President Biden threw in the proverbial towel on Thursday and all but admitted defeat in his months-long effort to enact sweeping measures to protect voting rights before MLK Jr. Day on Monday.
After months of unsuccessful haggling, Biden journeyed to Capitol Hill to make a last-ditch personal appeal to fellow Democrats to change the Senate rules to allow passage of the bills.
“If we miss the first time, we can come back and try it a second time,” Biden said. “We missed this time.”
Raising his voice, Biden insisted he wouldn’t stop fighting to expand voting rights and repeatedly called for the need to “count the vote.”
“I know one thing: as long as I have a breath in me, as long as I’m in the White House, as long as I’m engaged at all, I’m going to be fighting,” he said.
Not a great week for Democrats:
• SCOTUS strikes down OSHA Mandate
• Nashville becomes Republican district
• Dems partisan election bill is dead
• Manchin refuses to kill filibuster
• Biden’s approval drops to 33%
• #BareShelvesBiden trending
• Inflation at a 40-year high— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 13, 2022
Biden pleaded with Democrats, including holdout moderates Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), to tweak the Senate filibuster rule. That move could allow Democrats to pass two voting rights bills with simple majority votes.
He spoke for about 15 minutes and declared that Senate rules “are not sacrosanct.”
Manchin and Sinema support the voting laws but steadfastly oppose the changes, mostly because they say the 60-vote rule ensures bipartisan dialogue on a range of issues.
Just minutes before Biden’s arrival, Sinema again expressed her opposition, effectively putting a nail in the coffin of the voting rights push.
“I will not support actions … that would worsen the disease of division in our country,” said Sinema.
Republicans welcomed Sinema’s speech. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) heaped praise on her for an “act of extraordinary political courage.”
“(She) saved the Senate as an institution,” McConnell said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) earlier said the Senate would take up twin voting rights measures later in the day but that timetable might get pushed back.
The House of Representatives teed up the Senate action by approving the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act on a party-line 220-203 vote.
“The right to vote is sacrosanct and central to the integrity of our democracy,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the No. 5 Democrat in the House.
Biden and Democrats framed the voting rights push as essential to defend American democracy in the face of former President Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and GOP efforts to make it tougher to vote.
Republicans counter that Democrats are just making noise to rev up their base and gain an edge in future elections.
Schumer had initially set the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, on Jan. 17, as a deadline to either pass the voting legislation or consider revising the filibuster rules. That vote could still happen.
But under their new strategy, which uses a procedural shortcut, they will be able to actually hold a debate on the bill without being blocked by a filibuster, which Republicans have deployed four times in recent months to stop debate.
©2022 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy 🙂
PITY we are all suffering though.
What is amazing is that there are only 2 sane Democrat Senators willing to keep Senate Precedent and Constitutional Checks and balances in place that have protected our Democracy the past 235 years of the worlds longest running Democracy. Can only two of these Senators recognize that the proposed Bill’s voting rights only serve to cancel the votes of honest Native-born American citizens, to empower parties not THE PEOPLE? It is a sad day in America and its failed government educational systems that so many people can be so dumbed down all of the time. The progressive destruction of the Concept of American SELF-government marches on, which never collectively works when its individuals cannot govern themselves for even the basics needs of life like Food, Clothing, Housing, medication that so-called progressive have used to create a growing social dependency mindset that is becoming the majority, with a Self-governing American minority struggling, whose dwindling size can no longer carry the social weight of these deadbeats on their now about to break backs. Biden himself is proving to he the last straw that breaks the American Camel’s back, with snapper- head, back snapping dead weight Kamala by his side.
The other 48 insane democrat senators need to be voted out of office as insurrectionists! 🙂
Hung, drawn and quartered, then burned at the stake.. ANd if that doesn’t work.. Launch them all to Saturn!
The traitorous, dishonest, destructive, socialist Democrat Party revolves around and its philosophy is based on Total Control, Hate, Lies, Cons, Deceptions, Immorality and the lack of Integrity, Ethics or Honor.
Bozo really doesn’t know what is happening so we know obami is the unhappy crooked corrupt evil satanic moronic rogue who can’t get his agenda passed.
Joe and his “temper tantrums”, a clear sign of his dementia. The east coast elitist communist criminal!
Earliest lame duck president in the history of the country.
FJB
There must be a lot of stupid people in the US (not including the criminals who are encouraged and supported by the democrat party) that believe the constant lies spewed by the democrats. There are studies that prove that liberalism is a mental illness, but, what is happening now is beyond mental illness of the far left.