Biden Plans Voting-Rights Push as Allies Worry He’s Too Late
Biden Tees Up Voting-Rights Push as Allies Worry He’s Too Late
(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden will seek to rally support for voting-rights legislation Tuesday amid a growing backlash from allies who say he has neglected an issue vital to Democrats’ chances of keeping control of Congress.
Biden will make the case for a bill to prevent states from curbing voting access during a trip to Atlanta that includes a visit to Ebenezer Baptist Church and a speech at Morehouse College. The president will evoke the legacies of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis.
“Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice?” Biden will say, according to an excerpt of his prepared remarks released by the White House. “I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic. And so the question is, where will the institution of United States Senate stand?”
Republicans have vowed to block the measure.
The president’s trip, however, has drawn objections from some of his allies, who are upset that he didn’t make a priority of voting rights months ago and instead focused on trying to win passage of his tax and spending plan.
Voting activists in Georgia, some of whom plan to skip the speech, said Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris would make better use of their time staying in Washington to prod Democrats.
“If President Biden was going to make a speech calling for its passage, more important than doing it in Georgia would’ve been actually doing it in the Senate at one of the Dem caucus meetings,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, a group credited with helping to flip the state for Biden in 2020.
Albright told CNN on Tuesday that his group was among those boycotting Biden’s speech. Stacey Abrams, a Democratic candidate for Georgia governor who played a key role in Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, wasn’t among a list of attendees the White House released early Tuesday.
Biden said Tuesday that he and Abrams, who tweeted support for the president’s visit, “got our scheduling mixed up” and are “on the same page.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Biden and Abrams had a “warm conversation” Tuesday morning and “agreed that it’s important to continue to fight for this and work together, moving forward.”
More than a half-dozen members of Georgia’s congressional delegation, including Senator Raphael Warnock, a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, plan to attend, along with an extensive group of local and civil rights leaders, according to the White House.
Focus on Filibuster
Biden is seeking to pressure reluctant Senate Democrats -- including West Virgina’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema -- for a controversial one-time change in Senate filibuster rules that would clear the way for action on voting rights.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is planning a vote on changing the rules later this week, a tally that comes as voting rights legislation is stymied in a chamber split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans.
But Senate Democrats don’t even agree on exactly what changes to the filibuster they should attempt. Ideas under consideration include a “talking filibuster” that makes it more personally taxing for bill opponents to hold up legislation because they would have to remain on the floor speaking.
Manchin reiterated Tuesday that he opposes both getting rid of the filibuster entirely and changing Senate rules via a simple majority vote, the so-called nuclear option. He said any changes to the chamber’s rules should be made with support from at least two-thirds of the Senate.
“We need some good rule changes to make the place work better,” he told reporters. “But getting rid of the filibuster doesn’t make it work better.”
By endorsing significant changes to Senate rules, Biden opens the door to Republican attacks, risking further erosion among swing voters already frustrated by his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and inflation.
Biden’s Agenda
Biden’s pivot toward voting rights comes weeks after Manchin dealt Biden’s domestic agenda a crippling blow, saying he would withhold a decisive vote for the nearly $1.8 trillion package of social programs, environmental spending and new taxes.
Congressional inaction would allow a raft of restrictive new state-level voting laws to go into effect for November’s midterm elections.
The effect could be significant, especially in Georgia, where Republicans have passed new restrictions on absentee voting that could hurt Warnock’s re-election prospects.
Warnock, who won the runoff of a special election in 2021 and must face the voters again this fall, has championed voting rights.
Tuesday’s speech follows a warning the president sounded during last week’s commemoration of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that former President Donald Trump and his supporters were holding a “dagger at the throat of democracy.”
Republicans four times last year denied Senate consideration of bills drafted by Democrats that would allow automatic voter registration, bar partisan “gerrymandering” of congressional districts, allow Justice Department review of some state voting law rewrites and make other changes.
At least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting voter access to ballots between Jan. 1 and Dec. 7 of 2021, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have defended the actions of GOP-led legislatures and have said Democrats exaggerate their impact on minority voters. McConnell has vowed to keep Republicans united against the Democrat-drafted voting rights legislation.
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.