The Choice

It’s shaping up to be the most significant question about the new Democratic Senate: If forced to choose between the protection of voting rights and the protection of the filibuster, what will Democrats do?  Republican legislators in dozens of states are trying to make voting more difficult, mostly because they believe that lower voter turnout helps their party win elections. The Supreme Court, with six Republican appointees among the nine justices, has generally allowed those restrictions to stand.  “I don’t say this lightly,” Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida, recently wrote. “We are witnessing the greatest roll back of voting rights in this country since the Jim Crow era.”  The only meaningful way for Democrats to respond is through federal legislation, like the voting-rights bill that the House passed on Wednesday. Among other things, it would require states to register many eligible voters automatically; allow others to register on Election Day; hold at least 15 days of early voting; expand voting by mail; and allow people with completed criminal sentences to vote. The bill also requires more disclosure of campaign donations and restricts partisan gerrymandering.  But the bill seems to have no chance of winning the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome a filibuster. The Senate is divided 50-50 between the two parties (including two independents, who usually vote with Democrats). The bill will pass only if all 50 Senate Democrats agree to scrap or alter the filibuster, as they have the power to do.  “Proponents of eliminating the filibuster have said all along that their best opportunity to do so would come on a civil-rights bill, and this is the modern version,” Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, explained.  Carl went on to say: “They intend to ratchet up the pressure on Democratic holdouts to overturning the filibuster by saying Republicans are using undemocratic means to hold up urgent protections for our democratic system. The votes still aren’t there, but opponents of the filibuster believe they are gaining ground.”  The swing votes include Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, two of the most moderate Democratic senators, who have both expressed support for the filibuster.  So, what will the choice of Democrats be?  Will they have the “stones” to roll back  the filibuster allowing Biden his complete agenda which will guarantee Democratic victory at the polls or will they cave and one again give America a situation where the only focus of the Republican will be the failure of Biden Democratic administration?