I love you man, but seriously, Greg?
If Republicans succeed in blocking Democratic efforts to protect voting rights this week, as expected, the push to defend democracy will be anything but dead. That’s because another important proposal to prevent a stolen 2024 election is coming together in the Senate.
Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.This one may — may — prove harder for Republicans to oppose. At least it should prove harder.
No it won’t. Essentially, the proposal Greg’s talking about is to officially reduce Congress’s and the VP’s role in electoral vote counting to a ceremonial role. The pretend purpose is to forestall Trump’s ability to seek any legal recourse to play the games he tried to play in 2020.
But the real purpose of this bill — as Greg acknowledges at the end of the column even if he refuses to fully believe it — is to provide Manchin with an excuse not to vote for a voting rights carve-out for the filibuster — but still vote for something in that general direction. And of course, once that is dead and buried, any fake Republican support for this Lucy’s football of an electoral college reform bill — which is nearly worthless, given the dreadful state of this country’s governance — will magically disappear. And Manchin will likely not vote for Lucy’s football, either.
if you’re an ER doctor and a person complains about their severely sore throat when all you can notice is that their left arm appears to have been recently amputated and is bleeding severely, you treat the wound first.
We have been hemorrhaging democracy for years. We need voting rights protection and Manchin cannot be given an excuse to weasel out of voting for it. We can’t afford to have the imperfect be the enemy of the badly needed.