Filibuster Rule Change For Voting Rights Legislation Fails 52-48 in Senate
Brady-Handy Photograph Collection (Library of Congress) [Public domain]
A much-discusses and doomed-to-fail vote to change the filibuster rule regarding voting rights legislation failed in the US Senate Wednesday night 52-48, with Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) joining Republicans to defeat the measure.
Senate Republicans blocked Democrats from moving forward on voting rights legislation, and Democrats failed to get 50 votes to change the Senate rules to move forward with the legislation with a simple majority.
The dramatic night started with the Senate first voting on whether to end debate on the voting rights legislation, a move that failed to get the 60 votes needed to move the bill forward. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer then brought up a vote on a rules change to move the legislation forward with a one-time exemption, which was fiercely opposed by Republicans and two members of his own party, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Democrats’ frustration with Manchin and Sinema was apparent, with Senator Bernie Sanders saying after the vote that Manchin and Sinema have “forced us to go through five months of discussions which have gotten absolutely nowhere.”
President Joe Biden issued a statement after the votes, saying he was “profoundly disappointed” in the outcome, although he did not place blame on fellow Democrats.
“I am disappointed — but I am not deterred,” Mr. Biden said. “My Administration will never stop fighting to ensure that the heart and soul of our democracy — the right to vote — is protected at all costs. We will continue to work with allies to advance necessary legislation to protect the right to vote. And to push for Senate procedural changes that will protect the fundamental right to vote.”
Mr. Biden said Vice President Kamala Harris will continue to lead the effort to pass voting rights legislation. After the voting rights bill failed to advance, Harris said in a statement that “Senators voted to preserve an arcane Senate procedure rather than secure that fundamental freedom. The American people will not forget this moment. Neither will history.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said it was “perhaps the most important day in the history of the Senate” and said that if the Democrats’ succeed, they would “break” the Senate.
The focus on Senators Manchin and Sinema, respectively, opposition to changing the filibuster rule for the better part of a year failed to change either’s vote. Senate Majority Leader Schumer of course new this vote was going to fail, but held it anyway. Ostensibly, the push to change the rules was to get several pieces of voting rights legislation through. What had started as HR1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act had in recent days undergone even more changes prior to this vote. But critics point out that Leader Schumer only brought voting rights to a vote after a year of pushing other priorities such as the Build Back Better plan, infrastructure, and other legislative priorities. The cynical political observer might point out that Democratic leadership only did this after those other priorities either passed (infrastructure) languishing without the votes needed to pass (BBB), and that the doomed-to-fail vote Wednesday comes in what is now an election year where Democrats will faced with challenges on what they have accomplished legislatively.
But regardless, for now the filibuster remains intact in the US Senate, the various voting rights changes will remain unpassed, Senators Sinema and Manchin voted exactly how they said they would despite a year’s worth of lobbying, threatening, and cajoling, and yet another priority of the Biden Administration and Democratic leadership fails to become law. With President Biden conceding at his Wednesday press conference that the BBB legislation would need to go forward by “break the package up” there will be plenty more Senate drama to come.
And once again we prove that 48 votes is not 50.Report
That’s the American education system for you. A bunch of people in the highest tiers of government and media that can’t even count.Report
I’d like to gently disagree on this. Schumer knew very well he didn’t have the votes- Manchin and Sinema (especially Sinema who’s suffering grievously with constituencies she’ll need to get re-elected) would have very much preferred not to take the vote at all. Holding the vote was a way to make them pay for their obstruction and to demonstrate to various other Democratic constituencies both that the party is putting in the effort and exactly what the road block is. Bringing the vote was neither ineptitude nor indifference, it was politics and was a necessary step in the long term project of killing the filibuster and attending to the Democratic coalition.
As for the filibuster? It survives for now but in the medium to long run it’s doomed. The cultural support it once had within the chamber is withering away and with that gone the filibuster will endure only until it is standing in the way of something that 51 Senators want more than they care about the filibuster.
I think an argument can be made that the GOP will be in that position if it gets a trifecta and a 52-54 Senator majority (though my real politic hunches say Mitch won’t want to axe it over abortion rights but I may be wrong and Mitch won’t live forever).
On the Democratic side it’s even more dire. The filibuster probably will endure only until they get a 52+ majority plus the House and Presidency. The list is pretty long for policies they’d axe the filibuster over and the filibuster in of itself is rapidly (and rightly) coming to be hated in of itself on the left.Report
This could be right but I think you’re missing the timing of the GOP two cycle two-step. After 2022, GOP probably has 245 Reps and 54 Senators and I don’t think there’s much purpose in doing anything about the filibuster since Demos have a veto point in the White House anyway.
The pressure will come when/if President DeSantis is elected in 2024 with 58 or 59 Senators. In that case, I think the filibuster goes the way of all flesh. But it doesn’t have to work that way. There’s a very good chance the GOP will have 60+ Senators then. And at that point, GOP can beat a filibuster anyway, so what’s the point of getting rid of it.Report
Yes, agreed, a trifecta would necessarily include a GOP President. I called out abortion specifically because it’s one of the only policy commitments the modern GOP holds strongly enough that they might (emphasis might) need to actually axe the filibuster over. Their other few policy preferences are all achievable via reconciliation which is why the filibuster is such an advantage for them.Report
But! But! I thought the Rethuglicans hated black people!
If they hated black people so much, why would they want to nix abortions?
(Some of those Republicans are more pro-abortion than you’d think.)Report
What Republicans think of African Americans seems entirely non-sequitur to the topic at hand.
I do doubt the GOP under Mitch would axe the filibuster to pass an federal abortion ban. It is, however, not implausible that they would, certainly more plausible than any of the other scrips and scraps of policies that the GOP widely holds that can’t be done through reconciliation.Report
I’d be more forgiving of that in a situation where BBB hadn’t crashed into the Appalachian mountains. The priority for damage control in the midterms should be ‘doing stuff’ and doing lots of it. This sends the wrong message, that doing stuff is secondary.Report
BBB is sad. I can only assume leadership either thought that Manchin was more movable than he ended up being or that having BBB fail and then trying to pass individual components was more internally politically feasible than axing some of the interest groups pet projects from BBB and trying to pass the remaining components.Report
It’s frustrating. But I also hope they find a way to get some chunks of it piecemeal. Both because I vote for Democrats in hopes they will get that sort of meat and potato stuff done and also because ‘getting meat and potato stuff done’ is the best, yet strangely underrated, part of the sales pitch.Report
Manchin kept telling them he was more movable then he ended up being. They essentially allowed him to rewrite the legislation and then he balked.Report
I don’t appreciate Manchin balking; I agree he has obviously invited and reveled in the drama and I wish BBB had passed but Manchin did have about 1/4 of a point when he said that wadding every single groups wish item into the bill then cramming it down to just a year or two duration* was a terrible idea. Of course it all would have expired. The leadership should have picked just one or two items and fully funded them to make a run at it. Or Manchin should have just told them what he’d support and they should have just passed that. Anything would have been better than the drawn out process the indulged in.
And for the record Fish Sinema. She’s the real villain in my opinion.
*To meet a spending limit he himself imposed.Report
Manchin did do that… $1.77M 10-yr Pre-K no Child Tax credit.
Press and White House staffers came daggers out. That was the Huff Post attack that he won’t do CTC because people would spend it on drugs.
I think they thought that would sink him, but there was a strange bounce where people went maybe the crazy guy has a point with the heroin epidemic and spiking deaths/suicides. (Not arguing the point, specifically, just that it went nowhere).Report
One really wonders what the narrative on this inside the White House is/was. They lashed out like they had leverage. I understand the frustrations with Sinema but Manchin is not some unknown quantity. There’s no mystery about the tight rope he has to walk and he was never going to die for the cause.Report
Number 4, I know you heard this before
Never get high on your own supplyReport
Pretty much.Report
I’d certainly love to know but we won’t find out until 2 years after the end of Bidens Presidency minimum.Report
I disagree. Make people own their horribleness. https://www.democracydocket.com/news/democrats-must-reform-the-electoral-count-act-and-pass-comprehensive-voting-rights-legislation/Report
I’m all in favor of bringing things to the floor, even in a losing cause.I think people lose sight of the fact that the defeat was on a vote to even bring a bill to a vote. The filibuster is a nonsense rule in place so legislators can avoid doing the job they’re getting paid a pretty handsome sum to do.Report
It’s designed to prevent very narrow majorities, like this one, from doing things that the rest of the country hates. To prevent cultural cramdowns.Report
Let opponents make their case and vote accordingly. Don’t like what passes? Change it when you have control.
What we have now is an ossified remnant of a once lively legislature.Report
The Agencies are headed by people confirmed by the Senate – who can also be impeached and removed by the Senate. And they are still part of the Executive branch.
And the only reason the Executive Branch does things that look legislative is that the Legislative Branch – most notably the Senate – refuses to legislate. this vote is a classic example of that.Report
In this case, “we” is the legislature itself ceding control it once had.
The 2nd paragraph of your comment is just utter nonsense, but thanks for stopping by.Report
That “narrow majority” represents 41 million more Americans then its opposition. That’s a pretty big “rest of the country” never mind that substantial numbers of republican voters actually support the elements of the bills in question (or so even Fox News polls tell us). This wasn’t a cultural cram down.
Carving refusing to hold a vote on one president’s SCOTUS nominee a year out from an election and the holding a vote on another presidents nominee weeks before an election – that’s a cultural cramdown.Report
This might not have been a cultural cramdown, but that doesn’t mean the next one won’t be.Report
What Democratic legislation of this presidency – or the obama Presidency would you consider a cultural cram down?Report
You know, after the midterms, if the GOP regains even a marginal control of the both houses, you might seem some cultural cramdowns you have issues with (abortion rights, for instance).
Dark made a generalized statement, you shouldn’t assume he was focused on the current party in power.Report
FWIW, I think the filibuster is a dead man walking and it should be even with the cramdowns you mentioned. It is frankly an antidemocratic anachronism that people only defend when it is convenient for them and they do so in silly ways.
It will either be destroyed when the Democrats gain enough of majority to make Manchin and Sinema’s opposition irrelevant or when the Republicans have a trifecta with a narrow Senate majority like they did in 2017.
I don’t think it is possible for any would be Democratic candidate to the Senate to win a primary without opposing the filibuster. Even want to be Senator Tim Ryan in much redder Ohio is opposed to it. Before last night, there were some rumblings in the gossip columns that it was more than Manchin and SInema that opposed eliminating the filibuster but those two were the fall guys. Last night proved otherwise, it is those two.Report
Mitch McConnell has demonstrated a willingness to kill the filibuster when it suits him. I expect that will continue if Republicans regain power.Report
Personally, I’m agnostic about the filibuster. I can see the value in it, but we could get a similar effect but requiring more than a simple majority to pass something (maybe you need 55%, or 60%).Report
That is anti-democratic as well. A simple majority should be sufficient to pass legislation unless veteoed by the President.*
*My ideal would be to have a unicamal parliamentary system where the prime mininster and cabinet members are also in the legislative body. Plus proportional representation but I don’t think this will happen anytime soon or ever.Report
Calling something anti-democratic doesn’t carry much weight, since we are talking about the representative bodies own rules it makes for itself.Report
Politicians hold show votes all the time. Everyone knew this would fail so there was no risk to supporting it.Report
I don’t totally have a problem with this line of thinking but I do think there’s an issue with the filibuster being cost free. If the minority had to put it’s money where its mouth is and actually stop Senate business and coordinate days of reading whatever they would in place of the phone book to do it then I would think it makes sense. It would be there as a tool of last resort. Instead all someone really has to say is ‘I filibuster’ then without 60 votes that’s the end of it.
And that’s coming from me who thinks the moral urgency of this particular bill is kind of meh. I wouldn’t lose it if it passed but the idea that our democracy can’t survive states that don’t do universal vote by mail or require some minimal effort to maintain your registration has always struck me as pretty silly.Report
Yeah. Keep the Filibuster but make it costly. “Oh, you want to move on to something else? Then I guess that debate is done. Let’s have a vote! Oh, you want to keep debating? Well, then. The distinguished gentleperson from MK has the floor. Oh, they are done talking? Is debate done, then? Let’s have a vote!”Report
We should have something like a Rumsfeld rule. If you (and your allies) can’t stay on your feet for 8 hours of continuous ranting, you don’t get the filibuster.
Good for practicing stump speeches too.Report
That is basically how it worked until the 70s when they moved to a two-track Senate.Report
Schumer was trying to do this, but Manchin and Sinema clearly don’t even want this.Report
Concur, the fillibuster should be maintained by active effort on the part of the person/party exercising it. If that means we get to listen to all the junior D senators reading chapters from War & Peace instead of fundraising or attending posh dinners, then so be it.Report
The Senate gave that up when it became clear that the Dixiecrats were willing to burn the whole thing down rather than let any more civil rights bills pass.
Do you think there’s not a sufficient core of the Republican membership that’s willing to burn the whole thing down in opposition to much of BBB and voting rights?Report
More specifically, the onus of maintaining a filibuster should be on the filibustering party, not the majority.
Which requires a more significant set of rule changes than merely “make them talk”.
For instance, under the previous rules, the majority had to maintain a near-constant presence near the Senate, enough to ensure quorum and defeat the filibustering group if they attempted to call a vote. (Else, the filibustering party could coordinate a time to stop — say 3:00AM on a Tuesday — and rush the floor, and get up to all sorts of fun — including sending the bill back to committee and restarting the whole process).
My suggested change is simple: When the filibustering party yields the floor, absent a full quorum, it automatically invokes cloture and gavels out the session for the day.
The filibustering party either talks until they can’t anymore, or until they convince a majority they’re right. If the former, debate ends and the bill comes up for a vote the next day (or that day if it ends during a full session), If the latter, well, the bill comes up for a vote.
Not that the filibuster really does what it was intended to do anymore — which was to stall long enough for the voting populace to register their opinion, in the fond hopes they were against whatever business the Senate was up to, back when it’d take days or more for people to find out and start calling angrily.Report
Even this would be preferable to the current state.
Just publicize it.Report
That works too.
The whole declaring a filibuster and then going out to dinner is what annoys me.Report
If you look back at it’s history, and the reason why they changed it, it really was because the burden fell mostly on the majority party. The filibustering people would eventually run out of steam, but until then the majority were camped out in their offices 24/7.
Couldn’t go home, at least one or two Senators had to be in the senate 24/7, and they needed enough staffers awake for those poor pair in the Senate to send messages to wake everyone up and get them to the Senate floor in time for a sudden vote.
Whereas the filibustering party just needed to work out some shifts and could go sleep in a bed.
I will say this: I think it’s really clear that Sinema thinks she’s going to be President before her Senate term ends, which is NUTS. (Manchin I get. Old-school, deep red state, stuck in his ways — plenty of things to color his view. Sinema has aspirations and…is so deep in a bubble that it’s beyond belief. Who does she think she’s catering to? Not her supporters, not her opponents, not the mushy middle, and certainly not her ideology.)Report
Sinema seems utterly deluded. Serves us right for tapping a Green Party loon, we shoulda known better (no we couldn’t have known better). But Sinema is replaceable and should be primaried and replaced.Report
Yeah, there’s no world where Sinema is replaced by a Democrat who actually wins the seat. And for that reason, I suspect she’ll win a primary if she wants to run for reelection.
A lot of this goes to what I replied about earlier, specifically about how many GOP Senators there are going into the 2024 cycle and the outlook of that cycle. If it looks like there will be 58-59 GOP Senators in the new Senate and there’s still a filibuster, the Demos will probably pull out all the stops to get a 41st vote. If there’s 60+, it’s very likely the libs will work just as hard to primary her out of spite. Of course, in that case, they may be looking to take their frustrations out on every Democrat, not just Sinema.Report
As Kelly demonstrates, Sinema has no particularly unique skills or talents and Arizona isn’t West Virginia. She’s entirely replaceable and the Senate seat is far from lost without her.Report
She ain’t Trump. She ain’t Clinton. She’s “Moderate”. She’s vaguely good looking, if you’re into that, and, if your measurement of whether someone is acceptable includes nothing more than whether the right people are screaming in pain then you will thrill at the howls whenever her picture shows up on the telly.
Goldwater 2024. In your heart, you know she’s right.Report
It’s 100% lost w/o her. Tbh, there’s a very good chance it’s lost with her as well, but without, no chance. Or, to be more precise, it’s 100% lost if Sinema runs again and loses a primary.
She’s the incumbent, and divisive primaries against a sitting incumbent never help that party. Demos are going to need every break they can get to hold onto that seat.Report
She is already telling close friends she intends to run for President in 2024. Which tells me she doesn’t intend to run for senate, and therefore isn’t likely to be in a divisive primary.Report
“She is already telling close friends she intends to run for President in 2024.”
Which tells me she’s the most deluded Senator in the nation, which takes some doing.
Who exactly is going to vote for her in the primaries, when she’s angered pretty much the entire party? He approval numbers among Democrats are ridiculously low, and it’s not like she has any cross-over appeal AT ALL.
The GOP might cheer her on a bit for spiking the Democrats wheel a bit, but it’s not like that means they’ll vote for her.Report
Done properly, she could get the Sanders/Trump vote.Report
The important word is divisive. I don’t think a primary against Sinema will be divisive at all. Another moderate local Arizona Democratic politician will run against her and every major party constituency will promptly abandon her in favor of “Sinema without the treachery and cray”. Tulsi Gabbard did no damage when she washed out of her Primary because it wasn’t close. When Sinema gets primaried, unless her primary opponent is an utter loon or too many opponents pile in to challenge her then she’ll be landslided out. IIRC her cycle will not be the upcoming midterms but 2024 so Arizona should be eminently gettable. It’s been trending purple to blue for years now.Report
It looks that way now, but it won’t look the same way after the midterm cycle and the Demos are licking their wounds from losing a pile of seats and being repudiated by the voters.
Tulsi Gabbard is a good example. IIRC she didn’t lose a primary, and I don’t think she would have lost if she had ran. She just wanted to do other stuff instead.
Having an incumbent in that seat will look a lot more valuable then than it does now.
Btw, the reason that it seems gettable for Demos now is that their results are inflated by animosity to Trump. Trump is gone now, and I expect him to still be gone in 2024.
That leaves the Arizona Republicans, who as a state party are horrible and like to fight among themselves. But, the hate figures for the populist wing of the party are gone now (McCain, Flake, McSally) so hopefully they’ll execute better than they have over the last couple cycles.
Btw, the last time we went back and forth, I wrote a bad metaphor in one of my replies to you, and after I saw it I wished I hadn’t. Maybe you noticed and maybe you didn’t (and if you didn’t so much the better) but in either case please accept my apologies.Report
Gabbard lost a presidential primary but because she was inconsequential and washed out she did no harm to the candidate. Likewise with Sinema. We can read tea leaves and try and predict whether Arizona goes Blue or Red on a macro level but I am deeply dubious that Sinema being replaced by another centrist candidate would cause the Dems any harm in the Az election. She isn’t special in any way, she’s just a green party loon.
As to the apology, I accept it but it isn’t needed. I made a new years resolution to be less offended by what I read on the internet and be more temperate.Report
Well yes, but she was a big long shot in that race. She was an incumbent in her Hawaii House race, and she was threatened with being primaried there. As it happens she didn’t run for reelection.
But if she did, I think she would have won, probably fairly easily. Factional opponents can threaten to primary Gabbard or Sinema or whoever, but it’s a much bigger deal to actually do it.Report
Given Emily’s List appears to be cutting ties with her, all her major donors are walking, and even her fellow Senators are being real “no comment” about her re-election prospects AND her massively underwater popularity with Democrats in Arizona…..
Yeah, it’s not going to be a divisive primary. She’ll just get plastered as Democrats cheerfully replace her.
She never exactly had massive cross-over appeal, and Arizona isn’t a a deep-red state, and she’s got no real support among the voters as she’s basically gone to Washington to do the opposite of what they wanted.Report
You and I think basically the same way. I’ve seen no indication that Sinema is commanding some loyal constituency of voters in Az and, absent that, the party institution pulling support means she’ll get washed out so long as an equivalent or superior candidate runs against her.Report
I think it’s all a matter of getting the right person for a purple state. It has to be pitched as ‘actually doing things for you’ as opposed to officially running to Sinema’s left. This is where Jaybird’s comment about the Notorious BIG principle is prescient.Report
The problem with Sinema isn’t that she’s not liberal enough for some median Democrat, or not liberal enough for the tastes of some deep-blue seat House member.
Judging be her polling, she’s not liberal enough for pretty much any of her own voters.
“I’m gonna win a Senate race as a pretty progressive candidate for my State, then immediately destroy any progress on ANY policies I ran on for no apparent reason, including policies popular with the entire base — progressive to conservative — and even my entire State, all in a clear run for higher office”.
I can only assume she’s been told that you can only be President by angering as many voters as possible, and that the position is an anti-popularity contest.Report
I’m not against primarying her. I just think it needs to be done well, not treated as some easy thing.Report
Really? You don’t think there are lots of D’s in Arizona who don’t the last five years of the Republican Party and don’t want to be associated with Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs? Yet at the same time aren’t married to any of the lib sacred cows or interest groups? I think there’s lots of those people.
And how many do you expect a Demo in Az can afford to lose, especially given that Sinema won that seat by 1-2% in 2018, prob the best year in forever the Demo’s will ever see.Report
As I noted before, Kelly has toed the party line and is polling -better- than Sinema in Arizona. It also bears noting that the stunts Sinema pulled are contrary to what she campaigned on both in the primary and general election. If anything I’d say not primarying her would be the more risky proposition so long as the AZ Democratic Party can agree on a moderate candidate to back to replace her.Report
Yes, that’s exactly right. And Kelly Is Going To Lose, that’s the whole point.
In 2023 or 2024 Sinema will be doing Sinema things, and ex-Sen Mark Kelly is going to be a lobbyist trying to keep step-up basis in the federal estate tax like the other Demo ex-Senators are doing.
And when that happens, don’t you suppose that Demos in Arizona or Demos anywhere really will be looking at their options much differently than they are now? And that change in perspective will work substantially to the benefit of Miss Sinema?Report
Agreed.
Although to be fair for the current filibuster we’d have 24 GOP senators each spending an hour talking.Report
You are assuming that your side will always hold the Presidency. If Trump were still in office, and without the Pandemic he’d have cruised to victory, you wouldn’t be insisting that a 50-50 Senate meant whatever the President wanted.Report
I’m not insisting its whatever the President wants. I’m insisting its about what those 41 million people sent their democratic senators to do. And they were sent to make a series of Democratic ideas come to fruition. Some of those the president wants. Some he doesn’t.
Though I note that the Republican Senate under McConnel and Trump gave him what he wanted routinely.Report
No, it’s not the 41 million people’s call. That’s the point I’m trying to make below. There’s path dependence. Every candidate and vote took place in the system that exists. You can’t claim that a parliamentary system would have yielded the result you want, because a thousand things would have happened differently.Report
Here’s what I’m claiming – Senate Democrats have the majority in the Senate. Senate Democrats collectively represent 41 million more Americans than Senate Republicans. Claims that Senate Democrats support of or votes on bills don’t represent the majority of the American people is a falsehood.Report
You’re saying more than that. You’re saying that, despite the results of the specific elections, the Democrats should get their way based on the 41 million voters.Report
They have the majority in the senate and because of how many people they represent. Last I checked that means something.
Tell me – why do you think they shouldn’t given these circumstances? because I recall a lot of being told that Senate Republicans should get their way under Mr. Trump when they had a majority the first two years of his presidency. And I recall a lot of Senate Republicans actually getting their way . . ..Report
You keep saying the Ds have a majority in the Senate. But they don’t. It’s 50-50. What they have is a tie-breaker in the President of the Senate. And Kamala has already cast a tie-breaking vote more than any other VP in recent memory (15 times in just 12 months).
As you know, our bi-cameral system was set up to prevent the tyranny of the majority. You can support that feature or not, but advocating that Ds have some sort of mandate in this instance is as incorrect as it irrelevant.
As cynical as I am at times, I have to believe a bi-partisan attempt to tackle voting rights & voting security could have been hammered out in a somewhat functional Senate. Perhaps that is naive, but this partisan bill never had a chance, and that’s entirely on the Ds.Report
I agree we could have hammered out an agreement in a somewhat functional senate. We haven’t had one since early in the Obama years if not before because even the Republicans decided they didn’t want to govern, they only wanted to obstruct. During their majority under Trump they didn’t both to reach across the aisle, though Democrats did vote with them on a number of occasions.Report
Thing is, you haven’t been talking about them deserving a victory in the Senate based on the number of Democratic senators; you’ve been talking about it based on the number of Democratic votes.Report
Hold on a second… there aren’t 50 votes for BBB or 50 votes for the Voting reforms.
The Dems have a majority but not agreement on what to do with it. This is a pretty big issue you’re eliding here.
This is further exacerbated by the 60 votes needed for cloture, sure, but I feel we’re just not being entirely accurate about why these bills are not passing … and not representing this accurately in the Media (and on twitter) isn’t helping the Dems craft a strategy. I’d go so far as to say it’s creating an anti-strategy that’s preventing Dem wins.Report
The GOP didn’t have the super majority that you’re insisting a 50+ Senate should be.
The expectation should be that removing guide rails wouldn’t make Trump less dangerous.
And yes, Mitch had the opportunity and ability to get rid of the Filibuster then but didn’t, because he understood that he would be giving that power to his opponents.Report
I’m not sure what “cultural cramdown” is even supposed to mean.Report
What do you think of Texas’s abortion law?Report
An attempt by the majority to strip basic human rights from the minority.
Is this what you guys mean by “cultural cramdown”?
If that’s so, why not just say that the Voting Rights Act was an attempt to strip basic human rights from the minority?
Because you would sound silly, I think.
Better to invent a new word that disguises its meaning.Report
Got the concept down, then? Good.
Now you just have to figure out how to distinguish when they do it (“stripping basic human rights from the minority!”) from when you do it (“ensuring just and equitable outcomes for the largest amount of people”).Report
Easy!
“Outlawing abortion strips human rights from women.”
“Expanding voting rights strips, um, someone of human rights.”
I can distinguish between these two statements.Report
Sure. You just have to define the infant away. There’s nothing to balance if you do that. Like, if you don’t even *SEE* it, you can’t comprehend how someone else sees anybody there but the birthing person.Report
Wow, you’re right.
Lets eliminate the first part and what are we left with?
“Expanding voting rights strips , um, someone of human rights.”
The iron logic of this sentence has me in its crushing grip.Report
It’s like the whole thing about whether noncitizens should be allowed to vote.
Does weakening the wall around who is allowed to vote in the service of “expanding voting rights”, strip citizens of voting rights through dilution?
I mean, if the only thing you see is “expanding voting rights”, you probably have no idea that citizens might have grounds for not wanting their votes diluted other than selfishness.
Not being able to comprehend why or how someone might come to a different conclusion isn’t a strength, Chip. It’s a weakness.Report
legal non-citizens who receive local services and pay local taxes but are denied the right to participating how those resources are allocated would seem to be being denied a human right no?Report
I absolutely see the argument that people who pay bills in this country should be able to vote for politicians. Absolutely.
I don’t agree with it, mind… but I don’t think you have to be crazy to agree with it.Report
So, you’d be alright with Russia sending thousands of people to America, in order to interfere with a specific election? (This is not as much of a hypothetical as you’d think.)
Think this one through, before you say “This is a good idea.”Report
Which part of the filibustered bill allows noncitizens to vote?Report
Chip, we’ve gone from the question (*YOUR* question) of how expanding voters rights could strip someone else of their own to this particular filibustered bill.
But you want to know what’s really weird about this filibustered bill?
I don’t think it would have passed.
I certainly understand being upset about a bill that would have passed being filibustered, I don’t understand being upset about a bill that wouldn’t have passed being filibustered.Report
But to answer your most recent question, it doesn’t.
Is this a flaw in this most recent bill, do you think?Report
So if we disregard the entirely irrelevant issue you brought up, we are left with the original “Expanding voting rights strips, um, someone of human rights”, which is every bit as silly as it sounds.Report
Erm, no Chip. It deals with the question of “who should be able to vote on this?”
If we add people who should not be able to vote on this to the vote rolls, then we’re in a place where we are violating (though perhaps not “stripping”) the voting rights of the people who should be able to vote on it.
And that’s without getting into the issue of people voting on things that should be put up for a vote in the first place. (For example, Prop 8. Is the supreme court overturning a democratically voted-upon election issue stripping the voters of their rights? BUT MUH DEMOCRACY!!!!)
There are tradeoffs to what you are proposing. The fact that you do not see them is not a strength of your position. It is a weakness.Report
Which part of the filibustered bill “adds people who should not be able to vote to the vote rolls”?Report
I’m unable to read it at this moment but I know that Michael Cain has noted some of the concerns with the differences between the interests of the Northeast with the interests of the Western states.
(It’s probably some of the stuff that is of far more interest to the Senate than the House, though.)Report
What he noted was in terms of management of elections – meaning what form ballots took, how counties managed distribution, collection and counting of ballots.
That has zero to do with who is or is not voting. Ad here’s a hint – the filibustered bill doesn’t have any language on who could vote, other then trying to expand HOW people register.Report
That has zero to do with who is or is not voting.
I would phrase that slightly differently, that it has zero to do with who is allowed to vote or not. There are all sorts of decisions that can be made about distribution and collection of ballots that very much affect who is voting in practice. Much of the filibustered bills’ language is intended to limit state legislatures and election officials from making decisions with that kind of in-practice effect.Report
So, there aren’t any parts that are stripping human rights from anybody?
So why are they filibustering it, if the filibuster is to defend minority rights?Report
Looking over the bill…
Different states have different opinions on whether Ex-cons can vote.
Same-day registration without being able to require a photo id seems a little weird.
Redistricting is traditionally a state level thing.Report
It would be nice to regularize #1. “My company wants to transfer me with a promotion, but if I accept it I won’t be able to vote.”
From memory, so somewhat suspect, but in the case of #2 isn’t the requirement that the voter be allowed to cast a provisional ballot?
Most states do fine on redistricting. A few are egregious about letting the sitting legislators choose their new districts. There are no guaranteed cures. Despite adding an eighth district, Colorado’s shiny new Congressional redistricting committee seems to have bent over backwards to ensure each existing Rep lived in the same district they do now, and made those districts more favorable to the incumbent’s party.Report
When you picture a one-size-fits-all solution for an issue, picture something other than “what I want will become the norm”.
After it’s federal, politicians virtue signal and make the standard rule the opposite.Report
So, the objections are mild and easily amenable to some haggling and compromise.
Which makes their argument for a filibuster preposterous.Report
I believe the filibuster relaxation would be applied to both of the election bills. I may be wrong about that. One of the bills can be haggled over. The other one, at least every version up to now, dictates large complicated changes in how the states conduct federal elections.
Eg — and again, this applies to previous versions I’ve read, and maybe they’ve stripped the current version way down — New York’s absentee ballot system gets tossed and they have to install what is almost a complete contemporary vote by mail capability. It stops short by only requiring a permanent no-excuse mail ballot list, rather than sending a mail ballot to all registered voters. Risk-limiting audit requirements apply to the whole system, so the mail and in-person counting systems have to be compatible.
TTBOMK, the only state that currently runs under risk-limiting audits for all the state-wide general elections is Colorado. It took years to get there. Setting things up for small counties that can’t afford the hardware and software to automate was painful.Report
Your objections are reasonable and well stated and wholly different than the Republican party’s stance.
Their stance total and implacable obstruction in furtherance of chaos.Report
Hit “Report” by accident, so the editors can ignore it.
The only thing I can add is that prior to Shelby County, Congressional Republicans almost universally believed that the optics of failing to renew the Voting Rights Act were so terrible it couldn’t be risked. Post Shelby, well, they don’t have to actually vote against it except procedurally.
Note the VRA never dictated voting systems on the scale of HR1/S1.Report
Trump proved that there are no “optics” so terrible that Republicans will be shamed.
Mock a disabled person?
The Republicans will roar with laughter.
Sneer at a Gold Star family?
Thunderous applause from Republicans!
Brag about groping women?
Chuckles and smirking of Republicans all around.
Boast of trying to pressure a foreign government to produce dirt on an opponent?
Republicans will cheer at the cleverness.
Concoct a preposterous lie so as to destroy democracy?
Republicans will embrace it feverishly!
The past few years have been a demonstration of every Arendt quote.Report
Better double down on shaming.Report
The vast chorus of people insisting “I’m not a Republican!. Stop calling me a Republican!” shows that shaming is effective.Report
Do they stop voting for Republicans?Report
Yes, many do. Or sit home. Or vote third party.Report
Doubling down works, I guess.
Your self-evident moral authority shines through and people look forward to joining up. Or sitting home. Or voting third party.
I bet you’re already looking forward to November!Report
You’re voting third party again, right?Report
Fifth and sixth party. You’ve probably never heard of the people I vote for.
But I’m not someone who has ever voted Republican in the first place.
I’m still registered Democrat from when I first registered when I was 18.
So I’m not really an example of a moral victory.Report
I guess will see in NovemberReport
What it actually shows is the assumption that anyone who disagrees with a partisan leftist narrative is..
[checks notes]
A white supremacist.Report
Including the poor misled black folks!
And the Mexicans lining up to vote for Donald Trump!Report
From Larry Elder to the Barrio. it’s a big tent…
White Supremacy has never been more inclusive!Report
Or, as a Republican Senator might put it, the Republican Party has a lot of diversity- It has Black people, and Americans!Report
Look at the LatinX numbers and you may want to include them as well.Report
I fully expect the Asians and Hispanics will be “White” in a few decades. It happened to the Irish and the Polish, it will happen again.Report
There you go. Na.zi accusations are starting to look old and stale, ergo the shift.Report
Completely off topic, but hooray! Someone remembered the bad word list that dumps comments into moderation. I am so pleased!Report
If you use it every now and then then yes. If every GOP president faces Na.zi accusations, then not so much.
I remember back when Trump was running for office a Team Blue reporter had to say there was nothing he could say about Trump that he hadn’t already said about Romney and Bush.Report
Just to be clear, I’m not playing “Armchair Political Consultant” or proposing One Weird Trick to sway votes.
I just recited a simple list of historical facts, of what Trump did and how the Republican voting base reacted.
It wasn’t sly trickery or wordplay, just simple truthful statements.
Although I think shaming can be effective, it only works on those who are capable feeling shame.
But even when it doesn’t move votes, speaking the truth clearly and loudly is always a good idea.Report
Don’t you know, heaping more shame upon the shameless is the only way to, you know, do something.
Of course, that something is basically just letting yourself and your contemporaries feel better, or smug, etc; but it doesn’t actually do anything to the shameless. Or the people who actively support them (who also are without shame). Or the people who might have some measure of shame, but who have managed to compartmentalize that shame when it comes to politics/politicians/anyone of elite status who regularly gets excused for their shameful behavior.Report
So since heaping shame isn’t working, and we can’t get bills passed because only Democrats have agency, what would you suggest? Just acquiesce in the slide to white male conservative authoritarianism?Report
Are those the two options?
1. Shaming
2. Acquiescence
There are third and fourth and fifth ways. I’ll grant that they aren’t as likely to get endorphins.Report
Do tell.Report
Horse trading?
You know the thing where your opening bid is to ask for the moon and then negotiate down to what you really wanted in the first place?
Do that. “Okay, our opening bid was high. What’s your counter-offer?”
One thing that you could use for your leverage is the popularity of your ideas with the American People. You’re appealing to democracy, right? Point to the polls! “LOOK! WE’RE POPULAR!”, you can say. “This is what they want! Get on board!”Report
Democrats have been pointing to the polls. Republicans have made no counter offers. They have just said no. Repeatedly. Since Obama was elected. Manchin tried to negotiate in a watered down voting bill but when it came time to vote on it, the republicans he had negotiated with balked and filibustered.
How do you horse trade with that?Report
Maybe by breaking out smaller chunks of the BBB bill.
Maybe not 100% of it is achievable? Well, that’s asking for the moon. What’s the 70% of it that you want? Or, more importantly, that Manchin wants? Hell, maybe throw something in there for Maine.
As for polling, here’s Jack Schaefer explaining that Biden’s polls placing him tied with Trump the week of January 6th is a great time to get on board the Biden train because Biden can only go up from here.Report
BBB’s purpose is to feed money to the rich (and unprosecutable). That’s not popular, so there’s tons of “distractions” that play better to the people who like fluffy bunnies and little babies.
You should always be suspicious when the Democrats start going all “little baby” in the media.Report
The individual elements of BBB poll between 60 and 70% support, with Republicans in that mix. Manchin was allowed by Democrats to whittle the $3 Trillion bill down to his favorite $1.8T except for the Childcare tax credit. He walked away, and had no Republican co-sponsors for his effort.
Republicans keep saying they don’t want to negotiate and then don’t negotiate. They have told us clearly who they are and what they will do. Over and Over. We believe them You don’t seem to. Why is that?Report
Same for Manchin, apparently.
Was the whole “let’s give Manchin everything?” option ever on the table?
Is it more important to lose the whole loaf than to get Manchin’s vote on half of it?
Because where we seem to be right now is that the BBB ain’t gonna pass.
Maybe we’ll have a blue wave in November, though, and we can revisit it.Report
I’ll try this one more time – Democrats allowed Manchin to rewrite the BBB in his liking, save for keeping the childcare tax credit. He got nearly everything he asked for. No Republican signed on to support his version. And then after getting all the power, all the press and all the deference he walked away from his own proposal. He walked away. Democrats didn’t balk. They didn’t tell him no. He walked away.
You can’t negotiate that away, nor can you negotiate with Republicans who don’t want to.Report
I see someone do that and I think either A) we are being lied to about what actually went down; or B) we are ignorant of additional information that alters the calculus.Report
Given the MSM’s unwillingness to ask probing questions that might ruin their ability to attend high society cocktail parties in DC, I have no doubt that there is some portion of this in play. Until additional information comes out, all I have to go on (as do you and Jaybird) is what is reported.Report
As long as you keep that nugget in the back of your mind…Report
So he didn’t get everything he asked for and chose to walk away instead?
Could I spin that as “they didn’t give him everything he asked for and then he walked away”?
If you’re familiar with Game Theory at all, have you ever heard of the Ultimatum Game? It’s an important concept.
Here’s the gist. You’ve got the researcher and you’ve got two people. The researcher gives Person A $10 and says that Person A needs to offer Person B a percentage of the $10. It can be half, it can be a penny. Hell, it can be $8.
Person B can then choose to decline. If Person B declines, Person A does not get the $10 to split up.
Whenever you see this sort of thing in the real world, people seem flabbergasted that the rules work in that way. “But Person B *SHOULD* have accepted the offer! Getting something instead of nothing is good! It’s free money!”
But Person B has the ability to decline.
I appreciate that you offered Manchin almost everything he said he wanted. I appreciate that you feel that it should have been a good deal for him.
But he said what his price was and it seems to me that Dem leadership refused to pay it.
And he declined.Report
The new plan for BBB is to have Manchin write it.
It’s being presented as though it’s a new idea that they haven’t tried.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/590698-democrats-hope-to-salvage-bidens-agenda-on-manchins-termsReport
Modern monetary theorists don’t want to hear it, but most regular folk connect spending and inflation.
The timing of unprecedented spending followed by unprecedented inflation might be just a coincidence, but it sure as hell doesn’t look that way to most people.
Manchin knows this.
And while both party’s are Keynesian, there has to be some trepidation among even the truest believers before dumping another Trillion or two into the money supply at this point.
I have to believe that if inflation were in check Manchin would have struck a deal.Report
True enough – not unlike the President being responsible for gas price increases in an industry he doesn’t control. Regular folks go there because both left, center and right leaning media tell them to go there, and no one of prominence tells them otherwise.Report
Spending other people’s money polls well? Do tell.
What’s the total price tag again? If it can be compared to the Defense Department, then a self serving “poll” isn’t enough, you need to have masses of people screaming for it.Report
The price tag of Manchin’s version of BBB was $1.8 Trillion over 10 years. The price tag of Biden’s proposal was $3.5T. The current Defense Appropriation for a single year is $770B. Which translates into $7.7 Trillion over ten years. Interestingly, the ten year figure BBB is less then the $2 T we spent in Afghanistan.
Let’s also note that the appropriation to the Pentagon is both MORE then what Biden requested, and something the “masses of people” are not actually screaming for. Masses are screaming for solutions to their economic, educational and environmental problems – which BBB does.
Oh, and its not “other people’s money.” Its all our money. And if you want me to support spending at that level on Defense, I want you to support spending at that level on American citizens. Deal?Report
Really down in the weeds, but has anyone offered Manchin a bill where even a significant portion of his caveats, provisos, and quid pro quos on the green parts have been met? AIUI, he wants a whole lot more money for carbon capture than offered, maintenance of tax benefits for fossil fuels, no incentives for EVs, and a guarantee from Schumer that all bills that touch on energy at all must pass through Manchin’s committee for markup/revision/whatever you want to call it.
Basically, not only spending less, but he wants it to be a lot less green.Report
Pointing out that BBB was priced at only half of the Defense Department proves my point, which was “If it can be compared to the Defense Department”.
It’s not a rounding error compared to Defense, it’s a new entitlement that’s roughly the same as fighting a war we’re never going to get rid of.
And if we get rid of some of the smoke and mirrors accounting, we’ll find out free money is more popular than expected and BBB is more expensive than expected.
So we’re not spending anything “on American citizens” right now?
Far as I can tell, we are. Defense spending continues to go down as a percentage of the GDP, spending on entitlements continues to go up.
How about this, take some of the masses of money we’re all ready spending on American citizens and redirect it. Surely BBB is more important than something we’re already doing? Or if it’s not more important, maybe that says something?Report
Convince the bulk of American people (rather than just Team Blue) that we have a problem.
Weirdly the system seems to work when that happens.Report
No idea, I just know that attempting to shame people only works if that shame has cachet with the person being shamed, or their community.
If the community has decided that whatever you are attempting to leverage shame against is A-OK, then at best, it falls flat, and at worst, it’s a rallying cry and causes them to dig in.
I mean, FFS, look at Pride Parades. A big chunk of that is a public display of “You will not shame us!”.
Once the power of shame is lost, getting that genie back in the bottle is no easy feat.
I think the GOP is stupid for playing that game just to back Trump, and I think in the long run, it will bite them in the a$$, but in this moment, it has very little power.Report
Smuggery and self-righteousness are tools for narcissists to feel better about themselves.
Anyone championing these traits is your enemy.
Look for the person with facts, with arguments, or failing all that, the willingness to listen, and admit their own ignorance.Report
The problems the bill is trying to “fix” are mild. We don’t have vast numbers of people who are disenfranchised.
This bill is mostly Team Blue virtue signaling and Team Red preventing them from doing so.
Which makes the arguments for getting rid of the filibuster for it somewhat preposterous.
If Team Blue really wants to make good access to voting a thing, they can start with New York and so on.Report
Some people wanna believe in miracles. I’m a bit more nuts and bolts than that. Behind every miracle is someone pulling strings.
de Blasio worked with Trump, therefore he was “not a team player” and needed to go.
Personally, I believe the job of a mayor is explicitly “Don’t let the city burn.” I don’t care if he has to work with Uncle Joe to do so.Report
1) Mitch McConnell will happily change Senate rules – including the filibuster – when it suits him as majority leader. If Manchin and Sinema really wanted to protect the rights of the minority party for when Democrats go back to that position, they have failed.
2) Given that Manchin couldn’t get Republican support for his prior watered down version of these bills, I’m not what he thinks will be gained by “negotiating” separate packages composed of individual portions of each bill. Its a fools errand doomed to fail because it’s designed to run out the clock, not make substantive progress.
3) Mitch McConnell knows that voting to change the ECA won’t impact the significant voting restrictions imposed in red states over the last year, so he’s comfortable backing it.
4) Republicans playing of the long game at all levels including states is still beating democrats.
5) We as a nation are ill served by all of this, but until the people take to the actual streets, I see no way out. We will not – beginning this year – be allowed to vote our way out of this debacle.Report
Ah! I see! You believe that without this legislative action, all elections are NULL And VOID, if not fraudulent.
Nevermind your credulous assertions (I doubt you do voting analysis for a living) that the Democrats have more votes than the Republicans.
I believe the autists. They’re the only people who care enough about numbers. When they start showing up in droves, giving sworn testimony… you got a major problem.Report
The States represented by Democrats in the Senate contain 41 million more people then the states represented by Republicans. That’s from the Census Bureau – based on the counts done under President Trump. And I don’t believe that subsequent elections will all be null and void. I do believe – because I read – that the laws passed in a number of red states are designed to lower voter turnouts through a variety of means, and many of those laws allow republican state officials to overturn the will of the voters in their states on flimsy, evidence free grounds.Report
Do you believe it is right to overturn elections? Would you put your own right to vote in jeopardy in order to overturn an election?
Can we please listen to the nonpartisan folks who have gotten elections overturned?
Turns out they know a lot more about vote-rigging than you do. After all, how many people have you sent to prison for trying to rig a vote?Report
No, I don’t believe its moral or ethical to overturn elections, especially when there’s no evidence of fraud or any othe rillegality.Report
… you don’t? How many elections in this country do you figure there have been evidence of fraud or other illegality?
The correct answer is NOT zero. Just ask WV.Report
Going all the way back to 1982, the Heritage Foundation documents 1,340 incidents of in person voter fraud or fraudulent registrations. That’s roughly 34 incidents per year. that’s not even statistically significant, much something that needs to result in overturning an election.
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraudReport
So, we have you disagreeing with the courts in overturning an election? When fraud was in fact presented and proven, to the court’s satisfaction?Report
Wait, an overturned election is counted as one incident.
“Not Even Statistically Significant” — with the Inquirer finding at least 40 cases of improper voting within one ward…. (and, for the record, this is not “in person voter fraud or fraudulent registrations” — this has to do with absentee ballots).
Please do more than read the headlines.
Also no mention of the “trunk full of ballots” mysteriously discovered after the counting was done, that managed to swing an election in Wisconsin (found in one of Scottie Walker’s flunkie’s cars).Report
I didn’t mention any of those things because every time they have been presented to the courts they have been turned away as invalid and unsubstantiated.Report
So, you can’t read, and/or are lying to me?
We have an overturned election in my state, overturned by the courts, within the time period the Heritage database references.
It is counted as one instance. You are telling a falsehood when you say otherwise.
Furthermore, there were presumably over 300 cases of ballots being fraudulently submitted, in order for the court to overturn the election.Report
What is this election?Report
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110408/01441913818/14000-unsaved-votes-suddenly-found-wisconsin.shtml
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-02-20-1994051024-story.htmlReport
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-02-20-1994051024-story.htmlReport
I’ll assume you live in PA. Judge Newcomer seems like a fair arbiter, based on his Wikipedia entry.
I’ll agree that electoral shenanigans are far more likely in local elections just because of the relatively small number of voters. Swinging a national election via fraud is all but impossible.Report
I guess someone better tell the Senate that they’re supposed to be the House.Report
It’s not, in that each state carries equal weight. It’s not supposed to be a House of Lords.Report
I was pushing back on this:
Which I have yet to say about the Senate. I merely say – which is true – that the 50 Democrats represent more people in this us, so their proposals are not in fact counter majoritarian.Report
Maybe that’s what you were replying to the first time you brought up the 41 million stat. I don’t think it was the second time. But brining up the stat repeatedly indicates that you’re trying to muddy the waters. Tell me, did you ever point out that Trump won with less than 50% of the vote? Did you do so to undermine the validity of his win?Report
I have repeatedly pointed out that Trump won in 2016 with fewer popular votes geographically distributed to allow him to win the EC. I’ve never said his win was invalid. Frustrating, sure. But he won.
That’s way different then the newly minted state laws that say state legislatures can overturn an election certified by the state election official on the basis of … nothing.Report
It seems like your intent is to undermine the legitimacy of elections.Report
Donald Trump was legitimately elected president in 2016. Joe Biden was legitimately elected President in 2020. Donald Trump and most of the Republican Party continues to publicly lie about the legitimacy of that election.
Democrats in the Senate were legitimately elected to represent 41 million more Americans then Republicans.
And in response to to all this Republican legislatures are trying by passing laws, to keep that from happening regardless of what the voters actually do.
I’m not the one calling valid elections into question.Report
Not directly, because that would require addressing specific laws that weren’t broken. Instead, you’re suggesting that there was something wrong with the elections whose results you don’t like. Much more undermining.Report
no I’m not nor was I. The election of Mr. Trump was free and fair. In fact I have repeatedly asserted that Sec. Clinton’s staff made a lot of errors in the final weeks of the campaign that led to the outcome we have. No matter whether or not I liked him or his policies, he was president legally and validly for four years. I haven’t questioned that, nor do I intend to. Because its not a thing.
I do believe that the Electoral college not being aligned to the popular vote is a problem. But that problem exists independent of his election, and it doesn’t mean his election wasn’t valid.Report
MattY has an interesting post about the whole electoral reform thing.
Here’s where the essay starts getting really interesting and gets interestinger from there:
Report
Both Manchin and Sinema have had numerous on eon one discussions with he President on this and the BBB. Neither of them budged. And as I note elsewhere, ECA “reform” doesn’t address the real threats to voting rights in the states. It’s in the nice to do but not necessary to do category. Plus I remain unconvinced that there’s enough Republican Senatorial support to get over the 60 vote hurdle. Manchin spent what – 3 months, 4 months – supposedly negotiating an alternate voting rights bill across the aisle and couldn’t get them to vote for it. This won’t change that.Report
edit: crossing threads too much. Happy to revisit BBB elsewhere if helpful.Report
No worries.Report
Part of the issue here though is the premise that people agree that what’s going on at the state level regarding registration, vote by mail, drop boxes, etc. is a real threat. States are all over the map on it in ways that strongly suggest even
a significant number of Democrats don’t believe the rhetoric. To take the obvious example, even with Georgia’s much maligned new rules, you could make an argument that it’s still more convenient to vote there than a number of ‘blue’ states. Obviously the Republicans wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t think it helped them (I’ve come to strongly doubt it actually does but ymmv), but cynical and wrongheaded does not equal existential crisis.
The ECA situation on the other hand really does open the door for a kind of repeat 1/6 where a more nihilistic VP than Mike Pence destabilizes the entire country. Now if the GOP is bluffing then fine, don’t waste time, but if not then there is a duty to engage with them, at least if the Democrats are actually the party they say they are.Report
Texas is having an “unusual” high rate of vote by mail applications being returned, and county elections officials can’t tell them how to fix problems without being potentially prosecuted under the new laws there. Add that to the shortened time frame to apply for an absentee ballot, and Texas already highly restrictive rules on who can get an absentee ballot, and yeah I think what’s happening at the state level is already a problem.
The ECA situation only come into play if these sort of laws – and the hyperpartisan redistricting keep up. Take this stuff off the table, including the gerrymandering, through federal regulations, and what was attempted by Republicans last election would be harder to even plan.
That aside, I stand by my assertion that McConnell is just suing the ECA to run the table. He hasn’t introduced legislation, he hasn’t handed legislation to Schumer to introduce, and he didn’t bring it up until the current bill looked like it would fail. Its not a serious offer.Report
What’s Unusual? Last I checked, it was around a 4% ballot reject rate for absentee ballots. (This was before last presidential, where the “reject” rate was well under 1%).
Now, you can say “there’s more people doing it” or you can say “Nobody was checking very well” or you can say “there was better education.”
You are NOT supposed to be coaching people as to who to vote for. If they cannot read the instructions, then we have a problem, I suppose — but literacy rates in America are sky-high. Much better than in the 1970’s.Report
This isn’t about ballots – its about requesting them. The county Houston is in has a 50% rejection rate for requests. The county Austin is in has over a 20% rejection rate. There are more. All because the rules about what can and cannot go on the requests has changed AND the county election officials are now barred from helping.Report
Voting by mail as a method of casting ballots is not sacrosanct. That’s especially the case in jurisdictions with widespread early in person voting. Had there not been a pandemic necessitating it in parts of the country where it was never the norm this would not even be an issue. And if polls are to be believed it still isn’t an important issue among Democratic constituencies. Normally I wouldn’t care that much but I think people see this as the moving target it is, not some kind of principle.
Ensuring the peaceful transfer of power on the other hand is. That would be true if no excuse vote by mail was ubiquitous or if it went back to pre-2020 norms.Report
There are democratic arguments against Vote by Mail. I’ve made them here tongue-in-cheek as the Patriarchy LOVES vote by mail. But seriously, in person voting is a guaranty of protection to vote your conscience… vote-by-mail can/does/ and has offered opportunities for people to vote how other people want them to – and to provide the receipts.
It might be worth the trade-off… but elevating Vote-by-Mail as impenetrably pro-democracy — in fact, the ONLY position one could have? That’s just wrong.Report
I’ve said before that I hate this issue because I don’t think anyone really comes at it from a place of good faith. That includes the phantom fraud allegations as much as remaking no excuse vote by mail, something that was not remotely on anyone’s radar at this time 2 years ago, into a litmus test moral imperative.
And to make sure Michael Cain doesn’t hunt me down and kill me, I’m not worried about western states that have done it this way since pioneer times. But states where up until covid it was primarily the domain of military personnel and ex-pats? Well reasonable people can differ on that and should be able to without being called Bull Connor or whatever.Report
“Texas is having an “unusual” high rate of vote by mail applications being returned, and county elections officials can’t tell them how to fix problems without being potentially prosecuted under the new laws there
Want more irony? Vote by mail in Texas is allowed so sparingly that the primary people being rejected here are Republicans.
Only the following can vote by mail in Texas — and this is not NEW, this is how it’s always been:
be 65 years or older; <— LARGEST GROUP BY FAR
be sick or disabled; <– SECOND LARGEST, HEAVY OVERLAP WITH 65+
be out of the county on election day and during the period for early voting by personal appearance; <– HARDLY ANYONE
be expected to give birth within three weeks before or after Election Day; <–HARDLY ANYONE
be confined in jail, but otherwise eligible. <– HARDLY ANYONE. Felons can't vote, so you're talking people with no felony record who are in jail pending trial who aren't out on bail, and everyone's on bail right now except…multiple felons.
So yeah, Texas' is screwing it's own Boomer Republicans here because the state GOP was upset that several metro areas wanted to expand vote-by-mail to cover more people during COVID, so they weren't all standing in line breathing on each other in 2020.Report
And this is why I’ve learned to not listen to anything Phillip says.
You may be prone to groupthink, but at least you analyze things.Report
Regardless of who its impacting, its still a bad thing. And just because it currently impacts republicans there’s no reason it will remain such.Report
That’s not why you don’t listen to Phillip, and we all know it.
But bye now!Report
One of the stupider beliefs of the Republican party is that turn out necessarily hurts them.Report
Yeah, I don’t know quite how to say this, but you’re wrong about this.
Like, Democrats in Georgia know exactly what’s going on, and the reason the rules were much maligned is how _specific_ they were to the voter-supression con that Republicans in Georiga have been doing for decades, specifically, voting is a 4-8 hour process for urban voters, a 30 minute process for suburban voters, and a 5 minute process for rural voters.
That’s why much talk was made over the ‘providing water’ part of the law, which is something that looks like utter nonsense to anyone outside this state, but Democrats in Georgia understand it _perfectly_…because they have set up giant relay teams to actually feed and water urban voters as they stand in the goddamn lines that the Republicans have deliberately set up. (1)
I don’t know if Democrats in _other_ places understand this, but Democrats in Georgia really do.
1) And then blame on Democrats in cities mismanaging elections…although that nonsense stopped working _this_ election, where the lines magically all vanished because only half the people voted…which proved that the solution was literally just ‘have twice as many workers and machines doing this per voter’, an incredibly obvious solution and what Democrats had asked for this entire time.Report
As I wrote to Oscar above, I think the filibuster is dead in the water. It is only a matter of when at this point. It will happen when Democrats have enough of a majority to tell Manchin and Sinema to stuff it on the issue and /or the Republicans have a trifecta with a slim majority in the Senate.
Before last night, there was a lot of gossip that it was more than Sinema and Manchin that opposed filibuster elimination/reform. This is clearly not true, at least for voting rights. Sinema’s nonsense on BBB and voting rights have basically made it a mandatory position for any would be Democratic Senator to support filibuster elimination/reform. No future would be Democratic Senator will win a primary without this position.
I think both Manchin and Sinema are frustrated and delusional for very different reasons. Manchin is frustrating because he is clearly the best Democrats can do in West Virginia but he is stuck in the 1990s and a preening moralist who gets prickly when criticized. But there is no way he can find a home with the Republicans considering he voted to impeach Trump twice. But cranky backbenchers become kingmakers when the majority is slim.
Sinema is just deluded. Amy Siskind had a series of tweets last week that implied Sinema thinks she can maverick herself to the Presidency with this position. This is clearly nuts as the chances of her surviving a Democratic primary for her senate seat are zero. She is replaceable. She is more popular with “independents” and Republicans than Democrats right now.Report
“he is more popular with “independents” and Republicans than Democrats right now.”
But not, and this is key, popular enough for them to vote for. She’s got a D after her name, after all. And if she switches it “R” she’s still a bisexual, pink/green-haired former Democrat who voted to impeach Trump.
She’s got the actual electoral appeal of roadkill at the moment, and I don’t see that improving.Report
One of the defining attributes of politicians is they have unrealistic views on their ability to get elected and their willingness to take those risks.
Here she’s betting that Trump will be a lot less popular by the time people need to vote.
RE: bisexual, pink/green-haired former Democrat who voted to impeach Trump.
The first three things I don’t care about, the 4th is a good thing.Report
I see folks here talking about the “original intent” of the Filibuster. Wonder if they will be as shocked as I was to learn it was created by accident. From Wiki:
In 1789, the first U.S. Senate adopted rules allowing senators to move the previous question (by simple majority vote), which meant ending debate and proceeding to a vote. But Vice President Aaron Burr argued that the previous-question motion was redundant, had only been exercised once in the preceding four years, and should be eliminated, which was done in 1806, after he left office.[7] The Senate agreed and modified its rules.[7] Because it created no alternative mechanism for terminating debate, filibusters became theoretically possible.Report
So we are all hamstrung by a mistake of omission? That’s almost funny.Report
Matthew Yglesias wrote a piece with the bullet point history that’s worth reading, even if you disagree with his conclusions about eliminating it today. I think I linked to it last time we discussed at OT.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/filibusterReport
Very interesting. Thank you. Any appeals to defend the filibuster should be based on what it offers and what it takes away. Appeals to history/tradition/etc. are not only unhelpful, but largely inaccurate.Report
RE: Created by accident
1789 puts us into “it’s brand new so lets try these rules and see if it works”. That predates the 2nd AM by two years and it’s one year after the (revised) Constitution itself was put in place.
At that time, the dominate divisive issue was slavery and how to prevent one side from forcing the other to it’s point of view.
Congress needed to enact super-majority rules for that sort of thing or the country would have fallen apart. They were going to implement something along those lines.
So it’s like saying “I found this lunch place by accident”. Without that accident the alternative wasn’t death by starvation.Report
A reminder for people who don’t know:
Robert’s Rules of Order literally exist because running meetings is a complicated and hard process to do fairly, and at the time that it was created, meetings often evolved into total nonsense and were easily subverted by the formal rules that had mostly been crafted together in random ways and often had people using procedural tricks like to refuse to allow a simple vote on a thing.
Oh, and the first edition of Robert’s Rules of Order was published in 1876, as an adaptation of the rules of the current US Congress. The RRoO people, however, are willing to patch completely idiotic rules and loopholes, so you obviously can’t fillibuster under the current rules.
RRoO also has a pretty damn clear guiding principle of meetings that they state clearly, which is pretty ironic considering the origin of RRoO : The minority has a right to force a _debate_ on a topic, and all of them are allowed to speak their mind on it for a specific amount of time. But the minority is not allowed to block a _vote_ on the thing, and pretty much any way they can block it has been patched out. All they can do is delay it, and that for only a few hours.
I’m not saying they actually should adopt RRoO, but it would be really nice if they operated under those principles!
Note Congress ignores the principle in the other way, too: It’s pretty easy for the majority to keep bills from coming to the floor, something that is also unacceptable under RRoO. This is not only true in the Senate, but in the House.Report
Oh, and what RRoO would say about the rights of the minority is: If you wish the minority to be able to stop something from being passed, you must create specific rules that require a super-majority for passage of those types of things, not mess with blocking debate or voting.
Keeping something from being debated or voted upon is a _horrendous_ way to protect a minority. Not only is it not how things should work, philosophically, but it’s not actually useful…it means a minority has to deny debate to make sure something cannot pass, which means they cannot modify that thing…which means that when the majority _do_ get a chance to pass it, it often will include nothing the minority wants, because there never was any sort of real debate on it.
Which ironically is often yelled about by the very people who support that system, like how the Republicans yelled about not having time to debate the ACA…when (In addition to being very silly and basically a lie.) all of the time limit was due to the fact Republicans would fillibuster any health care bill the second they could.
If they _couldn’t_ have done that, the Democrats would have been able to operate much slower. They had an actual majority for another term. In fact, some of the ACA changes probably would have _already_ happened, over the decades.
The current system harms pretty much everyone by making it where things have to be bunched together into a giant bill and slammed through whenever it seems like a vote might possibly, conceivably, pass. Instead of just “Let us constantly drift back to a discussion on this problem and figure out a solution a majority likes.’Report
Point of Order – The ACA underwent 72 hours of Senate Debate after 13 months of negotiations and committee hearings. There were also 147 Amendments form Republicans added to the bill in Committee. Granted, most of those were technical in nature, but they were introduced, and in most cases voted on. And the ACA was based on Heritage Foundation concepts and ideas, so it was the Minority’s idea to start with.
And yet, even with that level of inclusion, it was denounced as partisan and voted against by every member of the GOP caucus in the Senate and House.Report
Anti-majoritarian mechanisms like court review and the filibuster are completely valid exercises of minority power.
But because they are so powerful, they need to show some compelling interest.
As I referred to above, there isn’t any compelling reason for the Republican’s use of the filibuster, other than, “We don’t want to share power.”Report
To quote myself from above: Keeping something from being debated or voted upon is a _horrendous_ way to protect a minority. Not only is it not how things should work, philosophically, but it’s not actually useful…it means a minority has to deny debate to make sure something cannot pass, which means they cannot modify that thing…which means that when the majority _do_ get a chance to pass it, it often will include nothing the minority wants, because there never was any sort of real debate on it.Report
This assumes there is a golden middle.
That works for many/most situations, but not all.Report
When I was a young man, my mom explained to me that I had a gun belt and a gun and a number of bullets.
“You’ve got dozens and dozens of rabbit bullets”, she told me. “You can shoot those all day.”
“You’ve got three, maybe four, bullets that can kill a wolf”, she said. “Be careful how you use those.”
“You’ve got one bullet that can kill an elephant. It’ll kill a wolf too, if you use it on a wolf, but once you use it, you probably won’t get another one for a long time. Best to use it on an elephant”, she said.
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One of my dear friends at work complained to me the other day. The guy who was in charge of adding Jira tickets to the queues of others had dropped literally dozens and dozens of tickets in his queue. Each one of these tickets had a “high” priority.
“You can’t dump 50 tickets in my queue and say that all of them are high.”
I mean, that’s absolutely right. 1 or 2 of them will be “high” and the rest will be “medium” in theory and “low” in practice. Which of the 1 or 2 is high *REALLY*?
Well, of course, the person in charge of handing out jira tickets didn’t understand. “They’re all high!”, he asserted.Report
Welp. BBB didn’t work.
Report
The Simpsons predicted this.Report