Can Voters Pick Their Politicians or Will Politicians Pick Their Voters?
Today is the day the Senate Rules Committee will begin the process of ‘marking up’ HR1/S1, the voting rights bill --already passed by the House of Representatives-- known as the For the People Act.
Make no mistake about it, this legislation is a crucial step toward protecting democracy. And the political party whose main purpose seems to be denigrating the process, namely the Republicans, will be doing everything in their power to prevent this bill from passing.
https://twitter.com/Public_Citizen/status/1391818231782936577?s=20
Compromise isn’t an option for the party behind 360 bills in 47 states this year with provisions restricting voting access, according to a tally by the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.
Casting doubts on the validity of the electoral process is a core tenet for today’s GOP via the Big Lie, which holds that (non-existent) voter fraud cost former President Trump the 2020 election.
The Rules Committee hearing will include a veritable circus of showboating, bad faith arguments, and proposed amendments with no chance of passing.
Sen. Roy Blunt, the ranking Republican on the committee, predicted the committee vote on the Democrats' election overhaul bill will last "at least all day."
"I know that 100-plus amendments takes a while," Blunt said.
While the Rules Committee is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, the power sharing agreement has a provision to move the bill forward even in a deadlocked committee.
Democrats in the Senate do have some amendments to the House version of the bill they say are based on feedback from local election officials. Election experts have doubts about whether many states would be able to realistically implement the bill by the tight deadlines in the current version.
From NBC News:
The Democrats' revisions would mostly extend deadlines, ease some rules and add flexibility for states to implement parts of the bill. Democrats don't expect Republican support for the final version, but they won't need it to send the bill out of committee to the full Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has promised floor consideration of the bill, known on Capitol Hill as S.1, after it goes through committee.
Democrats as well as Republicans are expected to offer other amendments, and aides are bracing for what could be days of markup. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has made it a priority to kill the bill, is expected to participate in the committee, an aide said.
The Koch-funded State Policy Network, a confederation of right-wing think tanks with affiliates in every state, organized a phone conference earlier this year to discuss strategies for stopping HR1.
Presented with polling research indicating broad popular support for the legislation, the consensus was that killing it with a thousand cuts would be more effective than actually trying to sell the GOP position to the American public.
From Jane Meyer at New Yorker:
Kyle McKenzie, the research director for the Koch-run advocacy group Stand Together, told fellow-conservatives and Republican congressional staffers on the call that he had a “spoiler.” “When presented with a very neutral description” of the bill, “people were generally supportive,” McKenzie said, adding that “the most worrisome part . . . is that conservatives were actually as supportive as the general public was when they read the neutral description.” In fact, he warned, “there’s a large, very large, chunk of conservatives who are supportive of these types of efforts.”
As a result, McKenzie conceded, the legislation’s opponents would likely have to rely on Republicans in the Senate, where the bill is now under debate, to use “under-the-dome-type strategies”—meaning legislative maneuvers beneath Congress’s roof, such as the filibuster—to stop the bill, because turning public opinion against it would be “incredibly difficult.” He warned that the worst thing conservatives could do would be to try to “engage with the other side” on the argument that the legislation “stops billionaires from buying elections.” McKenzie admitted, “Unfortunately, we’ve found that that is a winning message, for both the general public and also conservatives.” He said that when his group tested “tons of other” arguments in support of the bill, the one condemning billionaires buying elections was the most persuasive—people “found that to be most convincing, and it riled them up the most.”
https://twitter.com/ianbassin/status/1389818287412842499?s=20
Passing HR1/S1 won’t happen unless Democrats can find a way around the Senate’s filibuster rule. Stay tuned for that will or won’t happen.
From The Hill:
Fix Our Senate, an outside group pushing for rules changes, predicted that the fight over the filibuster “is about to return with ferocity — and the battle lines are being drawn.”
“In the coming weeks the Democrats’ number one bill and top priority will face off against Sen. McConnell’s focus on defeating it – and we all know that the filibuster will be the weapon he uses to win this fight with fewer votes, unless Democrats eliminate it,” they added.
And while Schumer hasn’t endorsed changing the Senate’s rules he’s hinted that he views the election reform bill as a crucial moment in the filibuster fight.
“The process that I outlined for S.1 is a process that, I think, could very well cause the Senate to evolve,” he said.
In researching this post I came across many of the GOP’s talking points against HR1/S1. And while their strategy (for now) appears to be to try and kill the bill behind closed doors, be aware of the hue and cry that will go up should it pass.
I can sum up their arguments by saying that everything they accuse Democrats of trying to do is in fact what Republicans are already doing with voter suppression bills in states like Georgia, Florida and Texas.
Here the list-via The Brennan Center of what the For The People bill WILL do, with links for details.:
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Cancel Culture is the new "Dog Ate My Homework"
Shot: Trainer Bob Baffert appeared on Fox News Monday, denying wrongdoing after his Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, tested positive for an illegal drug. Of course, he blamed it on the libs. “We live in a different world now. This America is different. It was like a cancel culture kind of a thing so they’re reviewing it."
Chaser: Late Night host Stephen Colbert quipped, “And the horse claimed he was just holding it for some friends.”
Morning After: October 23, 2020 (Associated Press) A filly trained by two-time Triple Crown winner Bob Baffert has tested positive in a postrace drug test for the second time this year, making it the third positive test by a horse in Baffert’s stable in the last six months.
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