Well, this is interesting. Shouldn’t there be a public debate on any big bill? Shouldn’t elected officials be telling their constituents what the bill does? Shouldn’t they be have a long debate on the floor of Congress?
Dems switch strategy on voting bill as Biden pushes action
Senate Democrats are trying to force a public showdown over their sweeping elections legislation, aiming to launch debate on a key party priority even though there’s no assurance the bill will come to a vote.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer outlined the plan in a memo obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, on the eve of President Joe Biden’s visit to meet privately with Senate Democrats about the path forward. It still leaves the Democrats in need of a way to force a vote on the legislation, now blocked by a Republican filibuster.
“We will finally have an opportunity to debate voting rights legislation — something that Republicans have thus far denied,” Schumer wrote in the memo to his Democratic colleagues, which described a workaround to avoid a Republican filibuster that for months has blocked formal debate over the legislation on the Senate floor. “Senators can finally make clear to the American people where they stand on protecting our democracy and preserving the right of every eligible American to cast a ballot.”
They’ve had plenty of time to debate it. They could debate it on the floor of the Senate. Easy. Because saying they want to debate now makes it look like they were hiding things. And they were. They really will not like what Republicans have to say in rebuttal. Besides the notion that if the bill passes and is signed by Brandon, Constitutional lawsuits will fly fast and furious.
The strategy does little to resolve the central problem Democrats face — they lack Republican support to pass the elections legislation on a bipartisan basis, but also don’t have support from all 50 Democrats for changing the Senate rules to allow passage on their own. But the latest tactic could create an off-ramp from their initial approach, which was to force a vote by Monday on Senate filibuster changes as a way to pressure Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to go along.
Not sure how, since the GOP won’t vote for it, Manchin and Sinema won’t vote for it, and there are reports that several other Democrats do not support killing the filibuster. They know that there’s a good chance the GOP takes the Senate in 2022, and, if not then, they’ll get it in the future.
By setting up a debate, Schumer will achieve the Democrats’ goal of shining a spotlight that spurs senators to say where they stand. The floor debate could stretch for days and carry echoes of civil rights battles a generation ago that led to some of the most famous filibusters in Senate history.
And how many citizens will get behind the federal government taking over all state and local elections? These people in far off D.C. with little connection to the average citizen controlling all voting. Senate Democrats are overestimating the support. Especially when things like Voter ID is popular, and required in 35 states. Biden is out there going thunder and brimstone (and lies, plenty of those), which should tell you a lot about the Democrats intentions, because they really cannot discuss the bill on what it actually does, just demagogue rhetoric. Is the public clamoring for this? Not in the least. They care about the collapsing economy.
Marco Rubio had an interesting speech on why this bill is bad, which includes
They don’t seem concerned that Americans will be fired or not allowed into a restaurant without papers, a vaccine card. The real problem is how dare you ask them to produce a voter I.D., a photo I.D. in order to vote. That’s the real problem.
How can this be? How can there be such an enormous disconnect between what real people in the real world care about and are talking about on the daily basis? And what we’re going to spend time talking about here in the speeches over the last week, it isn’t about the Capitol riot. Everyone agrees the Capitol riot was terrible and shouldn’t have happened. I think most everyone does.
But these are some of the same people that downplayed it. Over 700 riots, thousands of cases of looting that happened in America in the summer of 2020. It most certainly isn’t about election laws passed in the last year. They’ve been pushing these same bills with different titles and names, they’ve been pushing all of this for the better part of a decade.
I wonder what this is all about
Because it’s about power. Not just the power to change election laws. We’ve seen it. It’s about the power to tell you what you’re allowed to say. It’s about the power to tell you where you’re allowed to go. About the power to tell you what you’re allowed to do. It’s about the power to intimidate, destroy, smear, to call a racist, bigot, hater — anyone who dares get in your was I or disagree with you. It’s about the power to do that. Let me tell you something, I was raised by and have lived my entire life alongside people who lost their country, the country of their birth to power-hungry people just like that. I warn you, do not stand by and allow it to happen to this one.
Couldn’t be, right?
SEN. SCHUMER admits that nuking the Senate is just about Democrats winning elections:
"They're saying things like ‘I'll lose my election if the legislature is allowed to do this in my state’”
“We'll lose our majority" pic.twitter.com/l6f13OQ34x
— Senate Republican Communications Center (@SRCC) January 12, 2022
