July 28: Some Basic Realities For Democrats on Voting Rights
Watching an intra-Democratic argument on voting rights strategy intensify in Washington, I offered some advice to both sides at New York:
There has been an underlying disagreement within the mostly Democratic coalition favoring voting rights that was nicely captured in this New York Times report on Friday:
“A quiet divide between President Biden and the leaders of the voting rights movement burst into the open on Thursday, as 150 organizations urged him to use his political mettle to push for two expansive federal voting rights bills that would combat a Republican wave of balloting restrictions … In private calls with voting rights groups and civil rights leaders, White House officials and close allies of the president have expressed confidence that it is possible to ‘out-organize voter suppression,’ according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.”
Both sides in this argument are partly wrong. Those who expect Joe Biden to force the For the People Act or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act through the Senate via some major revision in the ability to filibuster are probably expecting the impossible. Yes, perhaps if Biden personally and insistently and abrasively lobbied Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema to abandon her very consistent defense of the filibuster, up to and including encouragement of a primary challenge to her when she is up for reelection in 2024, she might decide her current and very insistent independent-maverick “branding” isn’t going to keep working for her. But Joe Manchin? He would be thrilled to get attacked by a Democratic president or Democratic advocacy groups for insisting that he won’t support voting-rights measures unless at least some Republicans support them. His state is so very red that the threat of a primary challenge to the sole remaining successful West Virginia Democrat is a laugher.
Short of a nuclear attack on West Virginia, it’s hard to identify anything Biden might do to Manchin that wouldn’t run a high risk of backfiring. And he does need Manchin on the reconciliation bills Democrats are using to get around the filibuster to enact Biden’s social and economic agenda. It’s just too bad voting-rights bills don’t qualify for reconciliation.
Yes, it is intensely frustrating that Biden cannot bring himself to come out forthrightly for filibuster reform, but it probably doesn’t matter since it is not happening unless the Democratic Senate Conference gets bigger, making senators like Manchin and Sinema irrelevant on the subject. So at some point voting-rights advocates need to focus on that goal.
At the same time, White House claims that Democrats can “out-organize voter suppression” are partially wrong as well. Yes, restrictive provisions like voter-ID requirements, limits on voting by mail, and even voter-roll purges can be countered and perhaps overcome by intensive efforts to educate and energize the voters Republicans are trying to keep from the polls. But you cannot out-organize a partisan gerrymander, or a law that lets election officials or state legislators overturn the outcome of an election after votes are cast.
Voting-rights advocates will eventually have to play the cards dealt to them by the system as it currently exists. That means refraining from too much anger aimed at Democratic pols who have little choice but to concede defeat on some legislation and concentrate on legislation (i.e., those reconciliation bills with many items vital to the people whose voting rights are also under attack) they can enact with no margin for error in the Senate and little in the House. At the same time, Biden and his staff and Democratic “pragmatists” in Congress should never for a moment be cavalier about the legislative obstacles they face in defending democracy itself. They may have to accept a tactical defeat on voting rights in this Congress. But they should never, ever, give up on making it happen later if not sooner.
If John Kerry had won, it would have been close; we know that. He knew that all along. So what was he supposed to do (and Bush as well): stand up in the debate and say, “Well, I know if I win, it won’t be my much, so I probably won’t make any significant changes, since I won’t have a mandate.” What sort of leadership are we asking of any of our winning presidential candidates, be they in ’08 or 2032, or whenever, if we demand that they need to win by an enormous amount for them to believe they have a mandate to implement their policies? In a closely divided electorate, which the US is likely to be for the foreseeable future, this is a formula for endless paralysis.
Obviously, if a candidate wins by a little, but governs like he won by a lot, he is risking significant political capital. But I’d far rather see that than have an occupant of the Oval Office decide that his victory was by the hair of his chinny-chin-chin, so he better play it safe for the next four years. The President, Republican or Democratic, needs to be a leader. All this carping about Bush not having a mandate is telling him not to be a leader. The same standard easily could have been applied to Kerry if he won. This is a formula for disaster, not just now, but in the future.
Please! Let’s not forget that Ohio is still in recount mode. Just because the main stream media are not properly covering it, doesn’t mean it is isn’t happening.
Marty
if ohio is the breaker
bush only won by 100k
back in 1988 the first bush won in states that would have made the difference by 500k
and the second bush won by 538 in florida
3% is not nearly as large as clintons 5% and 8% wins in three way races
and much larger when nixon barely won in 1968 with 43%
bush has no mandate!!!
These are the actual vote totals:
Bush: 62,027,466 (50.73%)
Kerry: 59,027,612 (48.28%)
Nader: 456,356 (0.37%)
Badnarik: 396,888 (0.32%)
Others: 361,079 (0.30%)
As you can see, Bush beat Kerry by 2.9+ million votes but he won the election by just under 1.8 million votes. Seriously, why just post his margin over Kerry when it’s clear he won by much less than the MSM is telling us if all the votes are included in his “mandate”?
These numbers can’t be final – Washington State is still in the middle of a statewide recount which has already added over a thousand votes to the state total.
You’re buying into the Republican frame with this….Bush actually won by less than 1.8 million votes if you take into account the fact this was more than a 2-man race. More than a million people voted for third party candidates this year….Bush’s mandate is smaller than it appears, shouldn’t we be the first to point this out?