Voting Rights Blues

I loved President Biden's speech urging action to stop the Republicans from chipping away at voting rights.  The only problem was that he can't do anything about it.  Listening to his speech was like looking at a Maserati and knowing you'll never get to drive it.

Pressure on Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin to allow the filibuster to be overruled on at least voting-rights legislation continues, as Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) is hoping for, but it's making as much progress as the COVID vaccination rate in this country.  That is, progress so incremental it hardly matters.  The only way Texas Democrats can keep the restricting voting rights bill in that state from passing is if they stay in Washington D.C. for another year.  And with COVID travel restrictions and lockdowns likely due to be imposed any day now, along with some of these Texas Democrats having come down with COVID despite being vaccinated, they just might be able to do that!

Meanwhile, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been holding her committee's hearings in Georgia to shed light on that state's new voting restrictions.  Hardly surprisingly, Republican members of the committee, including former and future Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have been boycotting the hearings.  They just don't want to . . . hear it.

As always, if Democrats have any hope of maintaining control of Congress in the 2022 midterms, they'll have to work with what they have and educate their base on navigating all of these new voting restrictions, which President Biden thinks is doable - though he may end up being in a minority of one on that.  It would be ironic if, in the 2024 congressional elections, Senator Manchin loses his seat in West Virginia due to new voting restrictions in his state.