Voting Rights Renewed?

 Joe Biden has had enough.

He came out swinging yesterday at Morehouse College in Atlanta to declare his opposition to employing the Senate filibuster against voting rights legislation and, having tried to work behind the scenes to get reluctant Democratic senators to agree, is now shaming them publicly to get voting rights legislation passed.

And he may end up doing no more than swing his fists into thin air.

Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia an Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona remain opposed to any change to the filibuster where voting rights is concern, insisting that the issue must be a bipartisan one and encouraging compromise, while the Republicans - who will no doubt abolish the filibuster once Trump is back in power to turn Congress into a rubber-stamp body for the Dear Leader - remain steadfastly opposed to nay federal legislation that would make it easier for Democratic constituencies to vote.     

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell seems convinced that this push will work, as does House Democratic whip James Clyburn, who noted on O'Donnell's show this past Tuesday that women's suffrage was a heavy lift and added that he would like to remind Senator Sinema how much trouble it was to get the Eighteenth Amendment ratified to guarantee the right to vote.  You know that voting rights legislation is going to have a tough time when the third most powerful Democrat in the U.S. House invokes Prohibition to make the argument for expanded voting rights.  (And no, Clyburn did not correct himself to say the Nineteenth Amendment, and O'Donnell didn't correct him.)  These are the people fighting for our rights?

As for President Biden, I don't see a way forward for him to push voting rights unless he has a secret plan to end the filibuster (which I hope works out better than his secret plan to end the war in Afghanistan). Meanwhile, Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer plans a vote on the issue in the coming days to at least get senators on the record as a way to shame those who oppose the legislation - as if Republicans are capable of being shamed.  It's going to be interesting.