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Republicans will ‘move forward’ on infrastructure after Biden veto threat
A lead Republican negotiator has welcomed Joe Biden’s withdrawal of his threat to veto a $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill unless a separate Democratic spending plan also passes Congress.Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said on Sunday he and fellow Republicans were “blindsided” by Biden’s comment, which the president made on Thursday after he and the senators announced a rare bipartisan compromise on a measure to fix roads, bridges and ports.“I was very glad to see the president clarify his remarks because it was inconsistent with everything that we had been told all along the way,” Portman told ABC’s This Week.Moments after announcing the deal, Biden appeared to put it in jeopardy by saying it would have to move “in tandem” with a larger bill that includes a host of Democratic priorities and which he hopes to pass along party lines.Biden said of the infrastructure bill on Thursday: “If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it.”The comments put party pressure on the 11 Republicans in the group of 21 senators who endorsed the infrastructure package. One Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, told Politico Biden had made his group of senators look like “fucking idiots”.Biden issued a statement on Saturday that said he had “created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent … The bottom line is this. I gave my word to support the infrastructure plan and that is what I intend to do.”The White House said Biden would tour the US to promote the plan, starting in Wisconsin on Tuesday.“We were glad to see them disconnected and now we can move forward,” Portman said.A key Democrat, the West Virginia centrist Joe Manchin, told ABC he believed the bipartisan proposal could reach the 60 votes needed to become law.“This is the largest infrastructure package in the history of the United States of America,” Manchin said. “And there’s no doubt in my mind that [Biden] is anxious for this bill to pass and for him to sign it. And I look forward to being there when he does.”Manchin also appealed to progressives to support the bill as part of a process which will see Democrats attempt to pass via a simple majority a larger spending bill containing policy priorities opposed by Republicans.“I would hope that all my colleagues will look at [the deal] in the most positive light,” Manchin said. “They have a chance now to review it. It has got more in there for clean infrastructure, clean technology, clean energy technology than ever before, more money for bridges and roads since the interstate system was built, water, getting rid of our lead pipes. It’s connecting in broadband all over the nation, and especially in rural America, in rural West Virginia.”Another Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, said he trusted Biden. He also delighted in needling Democrats over the separate spending package.“This is a bill which stands on its own,” Romney told CNN’s State of the Union about the infrastructure deal. “I am totally confident the president will sign up if it comes to his desk. The real challenge is whether the Democrats can get their act together and get it on his desk.”Romney said Republicans “are gonna support true infrastructure that doesn’t raise taxes”. Another Republican negotiator, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, told NBC’s Meet the Press he thought the minority leader Mitch McConnell, “will be for it, if it continues to come together as it is”.But, Romney, said, “Democrats want to do a lot of other things and I think they’re the ones that are having a hard time deciding how to proceed.”A leading House progressive, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, told NBC it was “very important for the president to know that … the Democratic caucus is here to ensure that he doesn’t fail.“And we’re here to make sure that he is successful in making sure that we do have a larger infrastructure plan. And the fact of the matter is that while we can welcome this work and welcome collaboration with Republicans … that doesn’t mean that the president should be limited by Republicans, particularly when we have a House majority, we have 50 Democratic senators and we have the White House.“I believe that we can make sure that [Biden] is successful in executing a strong agenda for working families.” More
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Mike Gravel, former Alaska senator and anti-war campaigner, dies aged 91
Mike Gravel, a former US senator from Alaska who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and confronted Barack Obama about nuclear weapons during a later presidential run, has died. He was 91.Gravel, who represented Alaska as a Democrat from 1969 to 1981, died on Saturday, according to his daughter, Lynne Mosier. Gravel had been living in Seaside, California, and was in failing health, said Theodore W Johnson, a former aide.Gravel’s two terms came during tumultuous years when construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was authorized and when Congress was deciding how to settle Alaska Native land claims and whether to classify enormous amounts of federal land as parks, preserves and monuments.He had the unenviable position of being an Alaska Democrat when some residents were burning President Jimmy Carter in effigy for his measures to place large sections of public lands in the state under protection from development.Gravel feuded with Alaska’s other senator, Republican Ted Stevens, on the land matter, preferring to fight Carter’s actions and rejecting Stevens’ advocacy for a compromise. In the end, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, a compromise that set aside millions of acres for national parks, wildlife refuges and other protected areas. It was one of the last bills Carter signed before leaving office.Gravel’s tenure also was notable for his anti-war activity. In 1971, he led a one-man filibuster to protest the Vietnam-era draft and he read into the Congressional Record 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page leaked document known as the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department’s history of the country’s early involvement in Vietnam.Gravel re-entered national politics decades after his time in the Senate to twice run for president. Gravel, then 75, and his wife, Whitney, took public transportation in 2006 to announce he was running for president as a Democrat in the 2008 election ultimately won by Obama.He launched his quest for the 2008 Democratic nomination as a critic of the Iraq war.“I believe America is doing harm every day our troops remain in Iraq – harm to ourselves and to the prospects for peace in the world,” Gravel said. He hitched his campaign to an effort that would give all policy decisions to the people through a direct vote, including health care reform and declarations of war.Gravel garnered attention for his fiery comments at Democratic forums. In one 2007 debate, the issue of the possibility of using nuclear weapons against Iran came up, and Gravel confronted Obama, then a senator from Illinois.“Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?” Gravel said.Obama replied: “I’m not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike.“Gravel ran as a Libertarian after he was excluded from later debates. In an email to supporters, he said the Democratic party “no longer represents my vision for our great country”.“It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism – all of which I find anathema to my views,” he said.He failed to get the Libertarian nomination.Gravel briefly ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020. He again criticized American wars and vowed to slash military spending. His last campaign was notable in that both his campaign manager and chief of staff were just 18 at the time.“There was never any … plan that he would do anything more than participate in the debates. He didn’t plan to campaign, but he wanted to get his ideas before a larger audience,” Johnson said.Gravel failed to qualify for the debates. He endorsed Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in the contest eventually won by now-President Joe Biden.Gravel was born Maurice Robert Gravel in Springfield, Massachusetts on 13 May 1930. In Alaska, he served as a state representative, including a stint as House speaker, in the mid-1960s. He won his first Senate term after defeating incumbent Ernest Gruening, a former territorial governor, in the 1968 Democratic primary.Gravel served two terms until he was defeated in the 1980 primary by Gruening’s grandson, Clark Gruening, who lost the election to Republican Frank Murkowski. More
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‘We have a deal,’ Biden declares – but will his $1tn infrastructure package pass?
Joe Biden and a group of Democratic and Republican senators are agreed on a roughly $1tn bipartisan infrastructure package in hopes of fulfilling one of the president’s top economic priorities – but its prospects remain precarious.Biden’s endorsement of the deal this week marked a breakthrough moment in his quest to forge a compromise with Republicans for hundreds of billions of dollars in spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure needs.“We have a deal,” Biden proclaimed outside the White House on Thursday, standing alongside the group of 10 senators after a meeting in the Oval Office where they outlined their proposal, which would include $579bn in new spending on projects and other initiatives.But the declaration might have been premature. The deal still faces major challenges, and its passage now rests on a delicate two-track dance between the House and Senate to move both it and a separate spending bill, which Democrats plan to force through despite Republican opposition.Biden also spent the weekend trying to clean up a mess of his own making, after he said on Thursday he wanted both bills to pass but would be prepared veto the bipartisan plan.One furious Republican said said that made him and others look like “fucking idiots”. In a statement on Saturday, Biden said that though he had “created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to” that was not his intent and he would support the deal.The two-track strategy remains on course. But the difficulty is that, broadly, Republicans say they are wary of legislation driving large increases in federal spending, while Democrats worry the bipartisan package is too lean and think Republicans are just determined to obstruct anything Biden does.Democrats are placing many of their domestic policy hopes into a separate spending bill that could cost as much as $6tn, in what could be their final chance to push through Biden’s ambitious legislative agenda this year.It comes amid growing concern that the bipartisan package covers only traditional infrastructure projects and omits much of Biden’s original $4tn vision – such as spending to combat climate change – panned by Republicans.To break the logjam, top Democrats have coalesced on a complicated strategy that would see the Senate move on the bipartisan package before the House adopts the separate spending bill – all to ensure both pieces of legislation can be enacted.Laying out the strategy, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Thursday the House would not allow a vote on the bipartisan package until the Senate had passed the sweeping spending bill through reconciliation.“There ain’t gonna be no bipartisan bill unless we’re going to have a reconciliation bill,” Pelosi said, previewing sequencing also endorsed by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the No3 Senate Democrat, Patty Murray.Pelosi’s move is aimed at giving House Democrats leverage, after some voiced concern that if the bipartisan package was passed first, it could cost moderate votes on the separate spending bill and doom its prospects.The backstop from Pelosi also effectively pressures centrist Senate Democrats – most notably West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – to extend their votes for passing the separate spending bill by reconciliation, if they wanted the bipartisan package to become law.In the House, progressive Democrats will be under pressure to support the bipartisan package, since it contains key authorizations of spending measures left in from Biden’s proposal.But even then, the passage of the bipartisan package, and so also the separate spending bill, is far from guaranteed after the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, declined to say whether he supported the bill.The bipartisan package requires 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a possible Republican filibuster – a threshold that Democrats would probably struggle to meet should McConnell reject the bill and whip the Senate GOP conference in opposition.In another worrying sign, the Republican senator Bill Cassidy, part of the group of 10, told reporters he was dismayed by Democrats’ strategy that could sour the compromise and turn his colleagues against the bill.“We got a very good infrastructure bill that’s president-endorsed bipartisan, which can pass and is paid for. I cannot believe that they’re holding it hostage for their political agenda,” Cassidy said.Still, the balancing act across the House and Senate, if successful, could deliver both bills to Biden’s desk as early as September.Congress would first need to pass the annual fiscal year budget resolution before Democrats can start to consider taking the first step of their strategy and pass the separate spending bill through reconciliation.Senate Democrats are privately considering a sprawling $6tn spending package that would maneuver all the remaining priorities from Biden’s economic agenda, not in the bipartisan bill, around the 60-vote filibuster threshold.At present, the tentative schedule suggests both the House and Senate could vote on the budget resolution by the second week of August, freeing up the Senate to vote on the reconciliation bill in September, according to a source briefed on the matter. More
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White House seeks to put infrastructure deal back on track after Biden blunder
The White House scrambled to put Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure deal back on track on Saturday, after Republican senators balked at his surprise demand to pair the nearly $1tn plan with an even bigger investment package covering progressive policy priorities, a demand the president made on Thursday even while hailing the deal.In a statement, Biden said he had “created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent”.Biden said on Thursday he would not sign a bill arising from the infrastructure deal unless it was accompanied by trillions more in spending in a separate measure passed with only Democratic votes.One senior Republican said the president had therefore made him and others look like “fucking idiots”.Tensions appeared to have cooled by Saturday, after White House negotiators Steve Ricchetti and Louisa Terrell assured senators Biden remained enthusiastic about the deal and would make a forceful public case for it in trips around the US.In his statement on Saturday afternoon, Biden said: “To be clear, our bipartisan agreement does not preclude Republicans from attempting to defeat my Families Plan. Likewise, they should have no objections to my devoted efforts to pass that Families Plan and other proposals in tandem. We will let the American people – and the Congress – decide.”He added: “The bottom line is this. I gave my word to support the infrastructure plan and that is what I intend to do.”A White House official subsequently said Biden’s first trip to promote the two plans would take him to Wisconsin on Tuesday.You look like a fucking idiot now. I don’t mind bipartisanship, but I’m not going to do a suicide missionThe controversy pointed to the difficult path ahead. The two measures were always expected to move together through Congress, the bipartisan infrastructure plan needing 60 votes while the second bill would advance under rules allowing for passage solely with majority Democratic votes.But what had been a celebratory moment for Biden and a group of 10 senators on Thursday was jolted by the president’s surprise insistence at a news conference that he would not sign the bipartisan bill unless Congress also passed his broader package. Some senators felt blindsided. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Politico: “If he’s gonna tie them together, he can forget it! I’m not doing that. That’s extortion! I’m not going to do that. The Dems are being told you can’t get your bipartisan work product passed unless you sign on to what the left wants, and I’m not playing that game.”Graham said “most Republicans” had not known about any linkage strategy.“There’s no way,” he said. “You look like a fucking idiot now. I don’t mind bipartisanship, but I’m not going to do a suicide mission.”On Friday the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said senators should not have been surprised. The two-track strategy, she said “hasn’t been a secret. He hasn’t said it quietly. He hasn’t even whispered it.”Psaki said Biden would stand by the commitment he made to the senators “and he expects they’ll do the same”.Nonetheless, the White House sought to allay concerns. In a call to the Democratic negotiator, Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, Biden said he looked forward to signing both bills, the White House said.The two-track strategy seeks to assure liberals the infrastructure deal won’t be the only one and that the companion package, now containing nearly $6tn in childcare, Medicare and other spending, remains on the table.The White House also wants to show centrist Democrats including Sinema and Joe Manchin of West Virginia it is working with Republicans before trying to push the broader package through Congress.On Saturday, Biden said: “Some Democrats have said they might oppose the infrastructure plan because it omits items they think are important. That’s a mistake in my view.“Some Republicans now say that they might oppose the infrastructure plan, because I am also trying to pass the American Families Plan. That is also a mistake in my view.“I intend to work hard to get both of them passed because our country needs both.”Speaking to the Associated Press on Friday, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, the lead Republican negotiator, said: “My hope is that we’ll still get this done. It’s really good for America. Our infrastructure is in bad shape. It’s about time to get it done.”Ten Republicans will be needed to pass the bipartisan deal. While the senators in the group which negotiated with Democrats are among some of the more independent-minded lawmakers, it appears Republican leader Mitch McConnell could peel away support. More
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How Mitch McConnell has unified Republicans as a red wall against Biden’s agenda
It was a glimpse of Washington past. Beneath the vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows of the national cathedral, Joe Biden greeted Mitch McConnell and other senators in the pews, then offered a hymn to bipartisanship.“Empathy is the fuel of democracy,” the US president told mourners on Wednesday at the funeral of John Warner, a Republican senator he praised for working across the aisle. “The willingness to see each other as opponents, not as enemies. Above all, to see each other as fellow Americans even when we disagree.”It was a reminder on a grand stage of Biden’s strength as a consoler and uniter but left questions about his stomach as a fighter unanswered. Less than 24 hours earlier, McConnell had proved the nemesis of the president’s agenda by scuttling one of his top priorities.Fifty Republicans united to use a Senate procedure known as the filibuster to prevent debate on Democratic legislation to protect voting rights and safeguard American democracy. Biden, so compassionate from the pulpit, was accused by progressives of failing to use his bully pulpit, allowing McConnell to declare a cynical victory.The Senate minority leader had previously marshaled his red wall to halt a measure addressing the pay gap between men and women and stop a bipartisan effort to create a commission to investigate the deadly insurrection by Donald Trump supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January. He further warned that he would block a Biden supreme court nominee if a vacancy opened in 2024 – and perhaps even in 2023. Indeed, McConnell, 79, is offering a masterclass in the intransigence, wiliness and brutal obstructionism that he perfected in opposing the Barack Obama administration, earning nicknames such as “Dr No” and “Grim Reaper”.Ed Rogers, a political consultant who has known the Kentucky senator for 30 years, said: “Mitch McConnell is one of the few people in Washington that always has a plan. He isn’t making it up as he goes along.”For the obstructionist strategy to work, McConnell must keep in line a Senate caucus that ranges from moderate to far right and bitterly disagrees on some topics. Seven voted with Democrats to convict Trump at his impeachment trial in February; most remained fiercely loyal to the former president.McConnell himself observed recently: “100% of my focus is on standing up to this administration. What we have in the United States Senate is total unity from Susan Collins to Ted Cruz in opposition to what the new Biden administration is trying to do to this country.”Republican infighting will not end any time soon, but McConnell will have welcomed a recent shift in media attention to Biden’s own unwieldy coalition, which spans progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders and conservatives such as Senator Joe Manchin.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said: “Right now I think the Republicans are definitely the more united of the two parties and the Democrats at a certain point are going to boil over because while the first big bill [coronavirus relief] went fine, everything since has not.”In a Senate evenly divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, McConnell’s best friend is the filibuster, which can block bills that fail to muster 60 voters. He effectively has veto power over any Biden legislation that falls outside budget reconciliation, including gun control, police reform, voting rights and sex discrimination.Sabato added: “As long as they keep the filibuster, he’s guaranteed to succeed. I can’t find 10 Republicans who will break with McConnell on anything. They wouldn’t break with him on a weather report.”McConnell, whose memoir is titled The Long Game, has led his party in the Senate since 2007, sometimes leading the majority, at other times the minority. It might be argued that the latter role, blocking rather than building, finds him truly in his element.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “McConnell has always been superb at marshaling unanimity and he’s always been superb at what I analogise to playing black in chess: he’s very good at blocking initiative.”McConnell had to contend with the restive tea party during the Obama era. Now there is an even bigger challenge after his very public falling out with Trump, whom he said was “practically and morally responsible” for the mob violence on 6 January. The ex-president, who continues to dominate and and disrupt the party, restarts campaign rallies on Saturday.But Olsen, author of The Working Class Republican, suggests that the Grim Reaper and loose cannon of Trump can coexist. “It would be one thing if Trump were trying to actively provide guidance on issues in Congress but when Trump bothers to talk about anything other than his cauldron of grievances, he’s in line with what McConnell wants to do, which is oppose the Democrats’ agenda,” he explained.“So there’s no conflict. Trump is interested in politics and attention but not in policy. That gives McConnell a very free hand and, when Trump bothers to talk about policy at all, he’s not saying anything that other Republicans don’t agree with.”Biden claimed a bipartisan win on Thursday when a group of 10 senators reached agreement on a $1.2tn framework to invest in the country’s bridges, roads and other physical infrastructure. But McConnell again rained on the parade, warning that Democrats must guarantee not to unwind Republicans’ 2017 tax bill to pay for it. “That’s our one red line,” he told Fox News.His defenders point to bipartisan cooperation ranging from more than $3tn in pandemic relief last year to investments in science and technology for competition with China to the creation of a public holiday for Juneteenth. Yet his maneuvering to rally Senate Republicans to thwart the White House could prove more decisive in next year’s midterm elections.Antonia Ferrier, who was a spokesperson for McConnell from 2015 to 2019, said: “He’s very clear eyed in his understanding where things are going to go. People are lucky if they can see one step ahead. He has a tendency to be able to see five, six, seven steps ahead and I think that’s why he doesn’t have to exert undue pressure on his colleagues.”McConnell poses less of a roadblock to the Biden agenda than his own side, argues Ferrier, who now works in strategic communications.“When you have a 50-50 Senate with the vice president casting a tie breaking vote and you have the smallest House majority since before world war two, you’re in a situation where Democrats are going to be the biggest challenge to the Biden agenda.”“You’ve got moderate Democrats from swing districts to hard core progressives to senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. It’s going to be more of a challenge for Democrats themselves than anything else and I think they’re grappling with that right now. If you happen to be a Republican, why get in the way when Democrats are going to be their own worst enemies on this?”Some commentators, however, point out that even as McConnell strives to restore respectability to Republicans, this is still Trump’s party, its brand tarnished by racial divisiveness, voter suppression and baseless conspiracy theories.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “McConnell is trying to get the business community and business owners back in their camp in terms of contributions and money and support. He’s trying to rebuild that more traditional Republican base, particularly with money, going into 2022.“The problem for him is that they don’t want anything to do with Trump or QAnon or white supremacists and I don’t think the Republicans have succeeded yet in separating. The Achilles heel of the Republican party right now is the same thing that gives them some popular momentum. They’re going into a midterm where suburban voters, who are so key, have rejected Donald Trump and want nothing to do with him.” More
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Don’t despair over the Senate: a new voting rights law has never been closer | David Litt
This week, the For the People Act – the most sweeping voting-rights legislation in more than 50 years – came before the United States Senate, a place known, especially to itself, as “world’s greatest deliberative body”. Yet Republican senators refused to even debate the measure. Despite having the support of every member of the Democratic majority – a group of 50 senators that represents 40 million more constituents than their Republican counterparts – the bill failed to reach the 60-vote threshold for breaking a filibuster. It didn’t even come close.Given the stakes, it’s hardly surprising that some have rushed to portray For the People Act’s failure to pass the Senate as a political setback, a strategic misstep, or a presidency-defining blunder.To understand why American democracy still has a fighting chance, it’s important to consider three major developmentsBut such doomsday thinking ignores the big picture. Of course democracy advocates are disappointed – in theory, the Senate just blew a big chance to protect the republic from the greatest onslaught of authoritarianism the United States has ever faced. In practice, however, no voting-rights bill was ever going to pass the Senate on the first try. The important question has never been whether the For the People Act will win over 10 Republicans. The question is whether 50 Democrats can be convinced to end or alter the filibuster and then pass the For the People Act via a simple majority vote.Seen through this lens, this week’s vote was a step forward, not backward. Major voting-rights legislation has never been closer to becoming law.To understand why American democracy still has a fighting chance – and better-than-ever odds of prevailing – it’s important to consider three major developments, none of which was guaranteed when Democrats took the Senate with the slimmest of majorities six months ago.The first is that, despite President Trump’s attempt to overturn a legitimate election, his party’s unwillingness to stop him, and a well-funded campaign to turn voters against the For the People Act, democracy remains popular with the American people. According to one recent poll, 71% of Americans believe in-person early voting should be made easier, 69% support establishing national guidelines for voting, and a majority support expanding vote-by-mail as well.Thanks to a smart compromise proposal from Senator Joe Manchin, Democrats have even robbed Republicans of their one popular (if disingenuous) talking point in the debate over elections: support for voter ID. Mitch McConnell, the Koch political organization, and their conservative allies were hoping to turn voting rights into a political liability for Democrats, thus encouraging their members to drop the subject. Instead, the opposite has occurred. Continuing the fight to protect democracy is the right thing to do – and for Democratic senators, it’s the politically sensible thing to do as well.The moral and political case for protecting democracy has only been made more urgent by Republican overreach since the election. This wasn’t inevitable. In the wake of a closer-than-expected presidential race, and surprising strength in the House, state and local Republicans could have decided to appeal to moderate voters and enjoy their existing structural advantages, such as a rightwing majority on the supreme court and a large head start in the 2020 round of redistricting.Instead, Republicans doubled down on Trump’s authoritarian impulses. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 389 bills restricting voting have been put forward in 48 states. These bills go far beyond previous voter suppression efforts, ensuring lengthy, public court battles and risking a backlash. Already, voting-restriction laws such as the one passed in Georgia have proven so audacious and so egregious that some of America’s largest corporations – who are rarely keen to criticize the GOP’s top priorities – have come out against them.In the face of threats that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, Americans may yet save their democracyThe business community lending its support to voting rights, even in the abstract, has in turn given on-the-fence Democrats more room to maneuver. West Virginia’s Manchin, one of the filibuster’s most ardent defenders, joined voting-rights negotiations by proposing a version of the For the People Act he believes ought to receive substantial bipartisan support – and strongly implying he’ll consider reforming the filibuster if his proposal does not receive the support he thinks it deserves. Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, another filibuster holdout, has signaled a willingness to debate the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, even as she defends it. That leaves open the possibility that she may, eventually, support some kind of reform.Even some Republicans have inched, however slowly and subtly, toward supporting voting rights. While the Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski didn’t vote to break the filibuster against the For the People Act, she went out of her way to say that she supported certain key aspects of the bill. If the filibuster were no longer an impediment – if democracy advocates were trying to get to 51 rather than 61 – Murkowski’s vote would probably be in play. As recently as 4 January, when Republicans seemed likely to hold the Senate, the idea of a sweeping, bipartisan bill to end voter suppression and expand voting rights seemed wildly far-fetched. Today, it’s distinctly possible.Of course, just because something is possible does not make it likely. Democrats are racing against the clock. Campaign season will soon be upon us. Given the age of many in their caucus, there’s a chance Democrats’ Senate majority will be cut grimly short by a premature retirement or death. Manchin, Sinema and other lawmakers hoping to be prodded toward progress risk being too clever by half.But on the other hand, the slow-but-steady approach might just work – if activists continue to apply public pressure; if state-level GOP politicians continue to egregiously attack the vote; if public attention remains focused on the health of our democracy; if 50 Democrats reach a compromise that preserves the filibuster while allowing life-and-death legislation to pass. None of these things is certain to happen. But none of them is outside the realm of possibility. And all of them are more likely in the wake of this week’s vote.The path we’re on will never bring the sweeping, triumphant, day-one change that Democrats like me hoped for in the weeks before the election. But, in the face of threats that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, Americans may yet save their democracy. And saving democracy would be more than good enough.
David Litt is a former Obama speechwriter and New York Times bestselling author, and writes the newsletter How Democracy Lives More
