Act. “I’m committed to ensuring access to voting is equal, fair, and free from discrimination, which is why I’ve been working with Senators Leahy and Manchin in the context of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. There is nothing more fundamental than the right to vote.”
That was also Murkowski’s excuse for voting against the For the People Act back in June. She said she “absolutely” intended to cosponsor the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, because it is “narrowly focused on voting rights.” However, she has not signed on as a cosponsor to that bill, “but has indicated that she’s looking at it.” Sure. Thus far, there are no Republican cosponsors.
“The reflexive obstruction from Senate Republicans is not—is not—how the Senate is supposed to work,” Schumer said. “The question now before the Senate is how we will find a path forward on protecting our freedoms in the 21st century.” Yes, it is indeed. “The members of this chamber can take inspiration from great patriots of the past who put country over party. Or they can cross their arms and watch as our 240-year-old experiment in democracy falls prey to the specters of authoritarian control,” Schumer concluded.
There are two people to whom he needs to deliver that message directly: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. There are 46 other Senators—the Democrats and the two Independents who caucus with them—who need to deliver that message to them, as well. It’s time to end the filibuster, even if the rule change is limited just to elections-related issues.
There’s also a president who needs to use his bully pulpit to make this happen. President Biden needs to stop considering voting rights a niche concern that just another constituency is clamoring for, and start treating it like the three-alarm fire it is.
How many doomed votes is Schumer going to have before the tactic loses all utility, before it becomes rote and no longer outrageous that Republicans would obstruct voting rights? We’re nearly there, and when that happens, when it’s business as usual for Republicans to openly plot the theft of our elections, pretty much everything is lost.
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