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      Joe Biden Is as Puzzled by the Senate as You Are

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      Gail Collins: Bret, it’s been a while between conversations and although I’ve been on vacation I have noticed a lot of … stuff. Particularly the frozen Senate. Tell me, who’s your hero? Action-stopping Joe Manchin? Perpetually plotting Mitch McConnell? Let’s-all-get-along Mitt Romney?Bret Stephens: Welcome back from holiday, Gail. Years ago I won a minor journalism award on the strength of my mockery of Mitt Romney’s presidential bid. But how can you not love a Republican who voted to convict Donald Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors not once, but twice?Gail: Yeah, I’ve certainly gotten over that dog on the roof of his car.Bret: That said, my hero of the hour is the gentleman from West Virginia. Everybody hates the filibuster until they find themselves in the minority, and Manchin is doing his fellow Democrats a favor, which they can thank him for when they lose the majority. I really don’t understand how some liberals attack the filibuster as some kind of emblem of white supremacy when both Barack Obama and Joe Biden were defending its sanctity during a period of Republican control of the Senate. Come to think of it, as Democratic senators past and present go, I think I like Manchin almost as much as I like the other Joe — Lieberman, that is.But how about you? Who is your senator of the hour?Gail: Oh gosh, I’m fascinated by the Lieberman-Manchin coupling. I think you’re the first one who’s suggested to me it might be a … welcome development. We’ve divided on the Lieberman issue before. I’ve blamed him for everything from Al Gore’s loss of the presidency to the flaws in Obamacare, but I won’t torture you on that front today.Bret: Shouldn’t you blame, um, Ralph Nader, or Antonin Scalia, or those earth-tone suits for Gore’s loss? Sorry, go on.Gail: There are two reasons Manchin keeps holding up the Biden agenda. One is that he’s from a very Republican state and has to keep reminding his voters he isn’t like those other Democrats. Perfectly understandable, but not exactly heroic.Bret: Well, you can have a conservative Democrat from West Virginia who votes with his party roughly 62 percent of the time. Or you can have a Trumpist Republican who votes with her party 100 percent of the time. I think liberals should give their red state Democrats a little more respect lest they be tempted to defect like Colorado’s Ben Campbell, Alabama’s Richard Shelby and Texas’ Phil Gramm.Gail: Manchin also just seems like he thinks it’s cool to be the one guy who can stop every bill in its tracks. But in this kind of situation, being the big “no” vote isn’t heroic, it’s posturing.As to my senator of the hour, don’t know if I have a good nominee, but I am very, very tempted to drive you crazy and say Chuck Schumer.Bret: Ideological differences aside, I genuinely like the senator and his wonderful wife Iris. So I’ll refrain from suggesting that the Senate majority leader would ever stoop to any political posturing of his own. What is it that you’re liking about him so much lately?Gail: These days, Senate majority leader isn’t exactly a pleasant gig. Rounding up the votes to get anything done in a 50-50 chamber is godawful. But Schumer’s been doing pretty well at holding things together. You can tell he really gets a kick out of having the job.And admit it, he’s more likable than Mitch McConnell.Bret: Gail, that’s like setting the bar at the bottom of the Dead Sea.Gail: Meanwhile, there’s that movement by conservative Catholic bishops to deny Biden the right to take communion because he supports abortion rights.I’m pretty confident where you’ll come down on this one, but let me hear your thoughts.Bret: Well, as a friend of mine pointed out to me the other day, if the bishops are going to deny Joe Biden communion for his pro-choice views, shouldn’t they also deny communion to pro-death penalty conservatives? Last I checked, the Vatican wasn’t too keen on lethal injections, either. This seems pretty, um, selective in its opprobrium.But, hey, as a member of the original Abrahamic faith, what do I know about all this Catholic stuff? I’m more interested in your view of the subject.Gail: When I went through Catholic schools, we were taught abortion was murder, period. I stopped believing that a very long time ago, but I do understand people who have personal moral reservations.Bret: Fair enough, but I’ve always had strong reservations about the “abortion is murder” school of thinking.If it’s murder, then the tens of millions of American women who have had abortions over the decades are, at a minimum, accomplices to murder, if not murderers themselves. If that’s the reasoning, then the logic of the argument leads you to conclude that they ought to be in prison. Alternatively, if abortion is murder but the women who get abortions don’t deserve to be treated as criminals, then you are devaluing the moral gravity of the act of murder. Either way, the position strikes me as intellectually indefensible.Sorry. I’m ranting. Go on.Gail: I could appreciate where the anti-abortion forces are coming from — except that they’re often the ones who do so little to provide services that help poor women avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Or provide job protection for new parents. Or day care for their infants.Bret: I think this is yet another good argument for keeping religion out of politics as much as possible. I’m not a fan of many aspects of the welfare state, but I don’t understand conservative politicians who invoke their Christianity — the original version of which is basically socialism plus God — only to take less-than-Christian positions.Gail: Joe Biden is the guy who’s crusading to expand services that would make it easier for struggling young women to keep their babies and raise them happily. But he’s supposed to be the conservative bishops’ villain. Sort of ironic, huh?Bret: Ironic, too, that he’s only the second Catholic president in American history, after Jack Kennedy, and probably the most religious Democrat in the White House since Jimmy Carter. And he’s the guy the church wants to censure?Gail: One last thing before we sign off: Tuesday’s our big Primary Day in New York City. And the debut of our new preferential voting system. It’s the same thing Maine did in the 2020 presidential election.Bret: No idea why it didn’t occur to someone that what happens in Maine should stay in Maine. Like Moxie soda.Gail: So I went to vote early, having painfully prepared to choose five — five! — mayoral contenders in order of preference.Bret: I realize it’s a secret ballot, though I’d love to know who you picked last.Gail: Then I proudly moved on to the next section and discovered I was supposed to pick just as many people for comptroller. Have to admit this one threw me. Really, do you think even the most avid student of local government can tell you who the third-best comptroller contender is?Bret: I barely even know what a comptroller is, if I’m being honest. But I’ve gotta assume the third-best one must be Scott Stringer, since that’s the job he currently has.Gail: Not really sure this preferential voting system is my, um, preference. Any thoughts?Bret: Being the knee-jerk conservative that I am, my instinct is to oppose it on the “just-cuz” principle. Other countries that tinker with their voting procedures never seem to meaningfully change the quality of governance, even if it can shift the dynamics of a race. But, as you pointed out, ranked-choice voting does confuse a lot of voters who sensibly decide that they don’t have to become experts on secondary electoral races in order to make a political choice.On the other hand, advocates of the system argue that it tends to work in favor of more moderate, consensus-choice candidates, while cutting down on negative campaigning, which America could surely use these days. I also read somewhere that the Australians have been using the ranked-choice system for a century or so, and the universe Down Under didn’t come to a screeching halt. So I’m happy to be persuaded either way on the issue.Gail: We’ll see. But preferential voting certainly isn’t on my top five things to worry about. So many more worthy candidates.Bret: One last thing, Gail. If you haven’t already, read our colleague Nicholas Casey’s moving and elegant magazine essay about his father. I hope our readers do, too. It’s a reminder that all of us, at some level, spend a part of our lives searching for our dads — and, sometimes, even finding them.Gail: Amen.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      How Joe Manchin Can Fix the Filibuster

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      It’s easy to sympathize with the liberal desire to bury the Senate filibuster forever. The 60-vote threshold for Senate legislation is a choke point in a political system defined by gridlock, sclerosis and futility. It provides an excuse for policy abdication, encouraging the legislative branch to cede authority to the presidency and the courts, and the Republican Party to decline to have a policy agenda at all. Its history is checkered, its pervasive use is a novelty of polarization, and its eventual disappearance seems inevitable — so why not adapt now? More

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      Senator Joe Manchin Has a Point

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      With an opinion piece in The Charleston Gazette-Mail on Sunday, Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, effectively killed his party’s ambitious voting-rights reform twice over. First, he said he would vote against the bill in question — the so-called For the People Act. (In a Senate split 50-50, his defection looks decisive.) Second, he promised to defend existing Senate filibuster rules, which allow Republicans to prevent the bill from coming to a vote in the first place.For Democrats, the op-ed held more insult than injury. Mr. Manchin’s position has been clear for months. What is new is the grounds for it: Low partisanship, he implied, not high ideals, is the source of his colleagues’ vision.He has a point.The vision of voting rights that worries Mr. Manchin was succinctly captured in a communiqué that arrived last month in the inboxes of those who support the Brennan Center for Justice at the N.Y.U. School of Law. New laws proposed or passed in Republican-controlled states — Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona — have cracked down on early voting, voting by mail and the use of unmanned drop boxes, the email warned. “Nobody,” it stressed, “should erect barriers that would curb the freedom to vote. Period.”It is a stirring exhortation, but does it make any sense? Democracy is a system, a set of procedures — not just a mood or a dream. Barriers and curbs are what it is built out of. If you don’t have them, you don’t have a democracy. The important thing is that they be reasonable.The definition of reasonableness is proving elusive. When Republicans in the Texas Legislature were on the verge of passing their new voting law at the end of May, Democrats staged a walkout, denying the chamber a quorum and stalling the bill’s passage. Observers disagree about whether these Texan tactics are protecting democracy or sabotaging it.The Democrats who control both houses of the U.S. Congress discuss the conflict over voting in apocalyptic terms. The For the People Act aims to extend the voting practices that Republicans have been curtailing. Democrats describe Republicans’ tighter regulation as “disenfranchisement” and even “voter suppression.” Representative John Sarbanes, the Maryland Democrat who introduced the House version of the For the People Act, H.R. 1, has spoken of the bill as a way of addressing “the need for comprehensive, structural democracy reform.”That is the wrong way to look at the For the People Act. It has none of the hallmarks of a revolution in voting rights. It does not open the vote to new classes of people as the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments did. Those amendments granted the vote to ex-slaves and nonwhites (1870), women (1920) and 18-year-olds (1971). (The new bill does seek to disqualify states from permanently denying the vote to felons, though that would most likely require a constitutional wrangle over the 14th Amendment.)Since real voting-rights breakthroughs, by definition, admit people from outside the political system, they shatter political coalitions and produce bipartisan votes. Women’s suffrage did that a century ago. So did civil rights in the 1960s. By contrast, the new election bills, on both sides, are among the most partisan in memory. H.R. 1 got no Republican votes. On initial passage, Texas’ Republican-sponsored bill got no Democratic support in either chamber.You will find good ideas in the Democrats’ bills (like making Election Day a national holiday, and backing up electronic ballots with paper ones, to facilitate recounts) and just as many in the Republicans’ (Texas’ bans the public funding of third-party ballot distribution). What you won’t find is a single innovation that works against the partisan interests of its sponsors. When Mr. Manchin writes in his op-ed that the argument over voting rights “is not about finding common ground, but seeking partisan advantage,” he does not lack for evidence.Democrats are offering something different than what they say: not an expansion of voting rights but a relaxation of voting regulations. The For the People Act would codify the looser rules many states adopted in order to conduct the 2020 elections in the midst of a pandemic. That election had the largest turnout rate (66.3 percent) since 1900, and strengthened Democrats. But the looser rules were not so much triumphs of reason as concessions to Covid-19. The conditions that made the new rules seem normal or common-sensical no longer obtain. We might want those rules. But we don’t need them.There is always a paradox when it comes to democratic elections. They must be opaque, in order to guarantee ballot secrecy and prevent intimidation. But they must also be transparent, in order to prevent fraud. The perennial danger is that some actor with a partisan interest might interpose himself in one of the opaque spaces to make the contest less fair.At the crudest level, a politician can use private pressure as a way to render himself unaccountable to an electoral verdict. That is what President Donald Trump did when, on Jan. 2, two months after his electoral defeat, he phoned the Georgia secretary of state to seek the reversal of its results in that state. (“Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”) Certain reforms urged by Democrats are meant to pre-empt abuses and irregularities specific to the Trump era. Title X of H.R. 1, for instance, includes requirements that presidents and vice presidents disclose their tax returns.The basic practice that Republicans seek to curb is ballot harvesting: Whenever voting happens elsewhere than at a voting booth, third parties are responsible for conveying voters’ intentions to authorities. Obviously, bringing couriers into the voting system can increase turnout — consider “shut-in” older people in nursing homes and elsewhere. Just as obviously, ballot-harvesting increases opportunities for fraud — consider the same older people, chatting about their voting preferences as they plan to hand their votes to a partisan political activist. Some states authorize only relatives or caregivers to deliver votes; others, like California, have no such restrictions, opening the way for activist groups.It is largely to prevent ballot harvesting that most states used to allow absentee voting only in extraordinary circumstances. The prevailing understanding was that, other things being equal, a slightly lower rate of participation was a price worth paying for an election less susceptible to corruption. Absent a pandemic, there is a coherent case that there should never be absentee or mail-in balloting.It is striking that reformers in both parties have so little to say directly about what is arguably the biggest problem for the country’s electoral integrity: the dragging out of vote-counting till long after Election Day. Nothing did more to escalate tensions in the days immediately following last Nov. 3 than the indeterminate results in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, as Americans waited for who-knows-how-many votes to come in from who-knows-where.Except in extraordinary cases like the Florida recount of 2000, there is no valid reason for long counting lags. They seldom happened even when vote counting was much more primitive than it is today.An election in which votes are still being received even as counts are being made public is, ipso facto, an election vulnerable to manipulation. When political operatives understand that they need only a few votes from their allies in District X to put them over the top, occasions arise for malfeasance on one side and paranoia on the other. The result can be lawsuits meant to muddy the count, desperate searches for new sources of votes and back-room chicanery of the sort in which Mr. Trump tried to involve the Georgia secretary of state.Maintaining wide and equal access to ballots is a democratic necessity. If it were the only necessity, the For the People Act would be unobjectionable, and Mr. Manchin’s misgivings idle. But there is a second necessity: simplicity. The public will trust a voting system only to the extent that it is comprehensible and resistant to manipulation. Multiplying the methods, platforms and times of voting adds complexity. And in a democracy, complexity is often corruption waiting to happen.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin’s Nihilistic Bipartisanship

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      We are in the eye of the storm of American democratic collapse. There is, outwardly, a feeling of calm. The Biden administration is competent and placid. The coronavirus emergency is receding nationally, if not internationally. Donald Trump, once the most powerful man on earth and the emperor of the news cycle, is now a failed blogger under criminal investigation. More

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      VP Kamala Harris Asked to Lead on Voting Rights, and It's a Challenge

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      Her new role comes as the Senate enters a crucial month in the Democratic drive to enact the most extensive elections overhaul in a generation.WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris did not come to her role with a list of demands. She wanted to be a generalist, in large part to learn the political rhythms of a president she was still getting to know. In the first few months of her tenure, some of her portfolio assignments were just that: assignments.But on the matter of protecting voting rights, an issue critically important to President Biden’s legacy, Ms. Harris took a rare step. In a meeting with the president over a month ago, she told him that she wanted to take the lead on the issue.Mr. Biden agreed, two people familiar with the discussions said, and his advisers decided to time the announcement of Ms. Harris’s new role to a speech he delivered on Tuesday in Tulsa, Okla. In his remarks, the president declared the efforts of Republican-led statehouses around the country to make it harder to vote as an “assault on our democracy, ” and said Ms. Harris could help lead the charge against them.He also gave a blunt assessment of the task: “It’s going to take a hell of a lot of work.”Back in Washington, the president’s announcement has not clearly illuminated a path forward for Ms. Harris, whose involvement in the issue stands to become her most politically delicate engagement yet. Her new role comes as the Senate enters a crucial month in the Democratic drive to enact the farthest-reaching elections overhaul in a generation, including a landmark expansion of voting rights that is faltering in the Senate.Her office has not yet announced its plans, aside from calls Ms. Harris held with civil rights activists, including Derrick Johnson, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a few scheduled meetings with prominent voting rights groups. Her advisers say she will take a wide-ranging approach to the issue by giving speeches, convening stakeholders and using the vice-presidential bully pulpit to raise awareness of the importance of the vote.“The work of voting rights has implications for not just one year down the road or four years down the road but 50 years from now,” Symone D. Sanders, the vice president’s senior adviser and press secretary, said in an interview on Wednesday. “The president understands that and the vice president understands that, and that’s why we will implement a comprehensive strategy.”The voting rights bill faces a more urgent timeline. The vast majority of the party has agreed to make the bill the party’s top legislative priority, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, vowed to put it up for a vote later this month so any changes could be put into effect before the 2022 elections.With just weeks to go, it remains far from clear if it can actually pass. Because Republicans have locked arms in opposition, the only path forward would require all 50 Democrats — plus Ms. Harris, who serves as the tiebreaking vote in an evenly divided Senate — to support not only the substance of the bill, but changing the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to approve major legislation, allowing it to pass with a simple majority instead.A handful of Democratic senators have expressed unease about changing the filibuster, while Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have been more adamant in their opposition.Mr. Biden has already pledged to sign the bill, which the House passed with only Democratic votes this spring. Known as the For the People Act, the bill would overhaul the nation’s elections system by creating new national requirements for early and mail-in voting, rein in campaign donations and limit partisan gerrymandering. But with the bill all but stalled in the Senate, Mr. Biden has repeatedly expressed concern over its future in his discussions with Democrats.The announcement that Ms. Harris would be working to move the bill forward took many on Capitol Hill by surprise. Ms. Harris and Mr. Schumer spoke on Tuesday — and had plans to hold a follow-up conversation late Wednesday, a White House official said — but it did not appear Mr. Manchin or Ms. Sinema were given a heads up.In a statement, Mr. Schumer said he welcomed Ms. Harris’s help navigating into law an elections overhaul that was “essential to protecting the future of our democracy.”Proponents of the voting legislation took her involvement as a sign that their attempts to build pressure not just on lawmakers, but the White House, were being felt.Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said he welcomed Ms. Harris’s help navigating into law an elections overhaul that was “essential to protecting the future of our democracy.”Erin Scott for The New York Times“It’s an interesting move given the long odds of anything getting passed and signed into law,” said James P. Manley, who served as a senior aide to former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader before Mr. Schumer. “There’s not a lot of cards to play right now, so it shows me they are going to try to raise the public temperature of this thing.”Others pointed out that even though Mr. Biden has decades of experience moving legislation through the Senate, Ms. Harris, the first woman and woman of color to hold her role, comes to the issue with an equally valuable perspective as the country grapples with the ways American policies have marginalized and mistreated Black people.“I think that Vice President Harris herself personifies the need for voting rights to be extended,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, who attended the speech in Tulsa, said in an interview. “When she’s on the phone or walks into an office, we’re looking at the reason we need voting rights.”Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said that the decision to elevate Ms. Harris as the face of the administration’s work on the issue was a pivotal moment for the Biden White House given the number of voter suppression efforts that were moving forward — 389 bills in 48 states and counting, according to a tracker maintained the Brennan Center.“It has been decades since a Democratic White House has made voting rights and democracy reform a central goal,” Mr. Waldman said, but he added, “the clock is ticking.”Ms. Harris’s impact on the hand-to-hand politics of the Senate is expected to be limited, but she often drew attention to voting rights during her four years as a senator. During her last year in the Senate, Ms. Harris introduced legislation that would expand election security measures, require each state to have early in-person voting periods and allow for an expansion of mail-in absentee ballots.In 2020, Ms. Harris was also a co-sponsor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore a piece of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that relied on a formula to identify states with a history of discrimination and require that those jurisdictions clear any changes to their voting processes with the federal government. The protections were eliminated by the Supreme Court in 2013.Still, Ms. Harris, who spent a chunk of her time in the Senate running for president, was not known for building especially close relationships with colleagues, and Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema are no exceptions.Several Democratic aides who work closely with the senators scoffed on Wednesday at the idea that Ms. Harris, known as a staunch liberal, would be the one to persuade either moderate lawmaker to change the filibuster rule. Nor is Ms. Harris a likely candidate to broker the kind of compromise on the substance of the bill needed to persuade Mr. Manchin, the only Democrat who has not sponsored it, to back it.Ms. Harris’s attempts in February to nudge Mr. Manchin to back the White House’s proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package are illustrative.Mr. Manchin was piqued when Ms. Harris appeared, without warning, on a television affiliate in West Virginia to promote the package before he backed it. Though a Democratic aide familiar with the matter, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, said the episode was now “water under the bridge,” it prompted cleanup by top White House officials.Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema’s offices declined to comment about Ms. Harris’s new role.Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are doing their best to kill the bill and blunt any Democratic attempt to change the filibuster rule, which would leave their party powerless to stop the passage of sweeping liberal priorities well beyond voting rights.At an event in his home state on Wednesday, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, argued that Democrats were inflating the impact of new state voting laws in an attempt to justify an unwarranted and chaotic slew of top-down changes to the way states run elections.“What is going on is the Democrats are trying to convince the Senate that states are involved in trying to prevent people from voting in order to pass a total federal takeover in how we conduct elections,” he told reporters. He said “not a single member” of his party supported the bill.Aware of the daunting path ahead, allies of the White House said that shepherding the bill through Congress was only one piece of the effort. Ms. Harris could be useful in helping ratchet up pressure on private companies, working with civil rights organizations, and engaging local communities over the importance of registering to vote.“She understands the need to engage in what I’d like to call kind of an ‘all of the above approach,’” said Representative Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada. “We can’t take anything for granted when we’re talking about having people’s voice heard at the ballot box.” More

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      Harris Asked to Lead on Voting Rights, and It's a Challenge

      by

      Her new role comes as the Senate enters a crucial month in the Democratic drive to enact the most extensive elections overhaul in a generation.WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris did not come to her role with a list of demands. She wanted to be a generalist, in large part to learn the political rhythms of a president she was still getting to know. In the first few months of her tenure, some of her portfolio assignments were just that: assignments.But on the matter of protecting voting rights, an issue critically important to President Biden’s legacy, Mr. Harris took a rare step. In a meeting with the president over a month ago, she told him that she wanted to take the lead on the issue.Mr. Biden agreed, two people familiar with the discussions said, and his advisers decided to time the announcement of Ms. Harris’s new role to a speech he delivered on Tuesday in Tulsa, Okla. In his remarks, the president declared the efforts of Republican-led statehouses around the country to make it harder to vote as an “assault on our democracy, ” and said Ms. Harris could help lead the charge against them.He also gave a blunt assessment of the task: “It’s going to take a hell of a lot of work.”Back in Washington, the president’s announcement has not clearly illuminated a path forward for Ms. Harris, whose involvement in the issue stands to become her most politically delicate engagement yet. Her new role comes as the Senate enters a crucial month in the Democratic drive to enact the farthest-reaching elections overhaul in a generation, including a landmark expansion of voting rights that is faltering in the Senate.Her office has not yet announced its plans, aside from calls Ms. Harris held with civil rights activists, including Derrick Johnson, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a few scheduled meetings with prominent voting rights groups. Her advisers say she will take a wide-ranging approach to the issue by giving speeches, convening stakeholders and using the vice-presidential bully pulpit to raise awareness of the importance of the vote.“The work of voting rights has implications for not just one year down the road or four years down the road but 50 years from now,” Symone Sanders, the vice president’s senior adviser and press secretary, said in an interview on Wednesday. “The president understands that and the vice president understands that, and that’s why we will implement a comprehensive strategy.”The voting rights bill faces a more urgent timeline. The vast majority of the party has agreed to make the bill the party’s top legislative priority, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, vowed to put it up for a vote later this month so any changes could be put into effect before the 2022 elections.With just weeks to go, it remains far from clear if it can actually pass. Because Republicans have locked arms in opposition, the only path forward would require all 50 Democrats — plus Ms. Harris, who serves as the tiebreaking vote in an evenly divided Senate — to support not only the substance of the bill, but changing the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to approve major legislation, allowing it to pass with a simple majority instead.A handful of Democratic senators have expressed unease about changing the filibuster, while Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, have been more adamant in their opposition.Mr. Biden has already pledged to sign the bill, which the House passed with only Democratic votes this spring. Known as the For the People Act, the bill would overhaul the nation’s elections system by creating new national requirements for early and mail-in voting, rein in campaign donations and limit partisan gerrymandering. But with the bill all but stalled in the Senate, Mr. Biden has repeatedly expressed concern over its future in his discussions with Democrats.The announcement that Ms. Harris would be working to move the bill forward took many on Capitol Hill by surprise. Ms. Harris and Mr. Schumer spoke on Tuesday — and had plans to hold a follow-up conversation late Wednesday, a White House official said — but it did not appear Mr. Manchin or Ms. Sinema were given a heads up.In a statement, Mr. Schumer said he welcomed Ms. Harris’s help navigating into law an elections overhaul that was “essential to protecting the future of our democracy.”Proponents of the voting legislation took her involvement as a sign that their attempts to build pressure not just on lawmakers, but the White House, were being felt.Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said he welcomed Ms. Harris’s help navigating into law an elections overhaul that was “essential to protecting the future of our democracy.”Erin Scott for The New York Times“It’s an interesting move given the long odds of anything getting passed and signed into law,” said James P. Manley, who served as a senior aide to former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader before Mr. Schumer. “There’s not a lot of cards to play right now, so it shows me they are going to try to raise the public temperature of this thing.”Others pointed out that even though Mr. Biden has decades of experience moving legislation through the Senate, Ms. Harris, the first woman and woman of color to hold her role, comes to the issue with an equally valuable perspective as the country grapples with the ways American policies have marginalized and mistreated Black people.“I think that Vice President Harris herself personifies the need for voting rights to be extended,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, who attended the speech in Tulsa, said in an interview. “When she’s on the phone or walks into an office, we’re looking at the reason we need voting rights.”Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said that the decision to elevate Ms. Harris as the face of the administration’s work on the issue was a pivotal moment for the Biden White House given the number of voter suppression efforts that were moving forward — 389 bills in 48 states and counting, according to a tracker maintained the Brennan Center.“It has been decades since a Democratic White House has made voting rights and democracy reform a central goal,” Mr. Waldman said, but he added, “the clock is ticking.”Ms. Harris’s impact on the hand-to-hand politics of the Senate is expected to be limited, but she often drew attention to voting rights during her four years as a senator. During her last year in the Senate, Ms. Harris introduced legislation that would expand election security measures, require each state to have early in-person voting periods and allow for an expansion of mail-in absentee ballots.In 2020, Ms. Harris was also a co-sponsor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore a piece of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that relied on a formula to identify states with a history of discrimination and require that those jurisdictions clear any changes to their voting processes with the federal government. The protections were eliminated by the Supreme Court in 2013.Still, Ms. Harris, who spent a chunk of her time in the Senate running for president, was not known for building especially close relationships with colleagues, and Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema are no exceptions.Several Democratic aides who work closely with the senators scoffed on Wednesday at the idea that Ms. Harris, known as a staunch liberal, would be the one to persuade either moderate lawmaker to change the filibuster rule. Nor is Ms. Harris a likely candidate to broker the kind of compromise on the substance of the bill needed to persuade Mr. Manchin, the only Democrat who has not sponsored it, to back it.Ms. Harris’s attempts in February to nudge Mr. Manchin to back the White House’s proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package is illustrative.Mr. Manchin was piqued when Ms. Harris appeared, without warning, on a television affiliate in West Virginia to promote the package before he backed it. Though a Democratic aide familiar with the matter, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, said the episode was now “water under the bridge” it prompted cleanup by top White House officials.Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema’s offices declined to comment about Ms. Harris’s new role.Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are doing their best to kill the bill and blunt any Democratic attempt to change the filibuster rule, which would leave their party powerless to stop the passage of sweeping liberal priorities well beyond voting rights.At an event in his home state on Wednesday, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, argued that Democrats were inflating the impact of new state voting laws in an attempt to justify an unwarranted and chaotic slew of top-down changes to the way states run elections.“What is going on is the Democrats are trying to convince the Senate that states are involved in trying to prevent people from voting in order to pass a total federal takeover in how we conduct elections,” he told reporters. He said “not a single member” of his party supported the bill.Aware of the daunting path ahead, allies of the White House said that shepherding the bill through Congress was only one piece of the effort. Ms. Harris could be useful in helping ratchet up pressure on private companies, working with civil rights organizations, and engaging local communities over the importance of registering to vote.“She understands the need to engage in what I’d like to call kind of an ‘all of the above approach,’” said Representative Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada. “We can’t take anything for granted when we’re talking about having people’s voice heard at the ballot box.” More

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      Joe Manchin’s Motivations

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      Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherFrom the moment Joe Biden was elected president, all eyes have been on Joe Manchin, the Democratic Senator from West Virginia.Representing a vanishing brand of Democratic politics that makes his vote anything but predictable, he has become the make-or-break legislator of the Biden era.Mr. Manchin has often been a holdout when it comes to Mr. Biden’s economic plans because of his commitment to the ideals of bipartisanship and the cultural conservatism of his constituents.We explore how and why Mr. Manchin’s vote has become so powerful.On today’s episodeJonathan Martin, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.In an evenly divided Senate, the vote of Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is indispensable to President Biden. Sarah Silbiger/The New York TimesBackground readingIn Washington, policy revolves around Joe Manchin. Read Jonathan Martin’s exploration of why the senator likes it that way.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Jonathan Martin contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Leslye Davis, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano and Soraya Shockley, Corey Schreppel and Anita Badejo.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Theo Balcomb, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman and Wendy Dorr. More

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      Voting Rights Bill Falters in Congress as States Race Ahead

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      Opposition from Republicans and some of their own senators has left Democrats struggling to determine whether they should try to nix the filibuster to save a top priority.WASHINGTON — In the national struggle over voting rights, Democrats have rested their hopes for turning back a wave of new restrictions in Republican-led states and expanding ballot access on their narrow majorities in Congress. Failure, they have repeatedly insisted, “is not an option.”But as Republican efforts to clamp down on voting prevail across the country, the drive to enact the most sweeping elections overhaul in generations is faltering in the Senate. With a self-imposed Labor Day deadline for action, Democrats are struggling to unite around a strategy to overcome solid Republican opposition and an almost certain filibuster.Republicans in Congress have dug in against the measure, with even the most moderate dismissing it as bloated and overly prescriptive. That leaves Democrats no option for passing it other than to try to force the bill through by destroying the filibuster rule — which requires 60 votes to put aside any senator’s objection — to pass it on a simple majority, party-line vote.But Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the Democrats’ decisive swing vote, has repeatedly pledged to protect the filibuster and is refusing to sign on to the voting rights bill. He calls the legislation “too darn broad” and too partisan, despite endorsing such proposals in past sessions. Other Democrats also remain uneasy about some of its core provisions.Navigating the 800-page For the People Act, or Senate Bill 1, through an evenly split chamber was never going to be an easy task, even after it passed the House with only Democratic votes. But the Democrats’ strategy for moving the measure increasingly hinges on the longest of long shots: persuading Mr. Manchin and the other 49 Democrats to support both the bill and the gutting of the filibuster.“We ought to be able to pass it — it really would be transformative,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said recently. “But if we have several members of our caucus who have just point-blank said, ‘I will not break the filibuster,’ then what are we even doing?”Summarizing the party’s challenge, another Democratic senator who asked to remain anonymous to discuss strategy summed it up this way: The path to passage is as narrow as it is rocky, but Democrats have no choice but to die trying to get across.The hand-wringing is likely to only intensify in the coming weeks. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, vowed to force a floor debate in late June, testing Mr. Manchin’s opposition and laying the groundwork to justify scrapping the filibuster rule.“Hopefully, we can get bipartisan support,” Mr. Schumer said. “So far, we have not seen any glimmers on S. 1, and if not, everything is on the table.”The stakes, both politically and for the nation’s election systems, are enormous.The bill’s failure would allow the enactment of restrictive new voting measures in Republican-led states such as Georgia, Florida and Montana to take effect without legislative challenge. Democrats fear that would empower the Republican Party to pursue a strategy of marginalizing Black and young voters based on former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud.Demonstrators in the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta protested restrictive voting measures under consideration in March.Megan Varner/Getty ImagesIf the measure passed, Democrats could effectively overpower the states by putting in place new national mandates that they set up automatic voter registration, hold regular no-excuse early and mail-in voting, and restore the franchise to felons who have served their terms. The legislation would also end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, restructure the Federal Election Commission and require super PACs to disclose their big donors.A legion of advocacy groups and civil rights veterans argue that the fight is just starting.“This game isn’t done — we are just gearing up for a floor fight,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote, which are spending millions of dollars on television ads in states like West Virginia. “At the end of the day, every single senator is going to have to make a choice if they are going to vote to uphold the right to vote or uphold an arcane Senate rule. That is the situation that creates the pressure to act.”Proponents of the overhaul on and off Capitol Hill have focused their attention for weeks on Mr. Manchin, a centrist who has expressed deep concerns about the consequences of pushing through voting legislation with the support of only one party. So far, they have taken a deliberately hands-off approach, betting that the senator will realize that there is no real compromise to be had with Republicans.There is little sign that he has come to that conclusion on his own. Democrats huddled last week in a large conference room atop a Senate office building to discuss the bill, making sure Mr. Manchin was there for an elaborate presentation about why it was vital. Mr. Schumer invited Marc E. Elias, the well-known Democratic election lawyer, to explain in detail the extent of the restrictions being pushed through Republican statehouses around the country. Senators as ideologically diverse as Raphael Warnock of Georgia, a progressive, and Jon Tester of Montana, a centrist, warned what might happen if the party did not act.Mr. Manchin listened silently and emerged saying his position had not changed.“I’m learning,” he told reporters. “Basically, we’re going to be talking and negotiating, talking and negotiating, and talking and negotiating.”Senators Rob Portman of Ohio, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Gary Peters of Michigan this month in the Capitol. Ms. Sinema is a co-sponsor of the election overhaul, but she has also pledged not to change the filibuster.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesDespite the intense focus on him, Mr. Manchin is not the only hurdle. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, is a co-sponsor of the election overhaul, but she has also pledged not to change the filibuster. A handful of other Democrats have shied away from definitive statements but are no less eager to do away with the rule.“I’m not to that point yet,” Mr. Tester said. He also signaled he might be more comfortable modifying the bill, saying he “wouldn’t lose any sleep” if Democrats dropped a provision that would create a new public campaign financing system for congressional candidates. Republicans have pilloried it.“First of all, we have to figure out if we have all the Democrats on board. Then we have to figure out if we have any Republicans on board,” Mr. Tester said. “Then we can answer that question.”Republicans are hoping that by banding together, they can doom the measure’s prospects. They succeeded in deadlocking a key committee considering the legislation, though their opposition did not bar it from advancing to the full Senate. They accuse Democrats of using the voting rights provisions to distract from other provisions in the bill, which they argue are designed to give Democrats lasting political advantages. If they can prevent Mr. Manchin and others from changing their minds on keeping the filibuster, they will have thwarted the entire endeavor..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media 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(min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“I don’t think they can convince 50 of their members this is the right thing to do,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. “I think it would be hard to explain giving government money to politicians, the partisan F.E.C.”In the meantime, Mr. Manchin is pushing the party to embrace what he sees as a more palatable alternative: legislation named after Representative John Lewis of Georgia, the civil rights icon who died last year, that would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013.That measure would revive a mandate that states and localities with patterns of discrimination clear election law changes with the federal government in advance, a requirement Mr. Manchin has suggested should be applied nationwide.The senator has said he prefers the approach because it would restore a practice that was the law of the land for decades and enjoyed broad bipartisan support of the kind necessary to ensure the public’s trust in election law.In reality, though, that bill has no better chance of becoming law without getting rid of the filibuster. Since the 2013 decision, when the justices asked Congress to send them an updated pre-clearance formula for reinstatement, Republicans have shown little interest in doing so.Only one, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, supports legislation reinstating the voting rights provision in the Senate. Asked recently about the prospect of building more Republican support, Ms. Murkowski pointed out that she had been unable to attract another co-sponsor from her party in the six years since the bill was first introduced.Complicating matters, it has yet to actually be reintroduced this term and may not be for months. Because any new enforcement provision would have to pass muster with the courts, Democrats are proceeding cautiously with a series of public hearings.All that has created an enormous time crunch. Election lawyers have advised Democrats that they have until Labor Day to make changes for the 2022 elections. Beyond that, they could easily lose control of the House and Senate.“The time clock for this is running out as we approach a midterm election when we face losing the Senate and even the House,” said Representative Terri A. Sewell, a Democrat who represents the so-called Civil Rights Belt of Alabama and is the lead sponsor of the bill named for Mr. Lewis.“If the vote and protecting the rights of all Americans to exercise that most precious right isn’t worth overcoming a procedural filibuster,” she said, “then what is?”Luke Broadwater More