President Joe Biden on Thursday expressed doubts about the future of the two bills to protect the right to vote in the United States that Democrats want to advance in Congress and that face seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the Senate.
Biden admitted Thursday that his push to enact changes to the voting laws and the Senate obstructionist rule may be doomed. “The honest answer to God is, I don’t know if we can do this,” Biden said after leaving a meeting of more than an hour with Senate Democrats.
“I don’t know if we’re going to get it but I know one thing, as long as I have breath, while I’m in the White House and as long as I’m involved, I’m going to fight to change the way these (state) legislatures are moving,” Biden told his departure from a meeting on Capitol Hill with Senate Democrats.
We’re calling on Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act to prevent voter suppression – and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore the Voting Rights Act and allow the Department of Justice to stop discriminatory laws before they go into effect.
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 13, 2022
Biden vowed to continue fighting for electoral reform and voting rights legislation, even if Republicans again block an effort to promote the legislation this weekend.
“Like any other major civil rights bill that was introduced, if we fail the first time, we can go back and try the second time,” the president said.
Biden warned that failure could result in “electoral subversion.”
The progressives who put two bills to vote in the Senate to guarantee the right to vote, but face fierce Republican opposition to an electoral reform.
Republicans block all measures promoted by the Democrats to protect the right to vote : in June they already knocked down the so-called “Law for the People” (“For the People Act”) and in October they did the same with “The Law of the freedom to vote ” (“ Freedom to Vote Act ”).
All these initiatives sought to counteract the restrictions on the right to vote that Republicans have imposed in recent months at the state level, with the approval of 33 laws in 17 states that limit the suffrage of Hispanics, African Americans and people with fewer economic resources , who already they go to the polls to a lesser extent.
The conservatives have so far managed to block the approval of these laws thanks to a maneuver known as “filibusterism”, which makes it possible to prevent the debate of any measure if a majority of 60 votes does not meet in the Senate.
Biden had so far opposed the possibility that the Democrats would eliminate that maneuver to assert their very narrow majority, which is just 50 seats, just half of the chamber, but this week he assured that the obstruction of the Republicans has not let him “Another option” than to support that idea.
The president received a jug of cold water on Thursday before addressing Congress from his own ranks, where Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has warned that she will not support any measure that undermines “filibuster” in the Senate to allow the approval of new laws.
In an intervention in the hemicycle, Sinema said that he continues to support bills to protect the right to vote, but that he will not support “separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division that infects the country,” in reference to the great political polarization existing in the United States.
In his meeting this Thursday with the Democratic caucus of the Upper House, Biden reiterated what he said two days ago during a visit to Georgia and conveyed to the senators that “this is a historic opportunity to save democracy and the need to protect a fundamental of American government ”, explained the spokesman of the White House, Jen Psaki, in her daily press conference.
The battle for the soul of America is not over. We must stand together, and stand strong in defense of our democracy. pic.twitter.com/AZRmRfa8BV
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 13, 2022
Psaki assured that the White House will continue to fight to carry out the two bills until the votes are received in the Senate . In that sense, he referred to the leader of the Democratic majority in that chamber, Chuck Schumer, who will have to decide what are the next steps to follow.
“But we are going to continue with the meetings and calls, and that is going to be what the president is going to focus on,” said Psaki.
According to Democrats, the Republican Party is preparing the ground at the state level to make it difficult to vote in the next election cycles and, potentially, turn around a result that does not favor them in the legislatures of this year and the presidential elections of 2024.
Voting restrictions are affecting, above all, minorities such as African Americans and Latinos .
The civil rights leader, Martin Luther King III , the eldest son of Martin Luther King Jr., regretted Sinema’s decision on Thursday and pointed out that while the senator continues “stubborn in her optimism,” minorities “are losing the right to vote.” .