Democrats confront reality on voting rights: Congress probably isn't coming to the rescue

[Celerity]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/voting-rights-for-the-people/2021/05/16/bb65909a-b458-11eb-ab43-bebddc5a0f65_story.html


Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) is the lone Democratic holdout on the For the People Act, a sprawling overhaul of federal elections and campaign finance law, and he has shown little sign of coming around to supporting it.

Asked about the path to enact new voting-rights laws, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has repeatedly offered a pat reply: “Failure is not an option.” Faced with a barrage of new state laws aiming to restrict voting outside Election Day — pushed by Republican legislatures egged on by former president Donald Trump’s false claims of rampant fraud — most Democrats agree with Schumer that the need for a federal backstop is essential. But failure is very much an option — it is, in fact, the most likely one. A Senate committee on Tuesday reached a partisan deadlock over Democrats’ sprawling overhaul of federal election, ethics and campaign finance law — the For the People Act, also known as H.R. 1 or S. 1 — and there is no clear path to breaking it. A Thursday lunch meeting of Democratic senators to discuss a way forward did not produce any breakthroughs, and lawmakers, aides and activists said they have little more than blind hope that one will materialize. Leaving the meeting, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a lead author of the For the People Act, said that progress “starts with the conversation among the senators, getting focused on it, getting familiar with the details, getting all the questions answered . . . That’s a conversation we really started in full focus today.”

Yet the most important Democrat to the fate of voting legislation didn’t even attend the meeting and thus wasn’t part of the discussion. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) was in his home state, attending an event with first lady Jill Biden and actress Jennifer Garner — not huddled in a Capitol Hill conference room seeking a way forward. Manchin is the only Senate Democrat not to have co-sponsored the bill, and he has expressed serious misgivings about the For the People Act — and, more generally, moving forward on any type of voting legislation without Republican buy-in. “I think it’s too darn broad, and we got no bipartisan support,” he told reporters Wednesday. “The country is more divided today than it’s ever been.” The For the People Act, which passed the House in March, would provide minimum standards for early voting, vote-by-mail and automatic voter registration — overriding many of the provisions in the new Republican state laws, and expanding voter access in some Democratic states, as well. But it also would impose a plethora of new federal mandates that include nonpartisan congressional redistricting, public campaign financing, “dark money” disclosures and more.

Republicans have assailed the bill as an unwarranted federal intrusion in state election administration and a massive power grab by Democrats. They voted Tuesday en bloc in the Senate Rules and Administration Committee to reject it, creating a tie in the evenly split panel. Manchin said he instead supports an alternative — a refurbishment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 now known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named after the late Georgia congressman and civil rights icon, that would reestablish mandatory Justice Department oversight over voting laws in jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory practices, which previously included eight southern states plus Alaska. Manchin, in fact, suggested he would extend the preemptive federal reviews, known as “preclearance,” to voting laws in all states and territories — a massive expansion of the landmark law that broke the back of Jim Crow. In a joint letter to congressional leaders Monday, Manchin and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) called for bipartisan action to restore preclearance. “Protecting Americans’ access to democracy has not been a partisan issue for the past 56 years, and we must not allow it to become one now,” they wrote.



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[Horse with no Name]

1. The country is more divided than ever

The republicans have found that they can forever be in power whether they are the minority or majority.
Manchin supports republicans. There really isn’t any other excuse.
They change the rules when it benefits them.
Our country is almost gone. Joe Manchin is pushing us over the cliff.

[Demsrule86]

7. That is just not true.

He is from a red area and in order to win the election, he needs to be moderate. But there are others who have not come forward who will not vote down the filibuster. It is not just Sinema and Manchin.

[RANDYWILDMAN]

2. What a shitshow, we can't agree or pass a voting rights bill

No wonder a certain percentage don't.

Manchin, just vote with the D's or we are gridlocked!!!

So gridlocked, who benefits from that ????

Politics in this country is like NFL, we don't care who wins, so long as the game is close and exciting, except in this game if the wrong team wins people die !

[msongs]

4. takaes 60 votes so manchin does not matter with the filibuster in place nt

[RANDYWILDMAN]

10. Fillibuster and Manchin are jokes!

if we wait to get 60 votes, we will never pass anything and the R's win. If Manchin can't figure that out, oh wait he can. but he is oh so content with status quo, not with helping his state or his party or most americans....come on people we are better then this !!

[Crunchy Frog]

3. We can name the new country "The Joe Manchin Memorial Dictatorship".

[Demsrule86]

5. You need 60 votes. It can't be done in reconciliation.

[Crunchy Frog]

9. We wouldn't need 60 votes if Manchin would cooperate.

His unwillingness to work around the filibuster is the main obstruction.

[Docreed2003]

6. Motto: "At least we fought for bipartisanship"

[PortTack]

8. We have our work cut for us..we must have a massive ground game for the midterms and every

Single election going forward.

The one bright spot left..the voter suppression laws that states have passed will not stand in the courts, at least the most egregious parts.

[Takket]

11. we should take what we can get...

re-establishing preclearance sounds a hell of a lot better than nothing, and then we throw our support behind Marc Elias to defeat the voter suppression laws, which are WILDLY un-Constitutional, in court.

The battle isn't lost but we are going to have to hope for courts to save us, other its going to be more and more of Democrats getting 60% of the vote and rethugs setting the agenda nationally.