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Voting rights
Democrats in the House and Senate are running out of time to pass national legislation to protect every citizen’s fundamental right to vote in free and fair elections, now under the most serious threat since America’s founding.
That’s not an overstatement. For the first time in history, most Republicans refuse to accept the results of a national presidential election in which their incumbent president was defeated by a huge majority of American voters. To prevent that from ever happening again, Republican legislatures around the country have passed undemocratic state laws to disenfranchise opposition voters and throw out election results if their party’s candidate loses.
We all witnessed the corruption of what was once a legitimate national political party into active opposition to the fundamental principles of American democracy resulting in five deaths and 140 injuries to police in a violent mob attack on the U.S. Capitol by the defeated president’s supporters attempting to overthrow President Biden’s election.
The time may be short, but Americans need to feel there’s a real possibility Democrats can protect the right to vote nationwide against the unanimous opposition of every Republican Senator in a 50-50 evenly divided Senate. There still is, but it has to happen quickly.
United for Democracy
Despite overblown rhetoric about divisions among Democrats, Democrats aren’t divided in their support for democracy and voting rights. That includes the two most conservative Senate outliers Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who have frustrated Biden’s agenda to build back a better national economy serving all Americans.
Manchin has futilely tried to get 10 Republican Senators to support his own package of pro-democracy voting rights legislation without changing Senate filibuster rules. He’s attracted only one, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. Even moderate Republicans like Utah’s Mitt Romney avoid confronting the former president’s most dangerous supporters who chased them through the halls of Congress.
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Sinema is co-sponsor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act that would restore a key provision of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. The conservative court threw out a requirement states with a history of racial discrimination receive preclearance from the Justice Department before passing voting restrictions, calling it discriminatory against southern states.
The modern-day solution should require all states to get preclearance. Nothing discriminatory about that. It’s desperately needed now to block the latest tidal wave of Republican voting restrictions north and south aimed at reducing votes by Democrats. Wisconsin Republicans are eager to join them after their corrupt investigator Michael Gableman gets through smearing state and local officials for accurately reporting Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Package of Protections
Voting rights supported by Manchin and Sinema create a strong package of protections for democracy including automatic voter registration, creating national standards for voting by mail and limiting voter suppression, election subversion and partisan gerrymandering. But they can’t be passed without reforming the Senate filibuster, which Republicans intend to use to continue their destruction of American democracy.
Internal party discussions with Manchin and Sinema over the holidays suggest they may be ready to reform the filibuster, not end it, to stop Republicans from abusing the rule to block legislation “basic to the functioning of democracy.” Democrats need to act with uncharacteristic speed. Corrupt gerrymandering of congressional districts Republicans are confident can win control of the House already is well underway. But Democrats have a chance to create a brand-new narrative heading into those midterm elections.
Biden needs to deliver his most important achievement for American voters and democracy itself. Make no mistake. The radical, anti-democracy views of many Republican supporters are wildly out of step with those of most Americans. In a year-end Washington Post-ABC News poll, 70% of Americans recognize Biden as our legitimately elected president. Of the 30% of Americans who believed otherwise, 58% were Republicans.
The Republican Party can’t become a mainstream American political party again until it escapes the shadow of Trump’s fundamentally unAmerican presidency that openly embraced authoritarian violence, hatred and bigotry. Trump did incredible damage to the party by driving away decent Americans and attracting hate groups including decrepit Klansmen like David Duke and Nazis with swastika armbands carrying torches marching through Charlottesville, Va., chanting “Jews Will Not Replace Us!” and “Into the Ovens!”
When a party’s divisive president is soundly defeated for re-election by the largest voter turnout in presidential history, party members remaining in office would be expected to flee their unpopular president for their own survival. But elected Republicans literally are afraid of offending the violent, fanatical extremists within their own party who believe Trump’s preposterous lies Biden stole the election through massive vote fraud.
The most important issue Democrats can run on in this year’s November midterms is support for American democracy against Trumpian Republicans who are still out to destroy free and fair elections. That starts with Biden protecting every eligible American’s right to vote in those midterms.
