Voting Wrongs

Voting-rights activists vow to continue their fight or the various bills in Congress that would nullify voter restrictions in the states, but they are pitching in a game with no hitters.  The Senate voted on a rule change to allow the bills to go through, the vote failed, and that was the end of it.  The topic likely will not come up in the Senate for the rest of 2022 and though a Democratic Senate may revisit the issue in 2023, the House will likely be Republican.  And, of course, any bill passed by the House in this Congress has to be voted on all over again in the next Congress that opens in . . . 2023.

The bright side? Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema turned out to be the only Democratic U.S. Senators to vote against the filibuster rule change to allow the voting-rights legislation to move to a vote.  The rest of the Democratic Senate caucus is otherwise united in the need to preserve voting rights, so this should bolster the Democratic progressive base somewhat going into the midterms.

Without the guarantee of passing any of President Biden's social legislation in 2022, Senate Democrats are planning to schedule votes on the legislation to force their Republican counterparts to go on record as proposing popular program proposals such as Medicare coverage expansion and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.  The Democrats are hoping that Republicans will be forced to explain their "no votes in the misterm campaign.  There's just one problem with this strategy, and it's a big one: The Republicans are very good at explaining away their opposition to policies the majority of people support.  Especially when those who support them the most are the ones most likely to be discouraged from voting, thanks to all of these odious state voting laws.

The Democrats had best start voting on legislation soon, if exposing the Republicans as the real obstructionists after so much Democratic in-fighting over process is their only hope, because it looks less likely that they'll be able to propose anything in the 118th Congress that takes over in January 2023 - because of one or both houses under Republican control . . . though, thanks to election cheating, false-flag operations, and conspiracy theorists, the 119th Congress looks to be successful in passing Republican legislation under a Republican President . . . thanks to an emergency measure by the new administration that leaves the GOP with every seat in the House and the Senate. 😮