Last night we told you that Democrats were trying hard to get Manchin to join them in voting as a united front to debate the ‘Screw the People Act’ (thank you Sen. Kennedy), and it looks like they got him:
NEWSMAX – Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said he’d vote with his party to begin debate on a sweeping overhaul of U.S. election laws, but that won’t be enough to overcome unified Republican opposition.
Manchin was the only Democrat who hasn’t supported the broad voting rights legislation that’s before the Senate, but he said he’s reached a compromise with other members of the party on changing it.
“Over the past month, I have worked to eliminate the far reaching provisions of S.1, the For the People Act – which I do not support,” Manchin, of West Virginia, said in a statement. “I’ve found common ground with my Democratic colleagues on a new version of the bill that ensures our elections are fair, accessible and secure.”
Republicans plan to block debate on the legislation with a filibuster, which would need 60 votes in the 50-50 Senate to break. Democratic leaders have made the bill a top priority in response to actions in GOP-led states to tighten voting laws after the 2020 election and former President Donald Trump’s false claims that he was cheated out of a victory.
In case you missed last night’s post, the point of Democrats wasn’t to actually succeed in advancing the bill. They know that’s impossible because zero Republicans support it. No, instead they simply wanted all Democrats to vote together to advance the bill so they could make the argument that Republicans are the only ones standing in the way of getting this so-called ‘voting rights bill’ passed, and they’ll use this as an argument to get rid of the filibuster:
The showdown with Republicans is again putting the spotlight on the chamber’s filibuster rule and calls from some Democrats for the Senate to get rid of, or change, the filibuster rule. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday that the Senate’s failure to advance the legislation “will be dramatic evidence why the filibuster needs to be modified.”
There it is. They plan on campaigning on this for the next election, hoping that it will help them win larger majorities. To paraphrase the late great Rush Limbaugh, I hope they fail.
Just as a side note, Democrats will say that Republicans filibustered their bill. Okay. But in reality, the onus is on them to get Republican support for the bill, and they couldn’t because the bill is an atrocity. We know this because not even the RINO from Alaska would vote with them for the bill.