The president has a long record of waxing eloquent on voting rights. Now it’s time for him to get the job done
Shelby v. Holder
gave Republican-dominated state legislatures a green light to start suppressing votes again. In response, Biden has said little and done even less. That was supposed to change on Tuesday, when the president would deliver what his aides billed as a “major address” on voting rights in the symbolically charged setting of Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center.
While the president was holding forth, I was on the phone speaking with one of the Georgia Democrats who’d fought GOP lawmakers tooth-and-nail this past winter as they steamrolled their 98-page voter-suppression bill to passage. “I don’t care about speeches,” said Rep. Renitta Shannon, explaining why she hadn’t bothered to tune in to hear what Biden might say. “I care about action.”
And here is the sum total of the “action” Biden announced on Tuesday: “As soon as Congress passes the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For the People Act,.” The audience at the Constitution Center cheered on cue. But the president laid out no strategy whatsoever for ensuring those bills would pass, though he knows full well that they’ve stalled out in the Senate because of the filibuster rule that requires 60 votes to pass them. Nor did he use the occasion to pressure Sens.
In the days leading up to Biden’s “major address,” his press secretary, Jen Psaki, was far more frank about the president’s stance on filibuster reform. “The president’s view continues to be aligned with what he has said in the past, which is that he has not supported the elimination of the filibuster,” sheWhite House reporters on Monday.
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