President Barack Obama in a tele-town hall Monday gave remarks on the For the People Act impasse in Congress:
“Republicans in the Senate are lining up to try to use the filibuster to stop the For the People Act from even being debated,” Obama said during a tele-town hall with former Attorney General Eric Holder and grassroots activists about the bill, which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will put to a procedural vote Tuesday to take up the measure. That motion is not expected to receive the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and proceed to the bill.
“Think about this: In the aftermath of an insurrection, with our democracy on the line and many of the same Republican senators going along with the notion that somehow there were irregularities and problems with legitimacy in our most recent election, they’re suddenly afraid to even talk about these issues and figure out a solution on the floor of the Senate,” Obama said.
“That’s not acceptable,” he added.
Republican should have to stand before the people of the United States and explain why they support gerrymandering that allows incumbents to “choose their voters, rather than the voters choosing their elected officials.” They should have to publicly defend how making it illegal to hand water to voters in line in Georgia has anything to do with “ballot security” and preventing fraud as elusive as Heffalumps and Woozles. They should debate publicly why the Jim Crow filibuster (especially the silent filibuster) is in keeping with the best traditions of popular sovereignty.
But Republicans don’t want to, says Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, whose group is applying pressure to at least debate the For the People Act in the Senate. He set the scene Monday night for MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow:
Now the next step in this process is we have to debate whether there will be a debate. That is what the vote is tomorrow. The vote tomorrow is not the For the People Act. The vote tomorrow is whether the Senate consider the For the People Act.
And here`s what we are pretty darn sure is going to happen — Mitch McConnell and the entirety of the Republican Caucus is going to say, nope, we don`t want to debate voting rights. We do not want to debate voting rights despite the avalanche of voter suppression happening across the country, we don`t want to debate that. And that`s the filibuster. They`re going to use the filibuster to kill it.
Now, we do not expect the filibuster tomorrow. That is not what we expect. Instead what we expect is for the bill to tabled then. The Democratic caucus is going to go into a room by themselves, talk to each other, then they`re going to go on recess.
They`re going to go on congressional recess. They`re going to go back home to their districts over the Fourth of July holiday. And then they`re going to figure out what they`re going to do when they come back.
And, look, politicians have a very scientific method for figuring out what they`re going to do. They lick their finger, they stick it up into the air, and they see which way the wind is going to blow. And that`s how they`re going to determine what happens in July.
And if we are successful in changing the way the wind blows over the course of July 4th recess, they are going to take this up again. They`re going to amend the filibuster and they`re going to pass these voting rights reforms.
And pigs will fly. Sorry, I don’t see it happening. THAT DOES NOT MEAN we do not try. You cannot win if you don’t show up to play. You forfeit. So, get busy defending democracy.
“Whatever else we may argue about, the one thing we should agree on the bedrock idea that we as Americans have been taught to take pride in, this is the fact that we’re a democracy,” Obama said.
“The issue of voting rights might not set off alarms for most of us,” but “the violence that occurred in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6th should remind us we can’t take our democracy for granted,” he said.
Perhaps our opponents should be called Unreal Americans™ instead. They certainly have little interest in defending the real foundations of the U.S. government.