Everyone knew the Senate procedural vote Tuesday would fail. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has signaled repeatedly his opposition to the For the People Act (H.R. 1 or S. 1), and to any Democratic initiative, really. With the filibuster rule still backstopping Jim Crow with help from Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona (and other moderate Democrats for whom they provide cover), there would never be 10 Republicans willing to provide the 60-vote margin needed to have even a floor debate on the bill.
“Make no mistake about it: it will not be the last time that voting rights come up for a debate in this Senate,” Chuck Schumer said following the 50-50 vote. “We are going to explore every last one of our options. We have to. Voting rights are too important.”
CNN’s Stephen Collinson questions why President Joe Biden did not put more White House effort behind passage even though it wouldn’t have mattered if he had:
Instead of taking on Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Republicans, who showed the capacity to throttle Biden’s legislative plans at any time, the President decided to prioritize other goals, like a bipartisan infrastructure deal and other policy aims he views as closer to the American people. It’s a gamble that puts him in the position of needing a big win on infrastructure to justify his decisions.
Biden does not want to telegraph just how weak his legislative position is with a high-profile smack down, even on an issue as crucial as voting rights. And Democrats have signaled that this was a show vote, one in a series, to demonstrate Republican unwillingness to work with Democrats and to build pressure for eliminating or modifying the filibuster rule.
For his part, Biden may be gambling that “It’s the economy, stupid” is still a viable election strategy in an era of supercharged partisanship. A large-scale injection of federal money and jobs into the economy in the form of infrastructure spending could produce the oomph needed to hold Democrats’ congressional majorities in 2022 and to secure another Electoral College win for Democrats in 2024. By that theory, Democrats running on what they have done for you should produce more votes for them than running on what Republicans have done to you.
Despite a global pandemic and prior Republican election suppression efforts, voter turnout in 2020 was the highest since 1900, enough to turn out a Republican incumbent president and in January to elect two Democratic senators from Georgia.
Yet, voters are a fickle lot. Biden’s old-school gamble is that without Donald Trump to drive turnout on both sides, Americans will vote their pocketbooks again in 2022, and in enough numbers to offset the voting obstacles Republicans throw at them. By 2024, Trump and the Trump Organization could be on trial or worse.
But Republican efforts to suppress the vote in several states are also supercharged since November, augmented by legislation aimed at allowing GOP-led legislatures, in theory, to overturn the will of the voters when Republicans lose. If any red state has the political will to test those powers in 2022, there is no telling how Americans will respond in 2024.
Biden needs a big win on infrastructure. His voters need their rights protected as much as their children fed and their bills paid. Right now, neither looks promising and McConnell is the one wielding the veto.
Democrats and the White House have to decide, as E.J. Dionne tweeted, whether their obligations to defend the 14th and 15th Amendments outweigh their need for favorable midterm results. “It is never a good bet to bet against the American people,” Biden says. He’s betting that if he can pass his infrastructure plan, the rest will take care of itself.