Biden Is Right To Call The State Of Voting Rights An Existential Threat. But The Walk Must Be As Aggressive As The Talk.

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This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. 

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1388003
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What priorities at home can Biden help Manchin and Sinema advance? Or, what might be stripped for funding packages, what federal programs or military bases, might they hate to lose?

I doubt that there are many people on the planet more aware of these factors than Joe Biden. He’s spent more time in the Senate making these sort of negotiations than nearly anyone else alive or dead has. This is a bit like lecturing a professional tightrope walker on the importance of balance. I’m sure that, if there’s a way to either entice or coerce Manchin or Sinema into reforming the filibuster or anything else the Democrats want, Biden already knows of it and is working behind the scenes to use that leverage.

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Who rides to the rescue then? A U.S. Supreme Court which has proven itself a wrecking crew for voting rights? The shoddy and wildly outdated Electoral Counts Act? “Responsible” voices inside the Republican party?

Sadly, I don’t have a lot of hope that Manchin and Sinema are much better. I hope I’m wrong.

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THE END of VOTing rights FOR the DEAD and double VOTing LIBtards and anti-White VOTING machines is AN existentiaL threat to DEmonrats!!!1111one11!!!111!!!

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I like the way “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” has become a radical, far-left idea.

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It’s built around all these bizarre ideas like “consent of the governed” and such…can’t have notions like that getting out in the wild or people might actually start expecting their government to be representative of themselves.

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One issue with this essay, I agree we need to find creative solutions because the status quo cannot stand, but invoking Lincoln and LBJ is misleading. Both had supermajorities (Lincoln mainly because the Southern states had no representatives in Congress anymore). Using the bully pulpit was enough because they could wrangle the votes they needed from within that large pool of votes.

Working with the thinnest of majorities is a completely different beast and there really doesn’t seem to be any straightforward way like “the bully pulpit” to get similar results when 1 or 2 members of your party can hold the whole process hostage to their own whims. It’s just a different ballgame, as much as we might wish it were synonymous.

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See? Creative solutions right there.

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Yes! And that notion also forgets that LBJ was working with an entirely different Republican Party, one in which many GOP senators supported civil rights and one that was willing to help impeach a Republican president a decade later. The current GOP wouldn’t impeach a president who incited and cheered on an insurrection.

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Obama? Sure they would.

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Always best to divorce before you Hate one another and you can’t agree over the kids…

Always best to divorce before you kill one another.

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No alimony payments with the other option…

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He also had a lot of goodwill after Kennedy. At least a couple years

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As the blue states of America pay the bills mostly, we’d probably be stuck paying some bills after the separation.

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Again, see above post.

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But also a whole bunch of people who didn’t trust him as far as they could throw him – including almost all of the Civil Rights leadership. (With plenty of good reasons.)

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Say it with me all democrats

Voting Rights / Court reform

Court Reform / Voting Rights

Voting Right / Voting Rights

Cort Reform / Court Reform

Everything else is a waste of time if democracy burns in 2 / 4 years

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This is not to imagine a superhero president. It is, however, to demand a president who understands what Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson did, and who uses the bully pulpit of the presidency to command public attention and demand action.

Lincoln gave the Cooper Union speech and it helped make him President… I can’t think of any Johnson speech that was as much of a line-drawing exercise as that.

If Biden got up in front of the cameras and said that the Republican Party is determined “to rule or ruin in all events,” how would he follow up if Sinema and Manchin remained intransigent? The Republicans are not likely to repeat the Confederate mistake of calling home their Senators and Congresspeople.

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Sadly I think we’re going to see the soft Biden when we need him to act ruthlessly.

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I agree, we’ll see if time has passed him by.