Joe Biden on Tuesday delivered one of the most stirring speeches of his presidency: a powerful defense of voting rights and democracy, and a searing rebuke of Donald Trump and his allies in the GOP for their attacks on the electoral system. “There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today—an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in free and fair elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are as Americans,” Biden said in Philadelphia. “I’m not saying this to alarm you. I’m saying this because you should be alarmed.”
“I’m also saying this,” Biden continued. “There’s good news. It doesn’t have to be this way...We have the means. We just need to show the will—the will to save and strengthen our democracy.”
It was, in tone and substance, the kind of assertive use of the bully pulpit that many of those concerned about Republicans’ well-coordinated disenfranchisement campaign have been looking for out of the president. But for all its verve, it was missing one big thing: a roadmap for lawmakers to pass the pro-democracy legislation he described as a “national imperative.”
Not once in his otherwise rousing speech did Biden say the word “filibuster,” eschewing direct reference to the single greatest obstacle to passing the For the People Act and reauthorizing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The procedure, of course, is what Mitch McConnell, whose party’s electoral strategy has increasingly come to depend on the very suppression and subversion the bills seek to prevent, will use to kill the legislation unless Democrats can abolish or amend the rule. They’ve been unable to do that so far, even as McConnell wields it against key priorities, including a full investigation into the January 6 insurrection, because their more conservative members like Joe Manchin are preoccupied with keeping it in place. Biden likely doesn’t need to sell anyone in his party on the importance of protecting the vote; even Manchin, for all the headaches he’s caused his caucus, drafted a compromise election bill substantial enough to earn the support of Stacey Abrams. What he does need to unite his party on is a viable path to doing so, as one of his top allies on Capitol Hill suggested to Politico ahead of his speech Tuesday.
“Pick up the phone and tell Joe Manchin, ‘Hey, we should do a carve out,’” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn told the outlet. “I don’t care whether he does it in a microphone or on the telephone—just do it.”
Biden didn’t—at least not during his remarks at the National Constitution Center, though he did acknowledge “the obstruction we face” and nodded at efforts by the Justice Department and civil rights groups to combat the voter suppression campaign underway in GOP-led states across the country. (“Legislation is one tool,” Biden said, “but not the only tool.) But there may be reason to press Manchin to make an exception to his otherwise steadfast support for the filibuster: The West Virginia senator on Tuesday told the media he would meet with Texas Democrats who left the state to block their Republican counterparts from ushering in draconian anti-voting laws, and notably did not say one way or another if he would get behind a voting rights carve out like the one Clyburn suggested. Behind closed doors, he has tended to be somewhat less rigid. Manchin hasn’t publicly supported any changes yet, but Biden also hasn’t used his platform to push him to do so.
Biden is likely to give more speeches on the subject, according to Axios, and could make a primetime address on it, as allies are calling for. But no rhetoric, however soaring and true, is going to convince Republicans to stop their attacks—Trump-friendly outlets didn’t even carry the speech—and many Democrats are already convinced of the issue’s importance. Biden’s call to action Tuesday was an important start, laying out the stakes and energizing the caucus. But to ensure the GOP’s “unconscionable” attacks on democracy don’t stand, Biden will likely need to take it further. He’s made clear where the party needs to go; next, he’ll have to tell them how to get there.
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Joe Biden’s Big Voting Rights Speech Had a Gaping Hole - Vanity Fair
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