President Biden is finally realizing that without the end of the filibuster, that his entire legacy is in danger, and we will never have free and fair elections in GOP states. He's finally realized that he's the last card in the deck to be played to convince Manchin and Sinema to go along, or it's all over.
With a make-or-break vote looming in the Senate on a sweeping voting-rights and anti-corruption bill, President Joe Biden and his advisers have said in recent weeks that Biden will pressure wavering Democrats to support reforming the filibuster if necessary to pass the voting bill.
According to three people briefed on the White House’s position and its recent communications with outside groups, Biden assured Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he was ready to push for filibuster reform. Biden’s pressure would aim to help Schumer convince moderate Democrats to support a carveout to the filibuster, a must for the party if it’s going to pass new voting protections without Republican votes. According to a source briefed on the White House’s position, Biden told Schumer: “Chuck, you tell me when you need me to start making phone calls.”
The Senate returns to work this upcoming week, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer intends to call a vote on the For the People Act, the most ambitious reform bill in decades and the Democrats’ best shot at countering the wave of state-level GOP voter suppression laws this year. But to get the bill out of Congress, Senate Democrats will almost certainly need to change the filibuster, the procedural tactic used by the minority party to block many types of legislation.
Publicly, there are two centrist Democrats who have stated their opposition to changing or abolishing the filibuster, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Activist groups and fellow Democratic senators say Manchin and Sinema are the likely 49th and 50th votes both on any voting-rights legislation and especially any filibuster reforms. Sources say both senators are likely targets for when Biden launches his final push to pass a compromise version of the For the People Act.
“I think there’s a clear recognition the president will have a role to play in bringing this over the finish line, and if in order to do that, we need [filibuster] rules reform, then so be it,” says Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), who helped write the original version of the For the People Act. “I think Joe Biden with his long history and experience in the Senate can see that.”
A White House spokesman declined to comment on any private conversations between Biden and congressional leaders. The official said that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been “deeply involved” with the push to pass new voting protections. “The president and vice president have been very clear that this is a crucial priority and senior White House staff across many departments are constantly working on it,” the official said.
Even with a lobbying blitz from Biden, the path to passing the For the People Act is a tricky one. A group of senators will soon release a compromise version of the For the People Act intended to satisfy Manchin’s concerns about earlier versions of the bill. Sources familiar with the compromise bill say it will focus on shoring up voting rights against GOP suppression laws, crack down on dark money and partisan gerrymandering, and create new policies to stop attempts at election subversion like what happened after the 2020 presidential election.
But even if the revised bill earns the support of all Democrats, it won’t be enough to overcome the filibuster. Schumer will not only need to prevent a single defection on the bill itself but also convince — with Biden’s help — all 50 Democrats to create a carveout in the filibuster for voting-rights-related legislation.
Carveout rules already exist for nominations and budget reconciliation thanks to the GOP, but of course this will be sold as the end of the Republic, and most likely it will fail.
We'll see if this moves Manchin and Sinema at all. My fear is that it won't and the entire $3.5 trillion Good Package will fall along with it, and doom the Democrats and our country for decades.
As E.J. Dionne notes, failing to enact these measures in the weeks ahead could very well doom the American experiment.
Yes, the stakes are that high. The horror of what so many Republican-dominated state governments have done — most recently in Texas — to restrict access to the ballot and undercut the honest and nonpartisan counting of ballots presents Democrats with only two options: Act uncompromisingly at the national level to ensure democracy everywhere, or accept that many states in our union will, in important ways, cease to be democratic.
Killing a strong voting rights bill means accepting, to evoke Abraham Lincoln’s declaration on slavery, a nation half-democratic and half undemocratic.
Here again, the clarity of the hazard is pushing even reluctant Democrats to action. Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have said repeatedly that they would not overturn current filibuster rules to enact a voting rights bill.
So Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) issued Manchin a friendly challenge: Offer a proposal that you could vote for and find 10 Republicans to support it.
Manchin accepted the challenge, and as soon as this week, a group of Democrats including Manchin and Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Raphael G. Warnock (Ga.) could introduce a bill rooted in his ideas.
If Manchin can find 10 Republicans to support it, he will deserve canonization for having performed a miracle. If he can’t, will he and Sinema stick with their refusal to alter the filibuster and thus make themselves complicit in the death of a bill as important to democracy in our times as the original Voting Rights Act was in 1965?
Call me naive, but I do not believe that Manchin, Sinema and Biden want to be associated in history with those who failed to stand up for democracy at the hour of maximum danger. In a little over a month, we’ll know where they stand.
Unfortunately, I believe the opposite. I believe that by 2024 my vote will not only be meaningless, but punishable.
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