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      Manchin’s blocking bid is no shock, say disgruntled West Virginia Democrats

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      West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has emerged as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the passing of Joe Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda, declaring he will vote against a key voting rights bill and also blocking reform of the filibuster – a rule that at the moment allows Republicans to kill Democrat legislation.Yet Manchin is no Republican. He is a key member of Biden’s party, and in a 50-50 Senate his vote is the lynchpin of political power and crucial for passing Biden’s plans. Yet Manchin is seen by many Democrats as sabotaging his own president’s efforts to be a transformational leader who can help the US recover from the pandemic in the same way Roosevelt helped America recover from the Great Depression.To many people outside West Virginia, Manchin’s behavior is a mystery: how does someone take such a stand against their own side? But for many West Virginian Democrats Manchin’s tactics and those of his state West Virginia Democratic party leadership are no surprise at all.In fact, examining West Virginia’s Democratic politics shows that Manchin’s undermining of Biden’s efforts, especially around voting rights, should have been entirely expected.Manchin’s opposition to the For the People Act, a bill that aims to expand voting rights and reduce the influence of money in US elections, has angered Black Americans across the country. But earlier this year, West Virginia’s all-white Democratic party leaders submitted a draft affirmative action plan to the national party without input or approval from a newly formed affirmative action committee, a group whose membership includes women, people of color and people with disabilities.Affirmative action committee co-chair Hollis Lewis said moving the plan forward without any input from the committee – or any Black Americans at all – was unacceptable for communities of color in the state. “As a Black West Virginian, this is a slap in the face,” he said.Lewis linked Manchin’s stance against the national voting rights bill to the Democratic fight over the affirmative action plan in West Virginia, saying it showed he and party leaders in his state would rather maintain control than work to empower traditionally marginalized people.“These two incidents happened the very same week – and they parallel each other,” said Lewis. “You’re making a decision based on how you feel about something that’s not necessarily going to affect you.”In numerous interviews, West Virginia Democrats and people of color described a party at odds with their needs and belief and in thrall to Manchin’s power and conservatism.Mary Ann Claytor, an affirmative action committee member and 2020 candidate for state auditor, said she felt ignored by West Virginia’s party leadership when she won her primary race. Claytor, who is Black, says a county-level leader told her in confidence that members of party leadership said they didn’t think a Black, working-class woman could win an election in West Virginia.In an interview with the Guardian, Claytor said Manchin’s decisions in the Senate plus West Virginia’s state party politics are indicative of an issue that extends beyond race: a resistance by Democratic power structures in West Virginia to bring working-class people, women or any marginalized group into the party.“We hear a lot about how progressives can’t win,” she said. “They kept putting people down. Like, ‘Oh, they’re not going to win. [Manchin] is the only person going to win, because he has that much money in his war chest.’”Manchin’s office rejected an interview request for this article. Multiple interview requests sent to the West Virginia Democratic party leadership went unanswered.Critics say the state party and power-brokering Democrats such as Manchin are quick to dismiss the loyalty Black Americans have consistently put forth in supporting Democratic candidates. “They want the power concentrated where it’s at,” Peshka Calloway, a Black organizer for Democratic issues and a US army veteran, said of the WVDP leadership.A native of Parkersburg, West Virginia, Calloway was working for Planned Parenthood when Manchin unexpectedly showed up at an NAACP state conference she was attending in 2018. She confronted him afterwards about whether he would support former President Trump’s nomination of supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, a controversial candidate because of views on abortion and historical allegations of sexual assault.“How are you voting on Kavanaugh?” she asked. “I hope it’s a no because I’m a survivor of military sexual assault, and what I’m hearing about him is absolutely disgusting.” Manchin replied that he “was facing a hard decision” and would do his best.Two months later, he was the only Democrat in the Senate who voted to appoint Kavanaugh.Natalie Cline sees the Democratic party as excluding working-class constituents in the state. Cline secured the Democratic nomination for the US House of Representatives in 2020, when she won her primary race with 74% of the vote. She identifies as a “true blue Democrat” and grew up in a working-class family where both of her grandfathers had union jobs.After winning her primary, she said the state party offered her campaign no support or publicity despite endorsements from well-known names such as Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and actors Debra Messing and Rosie O’Donnell.“I can’t tell you how many times I would send emails to the state party and say: ‘Can you please share this information? We need people to watch’ – to no response.”Cline now believes that promoting inclusion within the party puts a target on a candidate’s back: seek to make good on the Democratic promise of being a “big-tent” party and get shut out by Manchin and his state party.One of the most baffling moments from her campaign and a sign, she said, of party’s disconnect with working-class people, came when the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) simultaneously endorsed Manchin and her opponent – a Republican who months later would vote to restrict individuals’ rights to unionize.“I didn’t feel that they [the Democratic party] cared. If they cared, they would be yelling and screaming,” she said. “They would have called the UMWA out on it. But heaven forbid they do that, because that might jeopardize Manchin’s endorsement.”David Fryson, who retired this year as a vice-president at West Virginia University, said the decline of the WVDP can be traced back to 1996. Before Manchin was senator, he lost his gubernatorial primary to Charlotte Pritt, an environmentalist hailed as a forward-thinking Democrat. Instead of throwing his weight behind Pritt, Manchin actively campaigned for Pritt’s Republican opponent, Cecil Underwood, who went on to win.Manchin’s embrace of conservatism continued. In 2012, he was listed as the only Democratic senator to serve as a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), a conservative nonprofit that focuses on reducing business regulations, weakening labor unions, loosening environmental conservation efforts and restricting voting rights.“What I’m trying to do, in my little way, is convince the Democrats to be careful going down the rabbit hole with with Joe Manchin,” said Fryson. “He will end up … doing to the national Democratic party what he’s done to the West Virginia Democratic Party. And he’s already doing it.” More

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      A different America: How Republicans hold near total control in 23 US states

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      Democrats across the US cheered last month, as Texas legislators staged a walkout from the statehouse to block the passage of a Republican bill that would enact a number of restrictions on voting access.But the victory seemed short-lived, as the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, quickly announced he planned to call a special session to get the legislation passed.The walkout and the probably only temporary relief it provides for Democrats demonstrated the immense legislative power that Republicans have in dozens of states across the country and the ability that gives them to pass a hard-right agenda on a vast range of issues from abortion to the ability to vote.In 23 US states, Republicans hold the governorship and the legislature, giving the party near total control to advance its policies. This year, Republicans have used that power to aggressively push their conservative social agenda – taking aim at abortion access, transgender rights and gun safety, as well as voting laws.During the Texas legislative session, which concluded late last month, Republicans approved bills to allow permitless carry of firearms, ban abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and increase criminal penalties for protesters who block intersections.“From day one of this session, our priorities were centered around hardworking Texans and building a state that is safer, freer, healthier, and more prosperous,” Abbott said in a statement after the session concluded. “We kept those promises while also delivering one of the most conservative legislative sessions our state has ever seen.”Texas is far from alone.Three other states – South Carolina, Idaho and Oklahoma – recently passed similar abortion bills, and several states have also approved permitless carry this year. Although Texas Republicans failed to get their anti-trans bills passed during the regular session, 2021 marked a record year for anti-trans legislation, according to the Human Rights Campaign.This trend of states approving increasingly extreme laws on issues like abortion and trans rights is alarming Democrats, who accuse Republicans of using their legislative power to target vulnerable communities.“The Republicans attacked everyone in this state during this legislative session,” said Rose Clouston, the voter protection director of the Texas Democratic party. “They came after women’s health. They came after trans Texans. They came after voting rights in Black and brown communities and the disability community. They were truly attacking every single community in this state in a shameless attempt to cling to their power.”Republican legislators’ focus on social issues marks a shift from previous decades, when the party was more concentrated on economic priorities like small government and fiscal responsibility.There are some notable exceptions to that trend. At least 25 states, all led by Republican governors, have moved to prematurely end the supplemental unemployment benefits included in the coronavirus relief package that Joe Biden signed into law in March. However, Republican legislators seem to have focused most of their efforts this year on addressing the cultural concerns of their supporters.“The base is more interested in culture than they are in economics right now, and that’s what the state legislatures are responding to,” said Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative thinktank.Olsen also noted that Republicans are not able to advance their agenda at the federal level right now, as Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress. The state legislatures present more opportunities for Republican lawmakers to enact conservative policies and push back against Democrats.“The Democratic victories at the national level made them feel threatened, so I think they’re using the power that they have to declare the values that they share,” Olsen said.But outside of Washington, Democratic legislators in Republican-led states do not have many options in the way of preventing conservative social policies from becoming law. Despite optimistic projections, Democrats did not manage to flip any state legislative chambers in last year’s elections.Democrats’ losses meant that they will not have much say in drawing electoral district lines as these states prepare for the decennial redistricting process. Republicans in states like Texas will thus be able to draw friendly maps that could make it easier for them to win re-election.The Republicans attacked everyone in this state during this legislative sessionRather than worrying about their general election races, Republican legislators seem to be more fearful of attracting primary challengers who are farther to the right on issues like gun rights.In Texas, for example, Allen West, a former National Rifle Association board member who pushed for permitless carry in the state, has indicated he is considering launching a primary challenge against Abbott. The Republican governor is up for re-election next year.“We know that the GOP is scared of primaries from fringe gun extremists,” said Shannon Watts, the founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action. “We’re watching the politics play out as opposed to true policy beliefs.”That political calculus has pushed state laws so far to the right that, in some cases, even Republicans are voicing criticism of the new policies. In Tennessee, which Donald Trump won by 23 points in November, a recent poll found that 59% of voters oppose the permitless carry bill signed into law in April.Permitless carry laws have also faced opposition from law enforcement groups, who argue that the policy will result in more violence and more 911 calls, resulting in slower response times.“They’re trying to score political points, and ultimately all they’re doing is undermining law enforcement and really making it harder to enforce public safety laws,” Watts said.The business community has similarly spoken out against some of the bills making their way through Republican-led legislatures. More than 90 major US corporations signed on to a statement opposing the anti-trans bills being introduced in dozens of states.And yet states have continued to approve anti-trans legislation, with the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, signing a bill earlier this month that will bar transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams in schools.Republican legislators’ determination to ignore public and corporate criticism of their policies has intensified Democrats’ calls for national laws to address these issues.On voting rights specifically, Democrats say the restrictions being approved by Republicans underscore the need to pass the For the People Act, a sweeping election reform bill that has stalled in the Senate.“Texas Republicans have shown that they are going to use their power to disenfranchise Texans and to maintain their power,” Clouston said. “We need the federal government to set those minimum standards for what a democracy looks like in the United States of America and step in.” More

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      Joe Manchin: the Democrat who holds the fate of Biden’s agenda in his hands

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      Five months after taking office, Joe Biden’s legislative agenda from infrastructure to voting rights is essentially hanging in the balance of one Democratic senator: Joe Manchin of West Virginia.The Democrat-controlled Senate passed a flurry of measures in the early days of the administration, including the $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus package and a nearly quarter-trillion-dollar bill to improve American competitiveness with China.But that burst of legislating dramatically slowed last week as the Senate prepared to consider a series of Democratic priorities crucial to Biden’s vision and the White House’s hopes for meaningful policy achievements before the 2022 midterm elections.The faltering efforts stem from Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the 50-50 Senate, which, in allowing any senator to hold up legislation, has thrust Manchin, the most conservative Senate Democrat, into the center of relevance in the nation’s capital and a position of almost unique power.The political dynamics mean Manchin now commands huge influence over Biden’s agenda, setting the stage for a collision between Democrats eager to use their majority to pass sweeping legislation, and his determination to restore bipartisanship to a divided Senate.“Senator Manchin’s influence there is shaping the agenda for the Democrats,” said Sarah Binder, professor of political science at George Washington University. “He’s the crux – he’s everything around which the majority depends.”The hand-wringing over Manchin’s power will only intensify in the coming weeks as Senate Democrats turn their attention to an infrastructure package and an expansive voting rights bill, known as For the People Act, opposed by Manchin for being too partisan.Manchin, a rarity as a pro-coal and anti-abortion Democrat, has already warned Biden and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, that he would oppose any legislation if they did not first work to compromise with Republicans.“Senate Democrats must avoid the temptation to abandon our Republican colleagues on important national issues,” Manchin wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed, in a throwback to a bygone era of collegiality in the Senate.Manchin often describes himself as having learned to legislate with “common sense” from watching small-town officials navigate local politics, even before he was twice elected governor of West Virginia first in 2004, and then in 2008 with nearly 70% of the vote.He is considered to most take after his uncle, Antonio James Manchin, an entertaining politician who became something of an icon in West Virginia politics after he rid the state’s countryside of thousands of rusting junked cars and old tyres.But the younger Manchin, who grew up in the small mining town of Farmington, built his own bonds with constituents when he cut short a 2006 trip to cheer on the West Virginia University Mountaineers at the Sugar Bowl in Atlanta, when a mine disaster struck back home.Now Manchin is the only Democrat who holds statewide office in West Virginia, a notable anomaly in a state where its rural working-class voters, who once backed Democrats for their strong trade union ties, have shifted sharply to the right.And after he held on to his Senate seat in 2018 in the steepest re-election challenge of his career, Manchin credited his survival to the strength of trust he built with voters through his compromise-seeking approach in the Senate.But in a hyper-partisan Washington, especially with Republicans committed to blocking Biden’s agenda, the chances of compromise materializing are slim.The bipartisan negotiations on infrastructure between Biden and the Senate Republican Shelley Moore Capito, for instance, collapsed on Tuesday after four weeks of talks failed to reconcile wide differences on size, scope and financing of the package.Meanwhile, on the voting rights bill, even moderate Republicans are united with the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, in refusing to engage in discussions on a measure they describe as a partisan power grab by Democrats but which many voting rights advocates describe as a vital defense of American democracy.The political landscape in the Senate means Democrats are likely to have little choice but to try to ram through legislation by destroying the filibuster rule – essentially a supermajority requirement – and pass them on a simple majority, party-line vote.Yet, here again there is a roadblock in the way: Manchin.Manchin believes that ending the filibuster would destroy the Senate and has repeatedly vowed to protect the procedural rule, invoking how his predecessor, Senator Robert Byrd, told him the chamber was supposed to force consensus.The Manchin-shaped hurdle for Biden’s agenda is delighting Republicans but exasperating Democrats, who say they can’t understand what he wants. “Can’t we just give West Virginia a new airport?” one Democratic leadership source said, illustrating the frustration.Manchin’s approach to moderating Democrats’ legislative ambitions is motivated in some part by the increasingly Republican nature of the state he represents, according to a source close to the senator.Trump won West Virginia in the 2020 election, and white voters without a college degree, the main demographic of Trump’s base, made up 69% of registered voters, according to census data – the highest anywhere in the country.“It’s among the deepest, reddest states in the country,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “So when Senator Manchin says, ‘If I can’t go home to West Virginia and explain it to my folks, I can’t be for it,’ he means that.”Democrats have mostly taken a hands-off approach with Manchin, mindful that his vote remains the only bulwark between a Democratic-controlled Senate, and a Republican-controlled one.But mostly, they just know that even if their patience is about ready to expire, there is ultimately little they can do. 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      Burrito economics: Republican claims about price rises are so much hot air | Robert Reich

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      House Republicans are blaming Democrats for the rise in Chipotle burrito prices.You heard me right. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) issued a statement on Wednesday claiming that Chipotle’s recent decision to raise prices on their burritos and other menu products by about 4% was caused by Democrats.“Democrats’ socialist stimulus bill caused a labor shortage and now burrito lovers everywhere are footing the bill,” said an NRCC spokesman, Mike Berg.It seems Republicans have finally found an issue to run on in the 2022 midterm elections. Apparently Dr Seuss and Mr Potato Head weren’t gaining enough traction.The GOP’s tortured logic is that the unemployment benefits in the American Rescue Plan have caused workers to stay home rather than seek employment, resulting in labor shortages that have forced employers like Chipotle to increase wages, which has required them to raise their prices.Hence, Chipotle’s more expensive burrito.This isn’t just loony economics. It’s dangerously loony economics because it might be believed, leading to all sorts of stupid public policies.Start with the notion that $300 per week in federal unemployment benefits is keeping Americans from working.Since fewer than 30% of jobless workers qualify for state unemployment benefits, the claim is that legions of workers have chosen to become couch potatoes and collect $15,000 a year rather than get a job.Republicans have found an issue to run on. Apparently Dr Seuss and Mr Potato Head weren’t gaining enough tractionI challenge one Republican lawmaker to live on $15,000 a year.In fact, evidence suggests that workers who are holding back from re-entering the job market don’t have childcare or are still concerned about their health during the pandemic.Besides, if employers want additional workers, they can do what they necessarily do for anything they want more of but can’t obtain at its current price – pay more.It’s called capitalism. Republicans should bone up on it.When Chipotle wanted to attract more workers, it raised its average wage to $15 an hour. That comes to around $30,000 a year per worker – still too little to live on but double the federal unemployment benefit.Oh, and there’s no reason to suppose this wage hike forced Chipotle to raise the prices of its burrito. The company had other options.Chipotle’s executives are among the best paid in America. Its chief executive, Brian Niccol, raked in $38m last year – which happens to be 2,898 times more than the typical Chipotle employee. All Chipotle’s top executives got whopping pay increases.So it would have been possible for Chipotle to avoid raising its burrito prices by – dare I say? – paying its executives less. But Chipotle decided otherwise.I’m not going to second-guess Chipotle’s business decision – nor should the NRCC.By the way, I keep hearing Republican lawmakers say the GOP is the “party of the working class”. If that’s so, it ought to celebrate when hourly workers get a raise instead of howling about it.Everyone ought to celebrate when those at the bottom get higher wages.The typical American worker hasn’t had a real raise in four decades. Income inequality is out of control. Wealth inequality is into the stratosphere (where Jeff Bezos is heading, apparently).If wages at the bottom rise because employers need to pay more to get the workers they need, that’s not a problem. It’s a victory.Instead of complaining about a so-called “labor shortage”, Republicans ought to be complaining about the shortage of jobs paying a living wage.Don’t hold your breath, or your burrito. More

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      Joe Biden’s reforming agenda at risk of dying a slow death in Congress

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      Joe Biden’s first hundred days surpassed progressive expectations with the scope of their ambition. His second hundred days are being mugged by reality: the one that says Washington DC is a place where dreams go to die.A once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure and the climate crisis has hit a wall. Reforms on gun safety, immigration and police brutality are in limbo. Legislation to expand voting rights and reduce the influence of money in politics appears doomed.The stalled agenda reflects Republican obstruction, Democratic disunity and the inherent messiness of “sausage-making” on Capitol Hill. But it also shines a light on taken-for-granted structures of American government and democracy that many argue are no longer fit for purpose because they favor gridlock and militate against sweeping change.“The American system of government is a beta form of democracy,” said Ezra Levin, a former congressional staffer who is co-executive director of the grassroots movement Indivisible. “We have a presidential system that hasn’t really substantially been updated since the 19th century.“Nobody designing a democracy today would create as many veto points as we have and nobody, including the original founders, would have developed a system like the Senate filibuster where theoretically senators representing 11% of the population can veto legislation that is wildly popular.”Much has been written about Biden’s prospects of emulating Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR) and Lyndon B Johnson (LBJ) with a transformational presidency and eclipse Barack Obama by throwing caution to the winds. The excitement only grew with the passage of a $1.9tn coronavirus relief package in March.But that, it transpires, was the exception not the rule. The Democrats’ progressive wing is becoming increasingly frustrated as other promises go unrealised, fearing an all-too-familiar pattern of hopes dashed and dreams deferred that will only feed anti-Washington resentment.Ro Khanna, a congressman from California who was a co-chair of Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, told the Associated Press: “There’s a lot of anxiety. It’s a question really for President Biden: what kind of president does he want to be?”Joe Biden won a fairly significant personal victory but the 2020 elections were hardly a victory for the Democratic party as a wholeThe first problem is that Biden does not have a Roosevelt-like majority in Congress. Democrats have only a wafer-thin advantage in the House of Representatives. The Senate is evenly divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, giving Vice-President Kamala Harris the tie-breaker vote. It is hardly a recipe for revolution.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “There was always the brute fact that the Democrats had the slimmest margin in the House of Representatives they’ve enjoyed since the 1940s and you can’t get any closer in the Senate than a tie broken by the vice-president.“So the fact of the matter is that Joe Biden won a fairly significant personal victory but the 2020 elections were hardly a victory for the Democratic party as a whole. Anything but. So I really had to shake my head and chuckle when I read all of those early comparisons to FDR and LBJ.”The balance of power leaves Biden’s entire legislative agenda subject to the whims of any individual senator. He got a taste of this last weekend when Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, declared his opposition to the For the People Act, a voting rights bill that many activists regard as crucial to protecting democracy and a direct response to restrictive new voting laws being passed in Republican-led states.In a newspaper column, Manchin described the bill as the “wrong piece of legislation to bring our country together” and a barrier to Senate bipartisanship. This was despite polls showing clear support for it in his home state. His stand provoked anger among progressives and prompted civil rights leaders to meet Manchin on Tuesday.Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, a member of the Just Democracy coalition, said: “There is nothing partisan about this. What’s partisan is what’s happened since 2020 where you have Republican state legislatures proposing bills and enacting laws that will restrict Black and brown people all over this country from being able to participate in our democracy.“That’s sad to me. especially because some of the Black men that we talk to voted for the first time in 2020 in ways that are no longer legal in some of the states in this country, simply because Republicans saw that if they allow people to vote by mail or use drop boxes, which are some of the most secure ways to vote, they lose elections.”Manchin has also joined the Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona in publicly refusing to end the filibuster, a procedural rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation, meaning that at least 10 Republicans would need to cross party lines to help Democrats achieve their priorities. Some senators propose reducing the voting threshold to 51.Activists increasingly regard blowing up the filibuster as essential and fundamental. Robinson added: “The fact that Joe Biden has been more progressive than I thought is a testament to him understanding the moment and I feel like some other elected officials aren’t reading the tea leaves. Roosevelt had a majority that Joe Biden can only dream for and we don’t have those majorities right now.What our lawmaking process does is make it all but impossible to enact sweeping, comprehensive change“So what it all leads back to is a need to eliminate the filibuster. We need to continue to make it clear to Senator Manchin he has a choice to do something or do nothing, and then someone has to press upon him that history will remember those choices.”America’s founding fathers constructed a government of checks and balances that guarded against rash action: a chief executive, a bicameral Congress with veto power, an independent judiciary. Washington mythology held that they invented the filibuster to guard against the tyranny of the majority but this has repeatedly been debunked by scholars who say it was created by mistake and first used in 1837.William Howell, a political scientist at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, said: “The framers didn’t create the filibuster. It’s excessive even by their standards.“What our lawmaking process does generally, and what the filibuster does in particular, is make it all but impossible to enact sweeping, comprehensive change. It leaves in its wake pervasive gridlock and sporadic opportunity to make incremental changes and that’s about it.”Every major piece of legislation successfully enacted over the past decade has circumvented the filibuster through a process called budget reconciliation, Howell noted. This tool may allow Democrats to go it alone with the American Jobs Plan, which would invest heavily in bridges, railways and roads, “soft” infrastructure such as caregiving and clean energy.Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator for Rhode Island, tweeted that he is “nervous” about Congress doing too little to address the climate crisis. “We must get Senate Dems unified on climate on a real reconciliation bill, lest we get sucked into ‘bipartisanship’ mud where we fail on climate,” he wrote.The filibuster is hardly the only design fault. It comes on top of a Senate that is deeply unrepresentative because each state gets two seats, no matter the size of its population. That means small, predominantly white states carry as much heft as huge, racially diverse states such as California. An effort to make the District of Columbia the 51st state would begin to redress the balance but Manchin has again vowed opposition.Levin, the Indivisible organiser, said: “The 50 Democratic senators represent 41 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators. I think anybody objectively looking at how legislation is passed in this country has to come away with the conclusion that we are not set up to tackle 21st-century problems with a 19th-century democracy.”I don’t think it’s fair to say that an op-ed from a single senator dictates the future of that legislationDespite these headwinds, Levin is not giving up on Biden’s progressive project, pointing out that Democratic presidents have been here before. In 1964, under Johnson, the Civil Rights Act passed the Senate after overcoming a 54-day filibuster, and the following year the Voting Rights Act took more than a month of full Senate debate to escape the threat.“Neither of those things were passed with the snap of a finger,” he said. “It is fair to say the For the People Act is a tough fight. I don’t think it’s fair to say that an op-ed from a single senator dictates the future of that legislation. It’s always easy to be cynical about these things but there’s reason to hope. There are very real pathways forward to get this done.”Groups supporting the legislation intend to press ahead with a $30m campaign pressing Democratic senators to rewrite filibuster rules and pass the bill. Manchin has talked about supporting another voting bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, but activists insist that both pieces of legislation are needed.LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said: “What we are seeing is that, as America becomes younger and more diverse, the reality is we currently do not have a political infrastructure that can support the kind of democracy that is laid out in the constitution where people have free and fair access to the ballot.“We need the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act as a step closer to strengthening our democracy and protecting those elements that have literally been fought and won through protest, through giving of lives.” More

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      Pelosi urges Senate Democrats to back voting rights bill and ‘save democracy’

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      Nancy Pelosi is urging congressional Democrats not to abandon their marquee voting-rights legislation in favor of a narrower bill, as the House speaker attempts to stave off opposition to the embattled measure from members of the party in the Senate.Pelosi said on a caucus call on Thursday that Democrats needed to prioritize HR1 – the sweeping election reform bill known as the For the People Act – to save American democracy, according to a source familiar with the matter.The legislation is teetering on the brink of collapse in the Senate after Joe Manchin, a key conservative Democrat, said he would not back the bill, nor vote to eliminate the filibuster rule that would ease its passage.But Pelosi said on the call that she was holding out hope that Senate Democrats could persuade Manchin to support the measure and force the legislation through.“I have not given up on Manchin,” Pelosi told her colleagues, according to the source.The rare, personal move from Pelosi to influence events in the Senate reflects the deep alarm among Democratic leadership about the rapidly diminishing chances of the bill passing into law in the wake of Manchin’s announcement.It also marks the second time in three days that Pelosi reiterated her position, after pressing the issue in a letter to her Democratic colleagues on Tuesday.“We are at an urgent moment because of the Republican assault on our democracy,” Pelosi said in the letter, adding that the legislation “must become law in order to respect the sanctity of the vote, which is the basis of our democracy”.In the national struggle for voting rights, Democrats have rested their hopes for rolling back dozens of new voter restrictions passed by Republican state legislatures to limit early and mail-in voting, and empower partisan poll watchers, on HR1.The 818-page bill would expand ballot access and tighten controls on campaign spending. It would also end the president’s exemption from conflict-of-interest rules, which allowed Donald Trump to maintain businesses that profited off his presidency.Manchin has said instead that he would support the passage of a narrower election reform bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore federal oversight over state-level election law struck down by the supreme court in 2013.But Pelosi noted sharply in her letter that the John Lewis bill was “not a substitute” for HR1, and stressed it would not be ready until after the summer as it undergoes intensive vetting to prepare for expected legal challenges.The John Lewis bill also faces further hurdles after the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, condemned the measure as Democratic power grab, all but ensuring it will be defeated by an expected Republican filibuster.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has vowed to force a vote on House-passed HR1 towards the end of June, but with Manchin’s vow to oppose the measure, the prospects of its passage in the Senate now appear all but impossible.Pelosi has remained undeterred. “HR1 must be passed now,” she said in the letter. More