Dems shifts strategy on ballot measure as Biden pushes for action – Orange County Register

By BRIAN SLODYSKO

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats are trying to force public opposition to their sweeping election laws, in an attempt to kick-start a debate over key party priorities even though there are no guarantees. The law will be put to a vote.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer outlined the plan in a memo obtained by the AP news agency Wednesday, ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to meet privately with Senate Democrats about the road. front. It still leaves Democrats in need of a way to force a vote on the legislation, which is currently blocked by a group of Republican opponents.

“We will finally have a chance to debate voting rights legislation – something Republicans have so far denied,” Schumer wrote in the memo to his Democratic colleagues, in which describes a solution to avoid a Republican controversy that for months has blocked formal debate on the legislation on the Senate floor. “Senators can finally make it clear to the American people where they stand in defense of our democracy and protect the voting rights of every eligible American.”

This strategy does not help address the central problem facing Democrats – they lack the support of Republicans to pass election legislation on a bipartisan basis, but also lack support from all 50 Democrats for changing Senate rules to allow them to pass on their own. But the latest tactic could give a blow to their original approach, which was to force a vote on Monday on the film’s changes in the Senate as a way to pressure Democratic Secretary Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona must follow.

By setting up a debate, Schumer will achieve the Democratic Party’s goal of shining a spotlight on senators who say where they stand. Debate on the floor can drag on for days and carry with it the echoes of the civil rights wars a generation ago that led to some of the most popular films in Senate history.

“I wouldn’t want to make anyone think this is easy,” Schumer told reporters on Wednesday. He called the push an “uphill fight.”

Democrats have vowed to fight a wave of new state laws, inspired by Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen election, that make voting difficult than. But after an initial flurry of action, the Democrats’ efforts stalled in the narrowly divided Senate, where they lacked 60 votes to overcome the Republican dissent, leading them to call rule change.

They’ve been trying to breathe new life into the endeavor lately. Biden gave a fiery speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, where he told the senators that each will be judged by “history” if they don’t act. He will meet Democratic senators at the Capitol on Thursday to push the effort forward.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell sharply hit back at Biden’s speech Wednesday, protesting his comparison of opponents of the voting law to racist historical figures, including George Wallace, governor of Alabama, running for president, and Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.

McConnell, R-Ky, said: “You couldn’t invent a better ad for the legislature than what we just saw: a president who abandoned rational persuasion in favor of pedagogy. pure,” McConnell, R-Ky, from the Senate floor. “A president shouting that 52 senators and millions of Americans are racist unless he gets whatever he wants is demonstrating exactly why framers build Senate to test his power. “

Asked Wednesday for a response to McConnell’s comments, Biden turned around, removed his black mask and said, “I like Mitch McConnell. He is a friend. That response came during Biden’s trip to the Capitol to pay tribute to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who passed away last month and is lying in bed in Rotunda.

Republicans almost unanimously opposed the voting law, seeing it as a federal violation that would infringe on states’ ability to conduct their own elections. And they pointed out that Democrats are opposed to changes to the objections Trump sought when he was president.

For Democrats and Biden, the law is a political imperative. Failure to pass it would break a major campaign promise for Black voters, who have helped Democrats control the White House and Congress, and will come just before the midterms when the Democrats Fragile Democratic numbers will be delivered. It would also be the second major setback to Biden’s agenda in a month, after Manchin halted work on the president’s $2 trillion package of social and environmental initiatives right away. before Christmas.

The current package of voting and ethics laws would usher in the largest overhaul of US elections in a generation, reduce barriers to voting enacted in the name of election security, reduce influence of large sums of money in politics and limit partisan influence on the withdrawal of district parliaments. This package will create national election standards that are superior to state-level GOP legislation. It would also restore the Justice Department’s ability to enforce police election laws in states with a history of discrimination.

Many civil rights activists say Biden’s push for voting rights is too early-too ​​late to act aggressively after GOP-supported changes to the state’s voting laws, which they see as a form of restriction. More sophisticated ballots such as literacy tests and poll taxes were once used to disenfranchise Black voters. Some boycotted Biden’s speech in Atlanta on Tuesday.

The New Georgia Project, a group founded by Democratic leadership candidate Georgia Stacey Abrams, is among those that have called on Biden to skip the speech.

“We’ve heard rhetoric like this before,” the group said in a statement. “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

Schumer has set the date of Martin Luther King Jr., January 17, as the deadline to pass the ballot legislation or consider amending the filming rules. It is unclear whether the planned vote on the rule changes will still take place.

Manchin, who played a key role in writing the Democratic Party’s voting law, poured cold water on hopes Tuesday, saying any changes should be made with substantial Party buying. Republican – although there weren’t any Republican senators willing to sign on.

That surprised South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn, the 3rd Democrat in the House and a senior member of the Black Congress party.

Clyburn questioned the wisdom of reflexively seeking bipartisanship, noting that the right to vote was granted to newly freed slaves by a partisan vote.

Clyburn said of Manchin: “He seems to be backing a bill of his own. “That, for us, is very upsetting.”

___

AP Congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed.

https://www.ocregister.com/2022/01/12/dems-switch-strategy-on-voting-bill-as-biden-pushes-action/ Dems shifts strategy on ballot measure as Biden pushes for action – Orange County Register

Huynh Nguyen

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