President Biden announced with all the pomp and circumstance that he could muster, in an effort to reassure the world and himself, that “America Was Back” and that he had retaken the mantle as the world’s leader of democracy. A skillfully designed sequence of meetings was set up where he could sing to the choir, who then could, more in hope than sincerity, chant amen, led up to him admonishing the poster child of totalitarianism Vladimir Putin of Russia. He let the Russian dictator know however that two could play the game of cyber warfare by taking a page out of his predecessor’s playbook, by murmuring under his breath, “Nice little oil pipeline you’ve got there. It would be a pity if it stopped flowing”.
Having established his international democratic credentials and the fact that he could do what he had to do to protect democracy on the world stage, he returned to America to attempt to save it there. The task had become more and more difficult as the Republican Party, like so many authoritarian entities before it, was using the democratic framework to destroy it. McConnell outright said he was not around to fulfill the electorate’s decision to allow the President to set an agenda. McConnell is more than aware that Republican support for a key Biden agenda item confers legitimacy as a President for all Americans. Republican State legislatures were out there doing their bit by not allowing Democrats to vote as the whole tribe swore fealty to their cult leader Donald J. Trump. As more and more was uncovered of his Presidential mob - type operation the more the party clung to his leadership.
The Republican Party in effect have sanctioned an unlawful insurrection and were now deserting democracy as it is understood in the Western World. They were going to have elections just like Russia and Iran but unlike them they were going to allow any one to stand. Instead they were going to limit who could vote and they would designate to themselves the right to change the election result if the outcome wasn’t what they wished for. They were not even prepared to debate the issue. Not one single Senate Republican voted to allow the For The People Voting Bill to be debated. They did the latter with the full knowledge that they would have been able to vote on an amendment which had accommodated several of their objections to the original act. The amendment had arisen out of an attempt to create bipartisanship.
However Biden had one further major piece of legislation that Republicans could not just blindside - the infrastructure Bill. It would hard to go back to their constituencies and argue that the bridge collapsed because fixing it up supported socialism. Biden was continually negotiating in private on portions of the Infrastructure Bill that Republicans could support. If Biden succeeded in this endeavor he would enhance the Democrats chances in the midterms immensely.
BIDEN’S PROBLEMS WITH THE DEMOCRATS AND REALITY
Biden’s Democratic Party response to GOP anarchy was to play by the rules. At least the rules that had been forsaken by the Republicans a long time ago. The latter just did what they liked. Biden’s problem was that he was working with a majority of one in the Senate where the filibuster could be invoked which meant he needed sixty votes on non financial legislation. Biden was also being pressured by the left. Alexandria Occassio - Cortez claimed that they were losing patience that he wasn’t delivering and they threatened to vote against any compromise that was worked out.
The answer was to dump the filibuster. The problem was two of Biden’s Senate caucus believed that this would go against the traditions of bipartisanship that characterized American democracy. Neither Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema could comprehend that they would have no democracy at all if they hung on to this arcane Senate institution which only needed all the Democrats and Kamala Harris to throw it onto the dustbin of history. Why they have stuck to their naive position when Mitch McConnell the Republican leader of the Senate has made it quite clear that bipartisanship is out, is a mystery. There was not one Republican vote to be had on the For The People Voting Bill.
So Biden who promised bipartisanship will be blamed for not delivering bipartisanship when the Republicans point blank refused to have any. He is also being castigated by the left in his party for not delivering on his promises. He has to be tempted to go back to Geneva and diss Putin and Belarus for their authoritarianism. But he can handle it all especially if he can get his infrastructure Bill through with some bipartisan support.
WHAT ABOUT THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE? - IT IS THE INFRASTRUCTURE BILL STUPID
Manchin has produced an amended For the People Voting Bill that has got the backing of Stacy Adams, the Georgian marvel, who is the main mover and shaker in mobilizing the African American vote. She nearly won the Georgian Governorship and masterminded the surprising Senate victories of two Democrats to the Senate. She has backed Manchin’s plan. So has Barack Obama. Manchin has to be persuaded to dump the filibuster so his hard earned effort to accommodate the Republicans, who subsequently deserted him, can bare fruit. Krysten Sinema has to become disabused that hanging on to an antiquated ritual in the Senate is not more important than democracy. However in the meantime life must carry on. The action to gain support for the Voting Bill has to be taken to the community. This will take time and may not happen so the battle has to continue on other fronts.
Biden has done his thing and spoken to the two holdouts who at least voted fo bring the issue to the floor. His number one priority is to get the Democrats to hold the legislature in the midterms. He has to decide where he is going to direct his energies. Being practical he has concentrated on the infrastructure bill. That has overwhelming public support and he can get it through the Senate with the 50 Democrats and Kamala Harris through reconciliation, as it involves finance.
Biden needs and has finally got bipartisan support for sections of it. The understanding is that Manchin and Sinema will buy into the rest which includes child care and climate change support and the Democrats will pass that by reconciliation. He has been working on this deal since the get go. He has been following the principle that you don’t negotiate in public.
The Republicans red line is that it cannot be paid for by taxing the wealthy. They prefer a gas tax for the poor. However a formula on the bipartisan component whereby the money can be obtained without taxing the poor billionaires has been agreed upon. McConnell inferred that bipartisanship would only be over his dead body. However if all this hangs together Biden can march over the McConnell corpse. That solution wouldn’t have solved the Republican States’ efforts at joining democracy Iranian and Russian style, but is very helpful to the Biden cause.
THE CONTINUED THRUST FOR THE PEOPLE VOTING BILL
One of Vice President Harris’s tasks is leading the bully pulpit on the voting legislation. She will be joined by the Senate Democratic members of the rules committee led by Amy Klobuchar. The latter will “be going on the road” to drum up constituency support that is close on eighty percent of the electorate. This illustrates that the Republican Party legislature at all levels are acting more and more in a vacuum. They only have three firm constituencies - the Trump cult, the Evangelical social conservatives and most important their corporate backers. The sectors that they are losing out on are the urban and suburban women, the youth and the independents. They have also lost a large chunk of the white blue collar workers whose defection back to the Democrats cost Trump the election. (But no one is telling him). So there is very fertile ground for educating the public on the danger to the threat to democracy.
Then there are the usual groups that have been working day in and day out to protect voting rights. There is former Attorney General Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistributing Center which has been in the forefront of the struggle against gerrymandering the voting constituencies. Other non profit organizations include End Citizens United and Let America Vote which has a thirty million dollar budget to promote the Bill. The New Georgia Project has worked for years to make the vote more inclusive. President Obama, who already has been very vocal on this issue seems set to campaign vigorously.
The new Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has signaled that the Justice Department will be looking into voting rights issues and has asked for a large sum of money to employ double the lawyers to effect this objective. Garland addressed the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department on June 11 on the issue of voting rights. He welcomed Kristen Clark, an African American jurist who became the first woman to head the Department of Civil Rights. In her confirmation she only received one Republican vote.
Garland cited legislation and Supreme Court precedents for enshrining the right of every citizen to vote. He noted that this work had begun in the 1870’s only to be thwarted by Jim Crow, The Lyndon Johnson voting rights act which sort to deligitimize against any attempt to hinder the African Americans’ right to the franchise. This was once again enshrined by the Reagan Government and by George W. Bush in 2006. The recent havoc was precipitated by a Supreme Court decision whereby they gutted the provision that certain States had to obtain permission to change their voting regulations. However Amendments fifteen, nineteen and twenty -sixth cover the right for all to vote.
To illustrate how far from orthodoxy the current Republic Party are from their original bedrock principles can be illustrated by a statement by Reagan, “The right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties and we will not see its luster diminished”. Every Republican President from Nixon to Bush 43 have reaffirmed the constitutional and legislative right for all citizens access to the franchise.
Garland stated that his department’s increase in lawyers will pursue the objective to protect the right to vote. To this effect the Civil Right Division will scrutinize new laws that seek to curb voter access. Where violations are noted there will be no hesitation in acting. Also laws which discriminate against black voters including where, for example, they have to wait in line substantially longer than their white counterparts will be vigorously litigated. Similarly the Justice Department will apply the same willingness to intervene in post - election audits. (Garland informed the meeting that the Department had already written to the Georgia legislature in connection with its current post electoral audit).
Notwithstanding the above and other endless ways Garland would enforce existing legislation and enactments he believed that it was essential for Congress to pass the Legislation on voting rights. Litigation is a slow and tedious process but Jay H. Ell has little doubt with American Democracy on the line this issue will receive the type of priority by the courts that it deserves.
MEANWHILE HOW WILL THE POLITICAL EQUATION CHANGE IN THE INTERIM
The Justice Department will begin to roll out its prosecutions of approximately five hundred defendants in the January 6 insurrection of the Capitol by a mob inspired by Trump. Key white internal terrorist groups will be exposed in open courts. The Judges hearing these cases have already made it clear that the Republican spin on this insurrection is disgraceful. The question is how much blame will be laid at the foot of Trump. Nancy Pelosi is going to appoint a select committee to investigate January 6 which will send shudders through the Trump and Republican inner circle.
Trump almost simultaneously is planning his comeback with two mega rallies and a visit to his border wall that never happened. Litigation both criminal and civil against him and his company proceeds apace. One way or another Trump will be gulping much of the oxygen in the political atmosphere, none of which is likely to swing the independents, women and doubting evangelicals back to the Republican Party who believe it or not back him and his mob operation to the hilt.
There is little doubt that the Democratic base are more inclined to back the moderate center as illustrated in recent primary elections. The latter usually favor the more extreme elements in the party and if the examples of the gubernatorial primaries in Virginia and New Jersey are anything to go by the priority is still to get rid of Trump and his party. Even in New York’s mayoral race, which has the most liberal constituency in the country and a population greater than that of thirty - eight states, the initial results point to wide spread support of moderates. It has to be remembered the outgoing mayor of New York was a Democratic Socialist and now a candidate, Maya Wiley, backed by the darling of New York’s left, Alexandria Occasio - Cortez, is struggling in the early voting. Incidentally Wiley is no flaming radical either having been in the Obama administration leaving the impression that Cortez’s backing may have been more of a hindrance than a help.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
American democracy is on the block. The Republicans have abandoned the American aspirational ideal and have in fact no policy. They unashamedly prefer not taxing billionaires in favor of adding a gas tax which would impact the poor disproportionately. They have accepted Trump as their leader and literally left policy making to him. They argue that January 6, was akin to tourists visiting the Capitol and even Pence has got over the fact that the mob had erected a gallows to hang him. They believe Trump when he says that the election was rigged. In fact they have abandoned democracy for power.
With the above as a background Mitch McConnell claims that For the People Voting Bill is the attack on American Democracy.
No - one put it better than Steve Schmidt the former Republican strategist who was John McCain’s Presidential campaign manager when he stated he had left the GOP because he had become a one issue voter. The issue was democracy.
Biden remains the guiding force to keep America on a democratic keel. He will intervene when and where he will have the best political impact. Nobody better than he knows how much easier this all becomes if he is able to persuade Manchin and Sinema to join the team. If the deals on the infrastructure bills hold with the Republicans and within the Democratic caucus, he will have gained crucial credibility with the electorate ahead of the midterms.
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