“I don’t want to have the debate on the wider issue of obstruction, because if we don’t do that part, if we don’t solve the democracy crisis, the rest is irrelevant,” Abrams said during a conversation broadcast with former President Bill Clinton this week. . “It is not just an existential crisis that we face, it is a moral imperative that we do not allow a procedural rule to destroy the most durable democracy the world has ever known.”
But that thought process runs for Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the only Democratic senator who opposes his party’s plan to expand access to the vote. Manchin called for changes to the proposal and demanded that the two Senate party leaders – Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York and Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky – unite around more targeted changes to protect voting rights.
“For the sake of our country, I’m begging the president, I’m begging the leadership … Chuck, I’m begging. Open your mind, Mitch,” Manchin told CNN. “We need to come to a holistic conclusion about a voting rights bill because we had an uprising. The vote is over. And now you are about to present a bill that is going to be passed on party lines, and you already want to end the obstruction completely? ”
Manchin added: “This is so wrong – in the most divided and most violent times in which I lived, to share even more.”
To appeal to Manchin, Democrats are proposing a strict change to Senate rules to ensure that there is an “exclusion” to allow any voting rights legislation to be presented by 51 votes, instead of the 60 votes currently needed to break an obstruction. . Still, Manchin has repeatedly told CNN that he is firmly opposed to any special exclusion, and other Democratic senators, like Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, have voiced opposition to lowering the 60-vote limit. To change Senate rules, all 50 members of the Senate Democratic bench would need to agree.
Voting rights have become an important issue for Democrats, with many in the party believing that Republicans are trying to thwart Democratic success in 2020 by passing restrictive bills.
Those Democratic fears peaked this week after Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill that imposes stricter voting restrictions in the state just months after a Democratic presidential candidate defeated Georgia for the first time since Bill Clinton in 1992. The new law imposes stricter requirements for absentee votes and limits on the use of ballot boxes, among other things.
President Joe Biden, in a victory for those who expect an obstruction exemption, said this week that he has an “open mind” about changing the obstruction rules on “certain things that are simply elementary to the functioning of our democracy”. He then cited “the right to vote” as one of those instances.
“This is a solution in search of a problem. The turnout for the 2020 elections was the highest since 1900,” said McConnell. “This is clearly a party’s effort to rewrite the rules of our political system.”
Several Republican Party aides say Democrats have not talked to Republicans about building a coalition to change voting rights on a bipartisan basis. Instead, a Republican Senate aide argued that the bill was merely a replay of the messaging legislation that the House passed in 2019, when there was absolutely no chance of being passed in the Senate.
The lack of Republican interest in the Senate, however, is exactly why activists pressed for the approval of a voting rights bill by all necessary means. Abrams and others argued that protecting the right to vote is the preeminent issue facing the party at the moment.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder also argued that the conversation about getting rid of the obstruction completely ignores the importance of protecting the right to vote.
“This is not a damn obstruction. It is bigger than that,” Holder said on Thursday. “This is the kind of country we want to have: our democracy is at risk. We must fight against Republican attempts – across the country – to cheat and suppress Americans’ voting rights.”
But the Democrats’ discussions about creating a special blocker exemption in voting rights legislation are also an impediment for Republicans, who argue that killing the blocker is a step in the wrong direction.
For Democrats, the challenge is to balance the wishes of many to the left of their caucus with the relentless commitment to protect obstruction by some of the moderates – namely Manchin.
Pressure from outside groups, however, is not weighing on the Democratic bench, said Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, who said the intensity from outside – including progressive members of the House of Representatives – would do little to really change Senate rules. That decision, he said, is one that only the caucus could make.
But some Democrats argued that Republican intransigence changed feelings about the obstruction.
“Over the course of this year, there has been a very significant shift in sentiment about McConnell’s strategy of obstructing and delaying, partly because we saw it in such a vivid display in 2009, 2011 and 2012,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, am The Democrat of Oregon who is a leader in the review of obstructions in the Senate.