The nightmare scenario arrived over the weekend for Democrats and the majority of Americans. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin declared he would oppose the For the People Act, the federal law co-sponsored by every other Democratic Senator to stop the nationwide destruction of voting rights and American democracy now underway in Republican-controlled legislatures including Wisconsin’s.
By continuing his opposition to reforming an undemocratic Senate filibuster rule, Manchin also brought to a screeching halt President Joe Biden’s ability to pass any more legislation unless it’s supported by 10 Republican Senators. Practically, that’s no legislation at all. Not a single Republican Senator supported Biden’s Economic Recovery Act passed under special rules putting money in the pockets of American families and speeding vaccinations nationally to reopen the economy. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell says Senate Republicans are 100% opposed to Biden’s agenda.
Manchin claims he wants to pass bipartisan voting reforms and legislation. “Some in my party have argued that now is the time to discard such bipartisan voting reforms and embrace election reforms and policies solely supported by one party,” Manchin said. “Respectfully, I do not agree.” But Manchin didn’t explain how bipartisan legislation could be passed when the opposition party not only opposes everything the president was elected to do to recreate a thriving U.S. economy, but opposes American democracy itself.
Delusional Ex-President
When the most anti-democracy U.S. president in history was soundly defeated after a single term, many expected the Republican Party to begin moving back toward more respectable American political values. Instead, the party continues to be controlled by an increasingly delusional former president who keeps babbling nonsensically about being reinstated as president in August.
Not even Republican leaders are dim-witted enough to believe that’s going to happen. Clearly, the loony old man is losing it wandering around Mar-a-Lago alone talking to himself. But Republicans are desperate to hold onto the 30% of violent, dangerous Trump supporters crazy enough to believe him until at least the midterms, which historically go against the party of the president in power. No one knows if Trump’s supporters will even bother to vote when he’s not on the ballot. They hate professional politicians, even Republican ones. That angry mob smashing furniture and smearing excrement on the walls of the Capitol really would have torn apart any actual Senators or members of Congress they encountered on Jan. 6.
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That’s why Republican state legislators want to take election results out of the hands of voters. New voting restrictions passed in Georgia are the model for Republican legislators around the country. Hundreds of state laws are specifically designed to suppress enough Democratic votes to assure Republican victories. If that fails, Republican state legislators would be empowered to throw out enough legitimately cast votes to reverse the actual election results.
“Sacred Right” of Americans
Biden used the 100th anniversary of a white terrorist massacre wiping out a thriving black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to denounce such laws as unAmerican. The “sacred right” to vote is “under assault with incredible intensity like I’ve never seen,” he said. Republican voting restrictions combine reductions in mail and early voting and Election Day polling places to intentionally create long lines forcing urban voters to wait hours to vote.
In addition to setting minimum national voting standards assuring every eligible American’s right to vote using a wide variety of methods, the For the People Act Manchin has now killed includes another crucial provision ending the corrupt partisan gerrymandering of voting districts after every census that for the past decade assured Republican control of Wisconsin’s legislature even when voters statewide cast more votes for Democratic legislative candidates. The law would have created independent commissions in every state to draw congressional and legislative voting boundaries more fairly representing the intentions of state voters.
Corrupt Republican gerrymandering is so prevalent nationally Republicans already were close to shutting down the Biden recovery by winning the House next year. The respected, non-partisan Cook Political Report says Republicans have full authority to redraw 187 congressional districts while Democrats control just 75. Redistricting in just four states—Texas, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina — could deliver House control to Republicans in 2022.
George Conway, the Never Trumper Republican husband of the notorious Kellyanne Conway, the communications advisor to the defeated president who coined the euphemism “alternative facts” to describe the constant stream of lies from the president and his administration, perfectly described the current state of the Republican Party in a recent Washington Post op-ed: “Four years of Trump have led to the Republican Party becoming a threat to democracy, a declining sect dominated by crackpots, charlatans and cowards.”
It’s impossible for Congress to pass the bipartisan legislation Manchin demands to protect the vote when only one party supports American democracy. Biden and Democrats can still succeed if they can make every American aware of how fundamentally Republicans are betraying their country.
