What Is Biden Thinking?

By John McCormack

Thursday, January 13, 2022

 

On Tuesday, President Biden went down to Georgia to deliver a speech that was as pathetic as it was demagogic.

 

The demagoguery in Biden’s speech focused on the idea that American democracy will die if Democratic bills to federalize elections aren’t passed and that those who oppose such bills — or merely oppose abolition of the filibuster — will go down in history alongside the likes of George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Jefferson Davis.

 

On paper, it’s hard to think of a worse insult than lumping half the country (or more) into the same camp as racists and traitors. But Biden’s speech didn’t pack the punch it could have for several reasons.

 

It was a pathetic speech because the Democrats’ voting bills are doomed to fail. Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have repeatedly and consistently made it perfectly clear that they wouldn’t abolish the 60-vote threshold for legislation. Manchin reiterated on Tuesday that he would only support smaller changes to the rules governing the filibuster if they had the support of two-thirds of senators voting — the hurdle for rules changes established by the Standing Rules of the Senate.

 

It was a pathetic speech because it sought to create an air of crisis where none exists. “It is easier than ever to vote: Registration has gotten simpler in recent decades, and most Americans have more time to vote and more ways to do so,” Yuval Levin writes in the New York Times. “Voter turnout is at historic highs, and Black and white voting rates now rise and fall together. These trends long predate the pandemic, and efforts to roll back some state Covid-era accommodations seem unlikely to meaningfully affect turnout.” At the same time, Biden and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer are neglecting a potential electoral crisis that actually looms — a future attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the Electoral College.

 

It was a pathetic speech because Biden’s approval rating is scraping the low 40s: Inflation is higher than it’s been in decades, and the Biden administration’s handling of Covid-mitigation policies — from tests to mandates to boosters — has been a failure. The notion that a president in such a sorry political state is going to successfully pressure Manchin or Sinema into flip-flopping on the filibuster is laughable.

 

It was a pathetic speech because Democrats have been telegraphing this attack for well over a year. As I wrote twelve months ago:

 

The progressive playbook has been obvious to Republicans for months. In his July 30 [2020] eulogy for late Democratic congressman and civil-rights leader John Lewis, Barack Obama endorsed eliminating the filibuster in order to pass a voting-rights bill. “And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do,” Obama said.

 

Sure enough, Democrats decided to introduce a bill to federalize elections as their first bill. “Senate Democrats have said they will join House Democrats in pushing the democracy-expanding ‘For The People Act’ as their first bill,” Ezra Klein wrote on January 21. “But you can’t use budget reconciliation for that. So do Democrats give up on democracy or listen to Obama and give up on the filibuster?”

 

The play was obvious: Use the voting-rights bill to portray any supporter of the filibuster as both racist and an enemy of democracy.

 

Why did Democrats wait to launch their assault on the filibuster until now?

 

The “voting rights” bills were put on the back burner while Democrats pursued legislation that had a chance of passing — from the $1.9 trillion “COVID relief” bill to the infrastructure bill to the currently stalled-out “Build Back Better” bill. But now it’s time to placate left-wing donors and the progressive base. Schumer is reportedly worried about the possibility of a left-wing primary challenger (the filing date for the primary is April 7).

 

Holding a failed vote to nuke the legislative filibuster will not help Biden and congressional Democrats improve their standing among independents — indeed it could hurt them — and it’s not clear it will help fire up the progressives instead of demoralizing them. The impending failed vote now looks more like an attempt to blunt criticism of Biden and Schumer from their left flank: Don’t blame us, they’ll say, it’s Joe Manchin’s and Kyrsten Sinema’s fault for siding with the racists and enemies of democracy.