Speaking in Tulsa on the 100th anniversary of the racial atrocity there, Joe Biden belatedly turned to the issue of voting rights, to explain why he is having such difficulty winning passage of the party’s priority legislation.
“I hear all the folks on TV saying, ‘Why doesn’t Biden get this done?'”
“Well, because Biden only has a majority of, effectively, four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.”
Biden was referring to Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
“But we’re not giving up,” Biden hastily added.
“Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed For the People Act to protect our democracy. The Senate will take it up later this month, and I’m going to fight like heck with every tool at my disposal for its passage.
“To signify the importance of our efforts, today I’m asking Vice President Harris to help … lead them. … With her leadership and your support, we’re going to overcome again, I promise you. But it’s going to take a hell of a lot of work.”
Thus did Biden designate Kamala Harris as his field commander in winning Senate passage of a voting rights bill that would cancel out many GOP victories in state legislatures in enacting voting reforms.
Sunday, Harris, who is also Biden’s point person on the border crisis, will be in Guatemala to learn what causes Latin American peoples of color to leave the land they were born in and travel 1,000 miles for a chance to live, work and raise their families in a nation established by and for white supremacists.
But when she returns, Harris will face a showdown — with Joe Manchin.
For Manchin, who has the decisive Democratic vote in the Senate, not only opposes elements of the Democrats’ voting rights bill. He has declared that ending the Senate filibuster would “be to destroy our government,” and he will never cast a vote to kill it.
In April, Manchin was emphatic in The Washington Post, “There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster.”
Yet, as long as that filibuster exists, 60 Senate votes are needed to pass major legislation. And if the filibuster is not eliminated, Democratic voting rights proposals don’t have a snowball’s chance of being enacted.
Hence, if Manchin is telling the truth and holds his ground, Harris is headed for a fruitless and failed assignment this June that will reveal her to be a leader without clout in the Senate whence she came.
Thus, in publicly handing Harris the portfolio on both the Democrats’ voting rights bill and border crisis, Biden may have set up his vice president for a great fall and a major humiliation. Yet, Harris is said to have asked Biden for the assignment.
As for Manchin, he is sitting in the catbird seat in the Democratic Party. He holds the whip hand over both Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Biden. For if the West Virginian refuses to bend or break on the filibuster, then not only will the voting rights bill fail in the Senate, so, too, could gun control, D.C. statehood, climate change, and immigration legislation.
All could suffer the same fate as the Jan. 6 Commission.
The Washington Post reports Senate staffers are saying that there is “panic” in the Democratic caucus that Manchin will stand his ground and refuse to kill the filibuster, no matter the pressure the party puts on him.
Recognition by the White House of the leverage Manchin and Sinema wield was evident in press secretary Jen Psaki’s effort to soften Biden’s crack about “the two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.”
Psaki brushed aside any suggestion that Biden was being caustic about the two senators saying, “I don’t think he was intending to convey anything other than a little bit of commentary on TV punditry.”
But the issues and stakes involved are becoming evident to everyone.
A coalition of progressive groups, on Thursday, called on Schumer to hold a Senate vote to kill the filibuster. More than 100 groups sent a letter to the majority leader arguing that the Republican senators who blocked a bill to create a commission to probe the Jan. 6 Capitol attack showed, “it is clearer than ever that the filibuster needs to be eliminated.”
The groups added: “We call on you and the Senate Democratic caucus to eliminate the filibuster as a weapon that Sen. McConnell can use to block efforts to defend and strengthen our democracy and make our government work for the American people.”
If Joe Manchin holds his ground this June, he will prevail, the filibuster will survive, the For the People Act will die a deserved death, and Joe will become legend in West Virginia.
And if Manchin stands his ground, the big loser is Kamala Harris.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.” To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
I hope Manchin remains a thorn in your side, Biden. I hope he makes things very difficult for you.
Just an observation regarding Kamala—every picture of her shows her smiling or laughing like she thinks her job is a joke. Well, she certainly acts as though it is.
The more Joe delegates to Kamala, the more of her incompetence is revealed. If half his brain is still working, he probably sees this as job and even life security for himself.
The woman who thinks herself a man, confronts a real man named Manchin who she thinks is a minor manipulative Munchkin, but may just turn out to be the real man behind the curtain, pulling the proper strings and levers of power that awards real heart back to the American Tin men, courage to the American Cowardly lions, and brains to the political straw men who now fearfully govern in confusion. Let’s hope some brave soul has the courage to grab a buck of water for that witch who now seems to be melting on her own, walking about always smiling, fearing a show of her own real tears will melt herself.
IMO it matters NOT, how incompetent she shows herself to be.. NOTHING WILL BE DONE TO fire her.. AND You can bet, she’s itching for the day, she can invoke the 25th amendment, and OUST biden from the P spot.
With Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, it’s the case of the blind leading the blind…
The Conservative Republicans should read Aesops fables, About the farmer and the Snake, when taking the word of democrats like Kamala Harris and he reminded that when dealing with the Democrat party, You knew I was a snake when you picked me up . “
The laughing hyena feeds on carrion, and theft of kills made by other predators. It is a vicious animal that will even eat it’s own dead. It runs in packs, and is feared by everything except crocodiles, elephants, rino’s , and hippo’s. kamala fits the description to a tee.
Other than unlike an ACTUAL hyena, she has no real teeth…
So does the word – “Chucklehead”.
This gave me a real chuckle: “ what causes Latin American peoples of color to leave the land they were born in and travel 1,000 miles for a chance to live, work and raise their families in a nation established by and for white supremacists. “ Likewise how can a Black man and woman be elected as President and Vice President, respectively, in a nation rife with systemic racism? To quote The Princess Bride, I don’t think that word (systemic) means what you think it does.
When she said they leave because of the climate, that made me really laugh. They all leave because of the weather? So we should open the temperate areas of America to the entire equator because it is too hot? What if a hurricane or tornado comes? Do they have to leave again, and we have to rehome them?
Should our people who live in Alaska all move to San Francisco? Do you think we can all squeeze in? Maybe if they offer a homing stipend?
“Bumpy Dumphy said, ” When I use a word, it means exactly what I mean it to say, Nothing More, Nothing Less. “
Humpy Dumphy could have been a Democrat be cause they never say where they stand and what they say to day may not be where they stand on a issue tomorrow
i’ve often asked that question, OF LIBERALS.. “WHY if our nation is so rife with racism, and systemic Oppression”, to HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of folks, year after year, RISK IT ALL< to come here illegally??
IF WE WERE THAT BAD, they wouldn't be coming!
TRUTH MAY BE silenced by the enemies of truth, but truth will out in the end and will establish its self again and truth willl win over its enemies
Latin American Immigrants didn’t come thousands of miles to enter this country, They traveled those thousands of miles because they had been told that once they entered America, welfare awaited them and they would never again , have to work for their living, on over to America, everything’s free….
* welfare awaited them and they would never have to work for a living….This is what I intended to post..
Maybe we need to ditch up MEXICO’s southern border, THEN DITCH THEIR border with the US.. I might even go so far as to say MINE FIELD IT UP!
The democrat, Joe Manchin, and what he’s doing right now is discussed in the Bible, Matthew 6:24. No man can serve two masters:For either he will hate the one and love the other….. ” The there’s the old qote, ” Give unto Czar, the things that are Czars,… ” . It would seem Senater Manchin has a decision that he has to make unless he wants to appear ” like the dog in manger… “And Senator Manchin like the Bible states,” Can ‘t service two masters, this advise applies to ; ( Dino ) Republicans as well.
One thing about Machin, he talks a good game, but then seems to fold and vote with the Democrats.
True, he’s a RINO through and through.. BUT AT LEAST FOR NOW< he's doing good, by standing UP to kamala.
He’s a democrat ituser.
Kampala Harris was asked recently, ” When are you going to the border, and her reply, ” I haven’t been to Europe ” Some how, Kamala thought that was an appropriate answer. This caused me to think of a song, ” Do you know the way to San Jose, song by Dionne Warwick , I’m not sure if anybody. Else will draw the same connection as I did , we’ll see…
Joe Manchin was elected to represent the voters of West Virginia and not kow-tow to the radicals in his Democrat Party. He believes in the Government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, and for the PEOPLE not just Democrats regardless of party affiliation. VP Harris can’t hold a candle to the light the Senator casts on his own party when he sees it going astray. The Democrat lemmings in Congress are poised to jump off the cliff and want the rest of us to follow! You go, Joe!
I thought the purpose of having a point person was to send a viable, knowledgeable, messenger to get the job done. In Harris, it seems she thinks her job at the border is to not show up, and for any other assignment, to smile or guffaw as if all’s right with the world…she is so pretentious, she seems to think her very presence is uplifting to we peons, that must be how she sees things. It’s good to be Queen.
I can see how conservative Republicans wouldn ‘t be as pleased as the Muslim Squad would be with Kamala Harris but as the quote remind us when referring to Kamala Harris, ” You knew I Was a Snake when you picked me up , after the Snake bi tthe person who put his faith in what the Snake promised , that he wouldn’t bite….
TO the left, the point of a point man, is to PASS THE BLAME ON to everyone else, BUT THEM.
The Marxists , progressive ,Socials say It’s not our fault the conditions America is presently in and the Democrats claim this under a democrat President and Democrat Vice President, ‘ It’s Donald Trump fault…..