In case you missed this over the weekend:
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia on Sunday said that he would support a "small carve-out" on the filibuster to pass voting-rights legislation.
On "Fox News Sunday," he cautioned against the Senate morphing into the House, where the majority party holds enormous sway over legislation, emphasizing the importance of preserving voting rights.
"I don't want the Senate to become like the House," Warner said. "But I do believe when it comes to voting rights, when it comes to that basic right to exercise and participate in democracy, I get very worried what's happening in some of these states where they are actually penalizing, saying if you give somebody water waiting in line to vote, or in states like Texas where they're saying a local government can overcome the results of a local election. That is not democracy."
He added: "If we have to do a small carve out on filibuster for voting rights – that is the only area where I'd allow that kind of reform."
Warner supports the sweeping voting-rights legislation known as the For the People Act, also identified as S.1, which would end partisan gerrymandering, expand early and absentee voting, establish national standards for voter registration, and blunt voter purges, among other measures.
Democrats would also like to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore federal preclearance from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that was weakened in the 2013 Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder.
Warner is a moderate Democratic Senator and is Vice Chair of Senate Democratic Caucus so his support for making an exception to the rule is significant. Especially after President Biden emphasized filibuster reform (the talking filibuster) over nixing the filibuster entirely. Yes, the talking filibuster would make it harder for the minority to block legislation:
You had to hold the Senate floor for hours, risking your bladder and your sanity. The theatrics were compelling, even if a filibuster was ultimately ineffective. (The salmon-colored sneakers Davis wore also sold out nationwide. The bill she opposed later passed, after a delay.)
Today, the talking filibuster still exists but it’s rarely used. It’s been replaced by the boring, procedural, but nonetheless lethal-to-legislation “silent” filibuster, in which senators in the minority party threaten to filibuster and the majority leader often decides it isn’t worth the hassle of bringing the bill to the floor. A tool that was intended to extend debate now cuts it off entirely.
“The minority doesn’t have to do a thing” nowadays, said Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “One member can just raise a little finger and say, ‘I’m going to filibuster.’ So it’s a complete minority veto and what flows from that is that they filibuster everything.”
While there’s support for eliminating it, the president remains a traditionalist: Don’t eliminate the filibuster, Biden said in March, but restore it to “what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days.” That is, he reiterated at his first news conference later that month, a filibuster where “you had to stand there and talk and talk and talk and talk until you collapse.”
And Democrats are working on making the 2022 midterms all about fighting voter suppression:
Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said that in addition to portions of laws seemingly designed to curb turnout, “what is even more nefarious is what happens once people, if they can get through all the hurdles that they’ve set up, what happens to their vote once it has been cast?”
Citing a provision of the law in Georgia giving Republican lawmakers more power to intervene in local elections operations, he said, “That is not America, that’s Russia. I mean, that is some straight-up dictator-type stuff.”
Vice President Kamala Harris this month announced a $25 million expansion of the DNC’s “I Will Vote” campaign to bolster voter registration, turnout and election protection programs. Harrison said the DNC in 2022 will have the largest voter protection program it has ever had, doubling the size of its staff, including embeds in states.
“Over the last 3 decades we have witnessed the Republican Party, especially at the state level, put up enormous roadblocks to the freedom to vote for every citizen and part of the problem is that there is one party that believes every American citizen deserves the freedom to vote while the other party erects barriers to the ballot box,” said Donna Brazile, a former DNC chair.
Some statewide elected officials expect a possible blowback effect on Republicans, saying that once Georgia Democrats understand the new rules in place, they will be even more motivated to turn out.
“That may incentivize more voters to turn out and do what needs to be done, to ensure that their ballot is cast,” said state Rep. Sam Park, whose district includes suburban Atlanta’s populous Gwinnett County, the state’s most diverse. “When you see politicians coming after your ability to cast your vote, it's a reminder of how much power you really have, how powerful the vote really is.”
Harris met with a group of voting rights activists at the White House in mid-July to discuss protecting ballot access, particularly among Black voters. Veteran civil rights leaders have also pulled the president’s ear on the issue, suggesting a number of filibuster workarounds to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act or For the People Act.
But Charles M. Blow for The New York Times makes this valid point:
If Joe Biden clearly, forcefully and repeatedly demanded that the filibuster be scrapped to defend voting rights, it still might not be axed. But Black people like me need to see you go down fighting rather than avoid the fight or grudgingly enter it.
Biden wants to make history with his agenda, but history is already being made by Republicans with this extraordinary voter suppression push.
During Biden’s victory speech, he said to his Black supporters, “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.” I’m sorry Mr. President, but that statement rings hollow because in Black people’s greatest time of need, you’re more concerned about roads than rights.
I’ll touch more upon Biden’s idea to bring back the talking filibuster in a separate diary. Biden may not be ready to nix the filibuster or lean in on U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D. WV) just yet until the infrastructure bill passes. But The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin has some advice for President Biden:
First, stop making Manchin’s arguments for him. Biden should instead make the case that the Republicans’ use of the filibuster is a gross distortion and abuse of the procedure. Manchin needs to be convinced he is saving the filibuster, not abolishing it. (The White House might find some colleagues of the late senator Robert Byrd to make the case that even he would not have defended the filibuster as it is currently being employed. After all, Byrd helped create the reconciliation process as we know it today, which is a giant deviation from the filibuster.)
Second, Vice President Harris, instead of meeting with voting rights advocates already on board, would do well to meet with business leaders and persuade them to sign a pledge to support voting rights. That would include an airtight refusal to fund those who vote for voter suppression laws, to give their employees a paid day off to vote and to assist in voter registration. (If Harris thinks this is too political, surely Stacey Abrams would be willing to do it.)
Finally, Biden can project his seriousness on the issue. He could say, for example: “If Republicans refuse — as they did on the Jan. 6 commission — to protect our fundamental right to vote, I will find some way to get a voting rights bill through the Senate.” He need not use the word “filibuster.” But he can assure voting rights groups that when the chips are down, the filibuster will not triumph over preservation of our democracy. If he does not make such a statement, voting rights groups should understand that for all his fine speeches, Biden does not intend to go to the mat on this issue, either because he thinks fears about our democracy are overblown or because he is incapable of persuading Manchin to do the right thing.
The White House would be making a grave error if it concludes Democrats can out-organize their way around Republican efforts to impede access to the ballot box and undermine election integrity. If Biden does not go all out for voting rights reform and Democrats lose the House or Senate (thereby imperiling the 2024 presidential process), the verdict of his party and history will be severe.
And U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D. AZ) has been getting a lot of bad press and attention back in Arizona. Former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, a former Republican turned Democrat and early backer of Senator Sinema’s campaign had some harsh words for her:
"I'm generally not too alarmist about most of these things but i am on this one," Woods told CNN's Jim Acosta. "I do believe this is a fight for our democracy."
He explained his views on the filibuster.
"And I'm against the filibuster in general. To me, it is a joke that people act like this is 20 years ago or 40 years or 50 years ago. It's not, it is 2021. Look at the behave of the Republicans in the Senate, they mass together and won't work cooperatively on virtually anything," Woods explained.
"So they got to rid of the filibuster, period. Certainly we have to make an exception here for voting rights and craft something with senator from my state, Sinema. I don't know what her problem is, frankly," he said. "A lot of us can't believe the behavior."
"If you can't do it to preserve democracy, to make sure that we have fair elections, that people are allowed to vote and that it's not disproportionately impacting negatively on people of color and people that the republicans don't want to vote, then why are you even there? Why are you in the Senate?" he wondered.
Right now, Manchin has a huge ego boost:
Joe Manchin strongly signaled in 2018 that his brutal reelection campaign that year was his last. Now, as he marshals the entire Senate in his centrist direction, he’s not so sure he’ll call it quits.
The West Virginia Democrat is steadily padding his campaign coffers, raising $1.6 million in the first six months this year and sitting on nearly $4 million for a potential race that wouldn’t occur for three years. His colleagues say he’s not acting like a senator in his last term, despite his famous assertion during his last campaign that Washington “sucks.”
And as the 50th Democratic vote, Manchin is charting a bipartisan course for the Senate alongside a like-minded band of moderates in both parties, not to mention serving alongside a president who shares his back-slapping and horse-trading DNA. Instead of sucking, Manchin now says Washington has “accomplished more than we have for the 10 years I’ve been here.”
“You never know. You don’t know. There’s always a chance, absolutely,” Manchin said in an interview. When it comes to a potential reelection campaign alongside a presidential race in 2024, Manchin said: “You better be prepared, that’s all I can say. And I’m being prepared.”
But him and Sinema have made the filibuster a campaign issue for Senate Democratic candidates. Here’s the North Carolina Democratic U.S. Senate primary as an example:
“We don’t need filibuster reform, we need filibuster abolition,” said former state Sen. Erica Smith in response to questions The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer sent to Senate candidates. “We either end the filibuster or we watch as our democracy ends.”
“A procedural rule shouldn’t stand in the way of policies that the overwhelming majority of Americans and North Carolinians support, which is why I’d take a look at changes that would benefit our state, recognizing that it also has been used to block harmful legislation in the past,” said Cheri Beasley, a former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice.
State Sen. Jeff Jackson wants to make it more difficult for senators to use the filibuster, including making it a “talking filibuster” where a senator or senators must hold the floor to stop a bill as depicted in the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
“If Mr. Smith has something to say, go right ahead. But I wouldn’t allow someone to make a phone call from South Dakota and anonymously shut down a bill, and that’s what we have right now,” Jackson said. “That doesn’t facilitate bipartisanship. It facilitates bad faith obstructionism.”
Beaufort Mayor Rett Newton, another Democratic candidate, said he favors small changes rather than a massive disruption to the system.
“We can make incremental reform. The fact that we cannot even debate an issue because of the filibuster is just outrageous. Let’s go ahead and get rid of the filibuster for debate and move forward. If all of a sudden it becomes problematic again and leads to more obstruction, then yes, I’m looking at more incremental reform to the filibuster,” Newton said.
“But to say outright that we’re going to just completely get rid of it, I think that’s taking a pretty wild swing and we need to think about this in a much more incremental way.”
Obviously, we need to expand our majority but if Democrats like Warner get this, than we need to keep up the pressure on the rest of Senate Democrats, including Manchin and Sinema, to get on board with this exception. Click here to see where your Democratic Senator stands on the filibuster.
Click here to contact your Democratic Senator to let them you support making an exception to the filibuster rules to protect voting rights.