![]() The source added that in the end, Mr Manchin is playing a long game of his own, but it’s a game that the Mr Biden and the White House can play. “That is ‘job one’ – if you get Manchin, you’ll get Sinema”. “Folks are figuring out what Joe Manchin wants and what Joe Manchin needs – what does Joe Manchin want for West Virginia to give him courage and the confidence that he can get reelected, and what does he need that can provide him cover – not just politically, but comfort in his own mind with being courageous and changing the senate rules,” they said. The White House did not respond to queries from The Independent on the subject of what, if any, outreach had been made to senators in hopes of moving the needle on potentially reforming the filibuster.īut a source familiar with discussions of the Biden administration’s legislative strategy told The Independent that the White House is hoping to entice the former West Virginia governor into relaxing his position with good old-fashioned horse-trading. When pressed on the matter by reporters last month, he replied: “Jesus Christ, what don’t you understand about ‘never’?” Mr Manchin, one of a small number of Democratic senators to win reelection in a state carried by Mr Trump, has grown more and more strident in his defence of the senate’s 60-vote threshold. and the only institution that can stop such an internal threat to our democracy is the federal government.” “We are facing direct, massive threats to our democracy from within, in the form of GOP elected officials in 47 states proposing more than 300 bills to suppress their neighbours voting rights. “He has to make that case over the next 100 days, because when it happens, whether it’s 50 days from now, or 150 days from now, it is our only hope to safeguard our democracy,” he said. Mr Jealous, a former president and CEO of the NAACP, also warned of trouble ahead for Democrats – and democracy itself – unless Mr Biden can find a way to move the two voting rights bills. The New York Democrat added that he would begin exercising other options in August, a self-imposed deadline he says is made necessary by the glut of GOP voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering that could be in effect by then. Everything will be on the table to get it done.” As I’ve said before and I’ve said this to all of my colleagues, failure is not an option. put our heads together and figure out a way to get it done. If they can get Republicans to join us in big, bold reform, not dilute half-baked reform, that would be the best way to go,” Mr Schumer said on Wednesday while speaking on MSNBC. “There are a number of members of my caucus who say let’s try things in a bipartisan way – let’s see if we can get Republicans to join us in dealing with this sacred issue of voting rights – and they’re going to try. ![]() Mr Biden explicitly called on Congress to pass both bills “right away”, but both are almost certain to be blocked by Republicans by way of the upper chamber’s filibuster rule, which would mean Democrats would need 10 GOP votes to move either of them.Īlthough Democrats could conceivably make use of their 51-vote majority (with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking ties in the evenly split body) to do away with the 60-vote threshold – the so-called nuclear option – Mr Manchin and Ms Sinema have so far declared their opposition to doing anything of the sort.įor his part, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is making it known that his patience for his colleagues’ insistence on bipartisanship in the face of GOP obstruction has limits. Such legislation is at least in part a response to the push by Republican-controlled state legislatures to sharply curtail access to the ballot in the wake of victories by Mr Biden and Democratic senatorial candidates in former GOP strongholds such as Arizona and Georgia. The former is a large ethics and election reform package that would ban partisan gerrymandering and codify many of the pandemic-era voting changes that led to record turnout in 2020, while the latter – named for the late Georgia congressman and civil rights icon – would require states to obtain permission from the Justice Department before making changes to election laws that could hamper Americans’ right to vote. 1, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. In Mr Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, two of the only bills he mentioned by name apart from his American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan were Democrats’s “For The People Act”, also known as H.R. Perhaps no non-spending priority is as important to the Biden administration and Democrats – and reviled by Republicans – as voting rights.
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