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If the Democrats don’t shape up, Biden’s presidency will lead to a Trumpian sequel | Astra Taylor
If the Democrats don’t shape up, Biden’s presidency will lead to a Trumpian sequelAstra TaylorThe president has failed to capitalise on progressive sentiment: his party needs to stand up for the working class How should one feel about the first year of the Biden presidency?I can’t really say I’m disappointed, since I didn’t have high hopes going into it. But I do feel dread. This last year has felt a bit like being trapped in a nail-biting intermission between two horror films. The opening instalment consisted of Donald Trump’s first four years in office – it ended with the cliffhanger of a deadly plague and a surreal, poorly executed, but still terrifying ransacking of the Capitol. The sequel practically writes itself, as the man ascends to power a second time, even more emboldened and determined to hold on to power.Winter of peril and impossibility: Biden faces hard truth at anniversary press conferenceRead moreOf course, the script is not yet set in stone. If regular people in the US get organised, we can help push the political class toward a different ending. But to do this effectively, we need to tell a story that begins earlier. To continue with the bad movie metaphors, the prequels are what got us into this mess.For decades, senior Democrats tacked rightward, helping to create the social conditions that Trump and his cronies took advantage of to propel themselves to the White House. Instead of rolling back Reaganism and standing up to a swiftly radicalising conservative base, the party elite helped implement and further entrench an undemocratic, corporate agenda. Democratic functionaries slashed welfare, invested in the military and policing, deregulated the financial sector, increased fossil fuel production and lobbied for disastrous international trade deals.The people who did this are Biden’s natural milieu – and they want Americans to believe their problems began in 2016. Establishment Democrats are desperate to paint Donald Trump and the Covid-19 pandemic as aberrations to an otherwise agreeable status quo. Thus a speedy “return to normal” is all it will take to cure what ails us.The problem, however, is that “normal” was a crisis.The political scientist Corey Robin recently pointed out a core paradox of the Biden administration. On the one hand, Biden has some important accomplishments under his belt: two enormous spending bills and crucial federal appointments, including dozens of judges. But, as Robin notes, they are tainted by an awareness of their fundamental inadequacy. These perilous times require more than generous spending bills and staffing tweaks – Americans need to restructure the economy, stabilise the environment and democratise the political system, before it’s too late.Though never the progressive candidate, Biden briefly appeared to be willing to break with tradition and embrace a bolder approach. “When President Biden took office, he promised to make ending poverty a theory of change,” Shailly Barnes, policy director at the anti-poverty group, Poor People’s Campaign, told me. “While we saw glimmers of what that might have been, we have yet to see this implemented in practice. The 140 million people who are poor or one emergency away from economic ruin … need more than short-term or temporary assistance programmes.”Consider one area I know well: the fight for student debt cancellation. Short-term assistance is all these borrowers have received, despite Biden’s promise of mass relief. Student debt cancellation is an interesting litmus test for the administration. While other proposals he campaigned on – such as raising the minimum wage and securing voting rights – require legislation to pass, the president has the power to cancel all federal student loans with a single signature. But instead of picking up the pen, the president has balked and backtracked, misleadingly focusing on the few Ivy League graduates who would benefit from write-offs. At the end of last year, his administration publicly declared that turning student loan payments back on was a high priority for the administration. Why? A concern about optics: his advisers worry that further relief programmes would undercut messaging about the economy’s good health. Given this intransigence, activists like myself have had to fight the White House tooth and nail just to get it to extend the student loan payment pause to 1 May.Here, the folly of Biden’s first year is on full display. Student debt cancellation would be a win for the American people and the administration. The more loans are cancelled, the more the economy is boosted and the more the racial wealth gap narrows. It is also incredibly popular with young voters, Black voters, and even Republicans. Given that it is a midterm year, delivering on this promise should be a no-brainer. Reform of the criminal punishment system is another area where progress has stalled, despite Biden having come to power after a wave of historic racial justice protests. Members of the dominant, corporate wing of the Democratic party like to marginalise progressives and activists while presenting themselves as savvy and responsible realists. This strategy is both insulting and absurd: there’s nothing naive or irresponsible about wanting a decent and equitable society where people aren’t buried in unpayable debt and don’t have to live in fear of the police.But the strategy is also self-defeating. “They think they are pissing on the left, but what they are really doing is failing to fight visibly [and] vocally for millions of everyday working people,” rural Pennsylvania organiser and author Jonathan Smucker told me. “There is no world in which that is good politics.”The Biden administration has instead been engaged in a dispiriting saga of insider negotiations – negotiations that make an already restive public feel even more frustrated and abandoned.Where the build back better bill is concerned, the president should have instructed his allies in Congress to load it up with extra investment that would mollify opposition and make it harder for his party’s obstructionists, like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, to hold it hostage. As the organiser Will Lawrence, a co-founder of the youth-led environmental justice-focused Sunrise Movement, put it on Twitter: include a “buyout of coal industry shareholders, and a generous lifetime pension for every miner in West Virginia. Blanket the airwaves promoting it for two weeks in West Virginia. Then put it to a vote and dare Manchin to vote against it.”If you are going to lose because a coal-baron senator is determined to derail your entire agenda and doom millions to deepening poverty and climate chaos, you may as well go down with a real fight. This fight should clarify for the public where the real problem is – not in culture war distractions, but the corruption of our political system by corporate interests – and it would make clear that the Democrats were firmly on their side.President Biden’s first year has ultimately demoralised people, while also providing an opportunity for Republicans to appear poised to seize power. Last spring, a strategic memo by Representative Jim Banks, leader of the largest bloc of House conservatives, was leaked: “URGENT: Cementing GOP as Working-Class party.” It laid out one plot for the second feature of the horror film I keep imagining. Of course, reactionaries will never actually defend working people. But they’re busy crafting a deceptive and destructive script. And if the current administration doesn’t act, we’ll all be watching it soon.
Astra Taylor is a writer, organiser and documentary maker
TopicsBiden administrationOpinionJoe BidenDemocratsRepublicansUS politicsUS CongresscommentReuse this content More - in US Politics
After Democrats’ historic defeat on voting rights, what happens next?
After Democrats’ historic defeat on voting rights, what happens next?In an extremely bruising loss for Biden, Republicans used the filibuster to block the sweeping bill from passing Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterFor a little over a year, America has faced a democratic crisis unlike any it has seen in recent history.As Republicans have spread lies about the 2020 presidential election, confidence in it remains staggeringly low and about 1 in 3 Americans now believe Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Republicans who claim the election was stolen are trying to grab key election administration roles, prompting unprecedented alarm that a future election could be overturned.And after an election with record participation, Republicans have pushed a wave of new laws making it harder to vote, placing new restrictions on longstanding policies that went unquestioned for years. “We’re facing the most significant test of our democracy since the civil war,” Biden said in July.On Wednesday night, Democrats’ biggest hope of blunting that threat failed in a historic defeat as Republicans used the filibuster – a technical senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation – to block a sweeping voting rights bill from passing.For months Democrats had offered the legislation as an antidote to the anti-democratic sickness that is plaguing America. The bill would have been the most dramatic expansion of the right to vote in a generation. It would have outlawed partisan gerrymandering, protected election officials from partisan interference, required early voting and same-day registration, and restore the pre-clearance provision at the heart of the Voting Rights Act.Politically, the loss was extremely bruising for Biden, who has spent an enormous amount of his political capital in recent weeks only to end up on the losing side. And – even worse – though the measure was blocked by 50 Republicans who refused to even negotiate around it, the moment was one of clear weakness for Democrats. The party has control of both chambers in Congress yet appeared helpless as two of its conservative senators joined with Republicans to preserve the filibuster and doom the legislation.But the deeper stakes of the failure go far beyond politics.It was a moment in which an American government system, crippled by deep partisanship and an arcane rule, turned its back on a rising threat of a dangerous anti-democratic tide. It’s a moment that future historians will be mystified by, a group of scholars warned in November.“To lose our democracy but preserve the filibuster in its current form – in which a minority can block popular legislation without even having to hold the floor – would be a short-sighted blunder that future historians will forever puzzle over,” they wrote.What happens next isn’t exactly clear.Biden suggested the 2022 elections could be illegitimate absent congressional action, a claim the White House quickly walked back on Thursday. “He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, tweeted.Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter, said the vote Wednesday was “disappointing”, but said that his group would continue to push for significant voting reforms. He noted how successful pressure from his group and others had been in getting Biden and other Democrats to support changing the filibuster and pointed out that historic past campaigns to pass the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act required continued pushing after setbacks.“Those debates and those votes were important, to put them on record. So that’s a victory for movement,” he said. “I don’t think this moment will be forgotten.”Tiffany Muller, the president and executive director of Let America Vote/End Citizens United, similarly pledged her group would “regroup” and “keep going” to push voting reforms.“We’re going to take that fight to the states. And we’re going to continue to elect champions down the ballot who will prioritize our democracy, and we’re gonna make sure that we’ll hold Republicans accountable at the ballot box in 2022,” she said. “There is no doubt about it that last night’s vote makes the best option on the federal level not available to us anymore. But we’re still gonna look at ‘are there ways to get other pieces of legislation passed on the federal level?’”Politically, Democrats have pledged to fight on.Previewing what could be a midterm message to frustrated voters on Thursday, Jaime Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, said the failure in the Senate was evidence for why there needed to be more Democrats in the US Senate.“We can send more Democrats to the US Senate and give President Biden and Vice-president Harris the votes they need to pass voting rights legislation. We can show those who stand in the way of voting rights that their actions have consequences,” he said in a statement.Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who laid out a plan for a talking filibuster, said in a statement he would continue to push to reform the rule.“We fell short. But this is not the end of the story,” he said. “When I came to the Senate, 48 senators voting to change the filibuster seemed like a distant dream, something that would never happen. We’re not there yet, but we’re closer than we’ve ever been.”With broad voting reform stalled, there appears to be some bipartisan appetite in congress for changing the Electoral Count Act, a confusing 19th century law that sets out the procedures for counting electoral votes. Trump’s legal team planned to use ambiguities in the law to try and overturn the election, and election scholars for years have said that it needs to be fixed. “There’s a good win there,” Manchin said after the vote on Wednesday. “I mean, my goodness, that’s what caused the insurrection.”But Democrats have rejected fixing the law alone as an acceptable solution, saying it’s unacceptable to fix the way votes are counted if the rules of voting are rigged. It would be a bit like deciding to fix an unreliable scoreboard in a game of basketball where the rules are rigged against one team. Muller also said she was skeptical of how sincere Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, was in his wish to change the law.“We are supportive of reforming the act. But that’s not going to be nearly enough to protect voters in all of these states. It does nothing to fight back against these voter suppression laws,” she said.Meanwhile, congressional inaction is also likely to encourage those seeking to undermine democracy to be even more aggressive, Sherrilyn Ifill, the director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told Congress on Thursday.“In 2021, we saw a repeat of history – a steady drip of old poison in new bottles. Whereas in a bygone era, discriminatory intent in voting restrictions was dressed up in ideals such as securing a more informed and invested electorate, the new justification is fighting imaginary voter fraud, a phantom conjured only to attack,” she said, according to prepared remarks.“With no pushback from Congress, those intent on subverting the next election by continuing to raise doubts about 2020 are becoming more brazen, not less,” she added.Eric Foner, a historian at Columbia who studies the Reconstruction era in US history, said it was difficult to predict how future historians would remember this moment. He said there were parallel moments in history when congressional efforts to protect voting rights were thwarted by the filibuster, such as in 1890 when federal voting protections backed by Henry Cabot Lodge were defeated after a filibuster in the senate.“Historically, the filibuster has been used for one reason: that is to prevent legislation supporting the rights of Black people,” he said. “Let’s not try to glorify the filibuster as having any reasonable reason for existence other than allowing a minority to rule over a majority.”TopicsUS politicsThe fight to voteDemocratsRepublicansBiden administrationanalysisReuse this content More
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Senate Democrats fail to pass voting rights bill: Politics Weekly Extra
As Joe Biden marks his first year in the White House, Democrats will be reeling from their loss to Republicans in the Senate, after Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema chose to let an important voting rights bill fail over a technicality. The Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act would have helped bolster voting rights for many minorities who have felt disenfranchised by recent legislation.Jonathan Freedland speaks to Errin Haines of The 19th about how black voters – who were instrumental in getting Biden elected in 2020 – think the president has done in his first year.
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Biden warns Russia will ‘pay a heavy price’ if Putin launches Ukraine invasion – live
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Biden clarifies Ukraine comments: ‘Russia will pay a heavy price’ for invasion
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‘There are no minor incursions,’ Ukrainian president says after Biden’s flub
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Biden clarifies Ukraine comments: ‘Russia will pay a heavy price’ for invasion
Joe Biden sought to clarify his comments from yesterday about a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, after the US president appeared to downplay the threat of a “minor incursion” into Ukraine.
Speaking at the start of a meeting on infrastructure, Biden told reporters moments ago, “I’ve been absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding. If any — any — assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion.”
Biden said such an invasion would be met with a “severe and coordinated economic response,” which he has “discussed in detail with our allies as well as laid out very clearly for President Putin”.
He added, “But there is no doubt — let there be no doubt at all that, if Putin makes this choice, Russia will pay a heavy price.”ABC News
(@ABC)
“I’ve been absolutely clear with President Putin…If any, any assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion,” Pres. Biden says. “It will be met with severe and coordinated economic response.” https://t.co/aWy2ej1jCo pic.twitter.com/Z5d2pDVEnwJanuary 20, 2022
Biden’s comments come one day after he seemed to imply that Nato was at odds over how to respond to Russian aggression depending upon the type of attack that was launched against Ukraine.
“I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades,” Biden said at his press conference yesterday.
“And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.”
That comment required a coordinated clean-up effort from Biden administration officials, with Kamala Harris and Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, seeking to clarify that the US and its allies are united in responding to Russian aggression.4.42pm EST
16:42
A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump seemed to suggest that she did not have any relevant information to share with the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.
“As the Committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the January 6 rally,” the spokesperson said in a statement provided to CBS News.
“As she publicly stated that day at 3:15 pm, ‘any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable. The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful.’”Fin Gómez
(@finnygo)
New- Statement from @IvankaTrump Spokesperson to @CBSNews on January 6th committee request to cooperate w/its inquiry. pic.twitter.com/rSGG2EpgMnJanuary 20, 2022
However, in his letter to Ivanka Trump, committee chairman Bennie Thompson specifically said the panel is interested in any conversations she had with Donald Trump about efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
So even though Ivanka Trump did not speak at the January 6 rally that preceded the insurrection, it is still quite likely that she has relevant information for the investigation.
The statement makes it seem even less likely that Ivanka Trump will voluntarily agree to cooperate with the select committee.4.23pm EST
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Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, said Ivanka Trump could be a “material fact witness” for the panel’s inquiry.
“If the former president has no executive privilege to hide evidence of an attempted coup or insurrection, neither do his family or friends,” the Maryland congressman said on Twitter.
“If Ivanka Trump was with Donald Trump as the attack unfolded, she is a material fact witness. I look forward to her testimony.”Rep. Jamie Raskin
(@RepRaskin)
If the former president has no executive privilege to hide evidence of an attempted coup or insurrection, neither do his family or friends. If Ivanka Trump was with Donald Trump as the attack unfolded, she is a material fact witness. I look forward to her testimony.January 20, 2022
According to the letter that committee chairman Bennie Thompson sent to Ivanka Trump, the panel is seeking information she may have about Trump’s efforts to pressure Mike Pence to attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“As January 6th approached, President Trump attempted on multiple occasions to persuade Vice President Pence to participate in his plan,” Thompson said in the letter.
“One of the President’s discussions with the Vice President occurred by phone on the morning of January 6th. You were present in the Oval Office and observed at least one side of that telephone conversation.”
Thompson also requested information from Ivanka Trump on “any other conversations you may have witnessed or participated in regarding the President’s plan to obstruct or impede the counting of electoral votes”.3.59pm EST
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Ivanka Trump asked to cooperate with Capitol attack committee
Hugo Lowell
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is asking Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the former president, to appear for a voluntary deposition to answer questions about Donald Trump’s efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
The move by the panel marks an aggressive new phase in its inquiry into the 6 January insurrection, as House investigators seek for the first time testimony from a member of the Trump family about potential criminality on the part of the former president.January 6th Committee
(@January6thCmte)
The Select Committee is requesting that Ivanka Trump provide information for the committee’s investigation.In a letter to Ms. Trump seeking a voluntary interview, Chair @BennieGThompson underscored evidence that Trump was in direct contact with the former President on Jan 6th.January 20, 2022
Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the select committee, said in an 11-page letter to Ivanka Trump that the panel wanted to ask about Trump’s plan to stop the certification, and his response to the Capitol attack, including delays to deploying the national guard.
The questions to Ivanka appear directed at a key issue: whether her father oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January that also involved obstructing a congressional proceeding – a crime.
The letter said that the panel first wanted to question Ivanka Trump about what she recalled of a heated Oval Office meeting on the morning of the 6 January insurrection when the former president was trying to co-opt Mike Pence into rejecting Biden’s win.
Read the Guardian’s full report:3.31pm EST
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Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, pointed to the Treasury Department’s newly announced sanctions against four Ukrainian officials as an example of how the US is proactively responding to Russian aggression.
“We are not waiting to take action to counter Russia. We see what they’re doing. We’re disrupting it,” Psaki said at her daily briefing this afternoon.
“And these actions are also of course separate and distinct from the broad range of high-impact, severe measures we and our allies are prepared to impose in order to inflict significant costs should they invade.”Bloomberg Quicktake
(@Quicktake)
Psaki says the U.S. is not waiting to take action against Russia over troop buildup on the Ukraine border after the Treasury Department announced sanctions against supposed Russian spies https://t.co/676DFgKgHT pic.twitter.com/X0J53QwFM9January 20, 2022
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US accuses Russia of conspiring to take over Ukraine government
The Guardian’s Julian Borger, Luke Harding and Andrew Roth report:
The US has alleged that Russian intelligence is recruiting current and former Ukrainian government officials to take over the government in Kyiv and cooperate with a Russian occupying force.
The US Treasury on Thursday imposed sanctions on two Ukrainian members of parliament and two former officials it said were involved in the alleged conspiracy, which involved discrediting the current government of the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“Russia has directed its intelligence services to recruit current and former Ukrainian government officials to prepare to take over the government of Ukraine and to control Ukraine’s critical infrastructure with an occupying Russian force,” the Treasury statement accompanying the sanctions said.
The claims suggest US intelligence fears Russia is preparing a full-scale invasion and not the “minor incursion” that Joe Biden referred to as a possibility in remarks on Wednesday that triggered alarm in Kyiv.
Online researchers have identified Russian troops and military vehicles within just ten miles of Ukraine’s borders, increasing the risk that Vladimir Putin could launch a military offensive on short notice.2.54pm EST
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As she wrapped up her daily briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked whether Joe Biden plans to do more press conferences in the future.
“Stay tuned,” Psaki replied. “Buckle up, bring snacks next time.”
Biden’s press conference yesterday lasted nearly two hours, after the president decided to extend the event by calling on reporters who were not on the original list provided to him by his staff.
After taking questions for about an hour and a half, Biden looked at his watch and decided to keep talking for another 20 minutes — likely to the chagrin of his press staff.2.41pm EST
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A reporter asked Jen Psaki for further clarification on Joe Biden’s comments about the possibility of Russia executing a “minor incursion” into Ukraine.
The president has since sought to clear up those comments, saying this morning, “I’ve been absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding. If any — any — assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion.”
Psaki said Biden was making the point yesterday that the US and its allies have “a range of tools” to respond to Russian aggression, which may take the form of paramilitary tactics like cyberattacks.
The press secretary also addressed Biden’s comment that there are “differences in Nato as to what countries are willing to do, depending on what happens”.
“We have been focused on ensuring that we remain united with Nato,” Psaki said. “Now united doesn’t mean that everything will be identical, right? It means we’re united in taking actions should they decide to invade. And we are united.”2.23pm EST
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A reporter pressed Jen Psaki again on Joe Biden’s comments yesterday about the legitimacy of the upcoming 2022 elections in the face of new voting restrictions in many states.
The reporter, Peter Alexander of NBC News, noted that Biden said yesterday, “I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit. The increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.”ABC News Politics
(@ABCPolitics)
Asked if Pres. Biden is confident that the midterm elections will be legitimate even if federal voting rights legislation doesn’t pass Congress, White House press sec. Jen Psaki says “yes.” https://t.co/Y5SVieyPLg pic.twitter.com/zsZXFgD41TJanuary 20, 2022
Alexander asked Psaki, “Yes or no: does the president believe, if all remains as it is right now, that the elections this fall will be legitimate?”
Psaki replied, “Yes, but the point that he was making was that, as recently as 2020 as we know, the former president was trying to work with local officials to overturn the vote count and not have ballots counted. And we have to be very eyes wide open about that and clear-eyed that that is the intention potentially of him and certainly of members of his party.”
Alexander then asked for clarification that Biden is confident in the legitimacy of the upcoming elections if no changes are made in voting rights legislation moving forward.
“Yes,” Psaki responded.2.08pm EST
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The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, is now holding her daily briefing, and she is continuing her efforts to clean up some of Joe Biden’s comments from his press conference yesterday.
A reporter asked Psaki whether Biden has confidence in the legitimacy of the 2022 elections, as Democrats struggle to pass their voting rights bill.
During his press conference, Biden was asked whether he had faith in the legitimacy of the upcoming midterm elections if Democrats are unable to pass their bill.
Biden responded, “It all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election.”
Psaki reiterated that Biden was not intending to cast doubt upon the legitimacy of the 2022 election but was instead making a point about how the 2020 election would have been illegitimate if election officials had cooperated with Donald Trump’s demands to overturn the results in battleground states.
The press secretary made the same point over Twitter this morning:Jen Psaki
(@PressSec)
Lets be clear: @potus was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election. He was making the opposite point: In 2020, a record number of voters turned out in the face of a pandemic, and election officials made sure they could vote and have those votes counted.January 20, 2022
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Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is attracting intense criticism for his comments about Black voters, which he made last night after Republican senators blocked Democrats’ voting rights bill (again).
Speaking to reporters after the bill failed and the Senate rejected a change to the filibuster, McConnell was asked for his message to minority voters who are concerned that they will not be able to vote unless the Democratic bill is enacted.
“The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” McConnell said.BG
(@TheBGates)
.@LeaderMcConnell: “The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as American.”Yikes. pic.twitter.com/WXR1WCZh5TJanuary 20, 2022
That comment sparked a lot of confusion among those who pointed out that African American voters are, in fact, Americans.
Democratic congressman Bobby Rush called out McConnell’s comment, saying in a tweet, “African Americans ARE Americans. #MitchPlease”
It’s also worth noting that studies indicate the voting restrictions enacted by 19 states in the past year will disproportionately impact voters of color.Bobby L. Rush
(@RepBobbyRush)
African Americans ARE Americans. #MitchPlease https://t.co/N3dSsQ9Jqn pic.twitter.com/SRnTTVJdJ4January 20, 2022
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Congressman Jamaal Bowman arrested outside Capitol amid voting rights protests – report
Joanna Walters
Demonstrators are right now outside the US Capitol demanding action to protect voting rights and election integrity in the US, following the Senate’s resounding refusal, once again, to pass legislation on this issue last night. More
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The three lessons for the voting rights struggle from the latest Senate setback | Steve Phillips
Three lessons for the voting rights struggle from the latest Senate setbackSteve PhillipsThis latest defeat is not a fatal blow. The struggle for democracy is ongoing – and our fate has not been decided yet At the conclusion of the 1984 Democratic national convention, Jesse Jackson gathered his supporters and offered important perspective to those of us who had labored long and hard on his presidential campaign, telling us, “We’ve never gotten freedom at a convention. The convention is a comma, where you pause and go on. We’re going to keep fighting for freedom – at the polls, in the courts, in the streets.” And then he concluded by invoking the phrase made famous by Malcolm X – “Freedom, by any means necessary.”Seven ways Republicans are already undermining the 2024 election | David DaleyRead moreThis week’s fight in the US Senate over the voting rights bill is a comma in a much, much longer story. It is a story that started in 1619 when Africans were brought in chains to America’s shores to do the work that created the wealth that made many white people rich. It is a story encapsulated in the country’s 1790 Naturalization Act, one of the nation’s very first pieces of legislation, which stated that citizenship is reserved to “free white person[s]” (a law that defined US immigration policy until 1965). It is a story that saw hundreds of thousands of Americans who wanted to be able to continue to buy and sell Black bodies go to war and kill hundreds of thousands of other Americans who sought to end slavery.At its core, it is the story of the centuries-long struggle over whether the United States of America should be a multiracial democracy, or whether it should be a white nationalist country.Reflecting on the defeat in the Senate, three dominant realities can help us make sense of what just happened and determine where we go from here.First, the cold, hard truth is that the majority of white politicians have always been reluctant to make America a multiracial democracy (between the House and Senate votes, 60% of the white members of Congress voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Act).Passage of the 15th amendment itself, guaranteeing the right to vote, was a ferocious battle that raged over months and multiple votes in 1869. Nearly 100 years later, in 1965, it was only after Jimmie Lee Jackson, Viola Liuzzo and James Reeb lost their lives in the struggle for voting rights that Congress was finally moved to pass the current Voting Rights Act. None of this unwillingness to protect the right to vote is new, and we should be disappointed – but not surprised – at the conduct of the country’s elected officials during this week in which we supposedly honored Martin Luther King Jr.The second reality is that many top Democratic strategists and leaders are behind the times and bad at math. The fact that Democrats put their political capital behind an infrastructure bill before taking on the task of protecting democracy was a race-based political calculation. The infrastructure bill was an attempt by Democrats to woo the support of white swing voters by emphasizing bipartisanship and brick and mortar, race-neutral, projects. The scary policies associated with people of color – things like reimagining public safety, providing a pathway to citizenship for immigrants and combating aggressive voter suppression – were downplayed.The mathematical calculation in determining that sequence of priorities was off from the start. Beyond the morality of the matter, from a crass realpolitik point of view, voting rights protections and ending whites-first immigration practices bring more people of color into the electorate. And people of color vote Democratic.The third, and most hopeful, reality is that progressives can still win, and we need look no further than Georgia for inspiration and instruction about what is possible even in the face of opposition from the right and lack of conviction on the left. Stacey Abrams is very good at math, and she has been working for a decade to engage the 1.1 million people of color who were not voting in a state where elections were routinely decided by 230,000 votes. On the right, Republican Brian Kemp, who was secretary of state during his gubernatorial run against Abrams, improperly purged 340,000 people from the rolls in the 2018 election Abrams lost by 54,723 votes.Abrams did not treat her defeat as a fatal blow; she saw it as a comma, and she went on to continue organizing and building a statewide network of groups and activists who could turn out large numbers of voters of color. For a long time, the leaders in Georgia soldiered on without support from top Democrats who couldn’t calculate the advantage of focusing resources in a state where the strategy centered on expanding the number of people of color voting. By late summer 2020, for example, Senate Majority Pac had invested zero dollars in Georgia while spending $7m in 85% white Iowa. Biden himself expressed amazement at his victory there, saying on election night, “We’re still in the game in Georgia. That’s not one we expected.”The Georgia model elected Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and delivered the current Senate control to the Democrats. In 2022, it can expand that majority, dramatically decreasing the dependence on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Massive investments in civic engagement organizations and voter mobilization efforts in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin can propel Val Demings, Cheri Beasley and Mandela Barnes to victories in their races against Republican incumbent senators.This week’s defeat of the Voting Rights Act is one chapter in a long story. While a sad chapter, it need not be the last chapter, and by applying the lessons from Georgia’s journey, we can actually write a happy ending over the next several years.
Steve Phillips is host of Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips. His forthcoming book, How We End the Civil War, is due out this year. He is a Guardian US columnist
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Democrats fail to advance voting rights law as Senate holdouts defend filibuster
Democrats fail to advance voting rights law as Senate holdouts defend filibusterSweeping protections for voters, already passed by House and backed by Biden, fail to clear 60-vote procedural hurdle Senate Democrats failed again to pass sweeping new voting protections on Wednesday, in what may be the most brutal blow yet to efforts to strengthen protections for voters at a perilous moment for US democracy.Just as they have done four other times in recent months, all 50 Republicans united in their opposition to the measure. They relied on the filibuster, a Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance legislation to a final vote.Bernie Sanders suggests he may support primary challengers against Manchin and SinemaRead moreDespite heavy pressure from Joe Biden and fellow Democrats, two senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have dug in defending the measure, preventing Democrats from getting rid of it.In a rebuke to Biden, Sinema gave a speech on the Senate floor last week making it clear she would not support changes to the filibuster. Manchin has also consistently made his support clear. “I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster. The filibuster plays an important role in protecting our democracy from the transitory passions of the majority and respecting the input of the minority in the Senate,” he said in a speech on Wednesday.Their opposition set up a showdown as the ultimately doomed bill was taken up for discussion on Wednesday. Late in the evening, Republicans used the filibuster to vote to end debate on the bill, effectively blocking it from advancing. Immediately afterwards, Democrats moved to hold a vote to try and change the filibuster rules anyway. The effort failed 52-48, with Manchin and Sinema voting with all 50 Republicans to preserve the filibuster. Sinema loudly said “aye” when it was her turn to vote in favor of preserving the filibuster changes.“I am profoundly disappointed that the United States Senate has failed to stand up for our democracy. I am disappointed — but I am not deterred,” Biden said in a statement.“Our Administration will continue to fight to pass federal legislation to secure the right to vote. We will not stop fighting against the anti-voter legislation that Republican legislatures continue to push at the state level—and to champion and support state and local elected officials who work to enact pro-voter legislation,” Kamala Harris said in a separate statement.“Isn’t protecting voting rights, the most fundamental wellspring of this democracy, more important than a rule?” Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said just before the vote on the filibuster change.Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said Democrats were seeking to restore a “talking filibuster”, where senators have to hold the floor of the US senate to prevent a vote on legislation.“We’re going to take up a rules reform proposal that will not blow up the senate,” he said on the Senate floor Wednesday evening. “It switches the secret filibuster into a public filibuster. It makes both parties work on the floor to get the kind of extended public debate we joined together to seek.”Senator Angus King of Maine, who once defended the filibuster, said the process that was in place was a “second cousin once removed of the filibuster”.“I’d venture to say if we had the rules we have today, we wouldn’t have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act,” he said.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, described Wednesday as “in all likelihood, the most important day in the history of the Senate.” He said the Democratic proposal was just “smoke and mirrors”, and accused Democrats of undertaking a plot to “to break the Senate”.The voting rights measure has failed before, but Wednesday marks the first time they have taken a formal vote on changing the filibuster. Its likely failure marks a profound setback for Biden’s presidential agenda. The president spent an enormous amount of political capital in recent weeks pressuring Manchin and Sinema to support rule changes to the filibuster, giving a speech in Atlanta and traveling to Capitol Hill to try to get support. In stirring remarks just before the vote on the voting rights bill, Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, said senators could not praise the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr while voting against voting rights. “You cannot remember MLK and dismember his legacy at the same time,” Warnock said. “I will not sit quietly while some make Dr King a victim of identity theft.”“Those of us who are students of Dr King, I know I have, often wonder ‘what would I have done if I was alive during the civil rights movement?’ I know that we all would like to think we had a fraction, just a small fraction of the courage it took for John Lewis to cross that Edmund Pettus Bridge,” he said. “Well, for those of us who serve in the United States Senate in this moment, in this moral moment, we do not have to wonder … we don’t have to wonder what we would have done. I submit that what we would have done back then we are doing right now. History is watching us.”The bill that failed on Wednesday, Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act, combined two major voting rights bills into a single mega bill.It would have set a national baseline for election access, guaranteeing 15 days of early voting as well as online voter registration. It protected local election officials from harassment and partisan interference in their jobs and curbed gerrymandering, the severe distortion of partisan district lines. It also restored a key piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required places with a history of voting discrimination to get their changes approved by either the justice department or a federal court in Washington before they go into effect.The bill’s failure comes as states across the US have waged an aggressive effort to restrict voting access after the 2020 election, which saw record turnout. In total, 19 states have passed 34 bills that restrict voting access, making it harder to request and return a mail-in ballot, among other measures, even though there was no evidence of fraud, either in mail-in voting or otherwise, in 2020.Many of those efforts are obviously aimed at Black and other minority voters who helped Democrats win in 2020, activists say. As state legislatures reconvene, Republican lawmakers are proposing even more new restrictions.At the same time, Republicans in state legislatures are redrawing electoral districts at the state legislative and congressional level to virtually guarantee their re-election for the next decade. Seeing Democratic gains in traditionally Republican districts, Republicans have redrawn the lines to simply make many districts uncompetitive for the next decade, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.It’s a strategy that has blunted the growing power of Black, Hispanic and Asian voters in places like the suburbs, which are rapidly diversifying. In North Carolina, for example, Republicans lowered the Black voting age population of a district long represented by GK Butterfield, a former judge who is Black. It will be harder for Black voters in that district to elect their candidate of choice and Butterfield has since announced he is retiring from Congress.There is also growing concern about what experts call election subversion – efforts to inject more partisanship into election administration and counting votes.Republicans are passing laws that give them more partisan control over key administrative roles and Trump allies who have embraced the myth of a stolen election are running for secretary of state in places such as Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada – a perch from which they could exert enormous unilateral control over election rules.Civil rights groups have waged an aggressive campaign, privately and publicly, trying to get Manchin and Sinema to support a filibuster change. “Let’s be honest, every voter suppression bill passed in the 19 states across the country has been passed by Republicans alone. If one party can dismantle our democracy on its own, the other party should muster the courage to safeguard it,” Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, wrote in a letter to senators.TopicsUS voting rightsThe fight to voteUS SenateUS politicsDemocratsJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More
