Democrats Are Fighting To Hold Onto Democracy-- Where's Joe Biden?
Reminder: Biden Is Jim Clyburn's Fault
[...]
The pollsters added that "Although majorities of Republicans-- across age groups-- view voting as a privilege with responsibilities that can be limited, younger Republicans and GOP leaners are more likely than older Republicans to say that voting is a fundamental right for every U.S. adult citizen: 44% of Republicans and Republican leaners under 30 say it is a fundamental right, compared with 37% of those ages 30 to 49, 29% of those 50 to 64 and just 22% of those 65 and older."
In one part of my brain I would agree with these old Republicans. Fascists and other groups hostile to democracy shouldn't be allowed to vote. Anyone stupid enough to have voted for Trump in 2020 should never be allowed near a ballot box again. But in the other 99% of my brain, I know that that is a stupid idea that I shouldn't even be saying out loud-- just a kind of guilty pleasure to think about.
In this morning's NY Times, Katie Rogers and Nick Corasaniti noted that enthusiasm for democracy and voting rights is chipping away at Biden's support. His conservatism is more and more showing for those who have missed it since the early 1970s. Rogers and Corasaniti wrote that Biden "is increasingly at odds with leaders of the voting rights movement, who see a contrast between his soaring language and his willingness to push Congress to pass federal legislation." In other words, idealistic grassroots Democrats are starting to confront the fact that Biden is full of shit. On Thursday, in a polite but pointed letter from 150 grassroots organizations, Biden was urged to use that soapbox that comes with the presidency "to push for two expansive federal voting rights bills that would combat a Republican wave of balloting restrictions."
Bully Pulpit 4" by Nancy Ohanian Biden and these groups are increasingly in disagreement about how to pass what Biden's speech-writer called the "most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War," a reference to the GOP dismantling voting rights for minorities on the state level. Biden seems to think keeping the Jim Crow filibuster in place is more important that passing that test. "Voting rights groups say that Biden is not expending sufficient political capital or using the full force of his bully pulpit to persuade Congress. They point to the contrast between his soaring language-- 'Jim Crow on steroids,' he has called the G.O.P. voting laws-- and his opposition to abolishing the Senate filibuster. [...]
[...] Writing for The Guardian this morning, Robert Reich, asked >Why isn’t Joe Biden doing all he can to protect American democracy? His answer to his own question involves how "both parties are beholden to an anti-democratic coalition [that] is stopping real change." After all, as Alan Grayson noted here on Friday, "We can have the filibuster, or we can have democracy, but we can’t have both. We can have the filibuster, or we can have progress, but we can’t have both."
Reich warned that "Some progressives have suggested a carve-out to the filibuster solely for voting rights. This might constrain the white supremacists but would do nothing to protect American democracy from the wealth supremacists. If democracy is to be preserved, both parts of the anti-democracy coalition must be stopped."
Dorothy Reik, a popular Democratic Party official in Los Angeles, told her followers today that she's "happy to answer Robert Reich's question. Biden doesn't support even a carve out of the filibuster for voting rights because he never ever intended to pass voting rights AND/OR the Green New Deal infrastructure bill. He lied to you. He lied to me too-- but I always knew he was lying. You can't teach an old pol new tricks! That is what he meant when he said ending the filibuster would cause "chaos"-- like everyone voting and the Green New Deal! And maybe the election of more Nina Turners!!! Don't listen to Clyburn either-- he wants HIS Black voters to vote-- not ours! "
All talk, no action. That's not much to say for the man. Not Trump can only reach so far and no further. Moreover, there is a lesser but still existent VP bully pulpit, so what are we learning from there? That there is gratitude from there for Clyburn? Perhaps that. But what else?
Detail - A brief attempt to search and find a Dorthy Reik online essay for the link Klein omitted failed. Perhaps it was a tweet? Possibly a personal communication between Reik and Klein? Arguably - The lady captured Clyburn in a nutshell.
_________UPDATE_________
The Robert Reich item to which Klein linked has this to say -
Republicans are stoking white people’s fears that a growing non-white population is usurping their dominance.
Yet while Biden and Democratic leaders are openly negotiating with holdout senators for Biden’s stimulus and infrastructure proposals, they aren’t exerting similar pressure when it comes to voting rights and elections. In fact, Biden now says he won’t take on the filibuster, which stands firmly in the way.
What gives? Part of the explanation, I think, lies with an outside group that has almost as much influence on the Democratic party as on the Republican, and which isn’t particularly enthusiastic about election reform: the moneyed interests bankrolling both parties.
A more robust democracy would make it harder for the wealthy to keep their taxes low and profits high. So at the same time white supremacists have been whipping up white fears about non-whites usurping their dominance, America’s wealthy have been spending vast sums on campaign donations and lobbyists to prevent a majority from usurping their money.
They’re now whipping up resistance among congressional Democrats to Biden’s plan to tax capital gains at 39.6% – up from 20% – for those earning more than $1m, and they’re on the way to restoring the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes, of which they’re the biggest beneficiaries.
In recent years these wealth supremacists, as they might be called, have quietly joined white supremacists to become a powerful anti-democracy coalition. Some have backed white supremacist’s efforts to divide poor and working-class whites from poor and working-class Black and brown people, so they don’t look upward and see where most of the economic gains have been going and don’t join together to demand a fair share of those gains.
Similarly, white supremacists have quietly depended on wealth supremacists to donate to lawmakers who limit voting rights, so people of color continue to be second-class citizens. It’s no accident that six months after the insurrection, dozens of giant corporations that promised not to fund members of Congress who refused to certify Biden as president are now back funding them and their anti-voting rights agenda.
Donald Trump was put into office by this anti-democracy coalition. According to Forbes, 9% of America’s billionaires, together worth a combined $210bn, pitched in to cover the costs of Trump’s 2020 campaign. During his presidency Trump gave both parts of the coalition what they wanted most: tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks for the wealth supremacists; legitimacy for the white supremacists.
The coalition is now the core of the Republican party, which stands for little more than voter suppression based on Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and tax cuts for the wealthy and their corporations.
Meanwhile, as wealth supremacists have accumulated a larger share of the nation’s income and wealth than at any time in more than a century, they’ve used a portion of that wealth to bribe lawmakers not to raise their taxes. It was recently reported that several American billionaires have paid only minimal or no federal income tax at all.
Tragically, the supreme court is supporting both the white supremacists and wealth supremacists. Since Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito joined in 2005 and 2006, respectively, the court has been whittling away voting rights while enlarging the rights of the wealthy to shower money on lawmakers. The conservative majority has been literally making it easier to buy elections and harder to vote in them.
Do recall that Rep. Clyburn has endorsed Nina Turner's main Dem primary opponent in Cleveland, the one written of earlier on Crabgrass. The one featuring a photo-op prop.
How do we tell who our real friends are? By words? By deeds?
That Dorothy Reik lady mentioned above as quoted by Klein, does have a deft touch in commenting about Clyburn. She pinned Biden down too.
___________FURTHER UPDATE___________
Gentler in wording, but nearly identical criticism: July 25, 2021 - NYT op-ed - by Charles M. Blow -
[...] it is still important to recognize that Biden has consciously chosen not to use the full force of the bully pulpit to explicitly and repeatedly call for the protection of voting rights — and therefore our democracy — by any and all means necessary, including the elimination of the filibuster.
Biden has a vision of what he wants his legacy to be: the builder, not necessarily the defender. He wants to be the one passing out checks, not the one sticking out his neck. This was on full, contemptible display at a town hall with the president hosted by CNN on Wednesday.
Don Lemon, the moderator, asked Biden, “Why is protecting the filibuster — is that more important than protecting voting rights, especially for people who fought and died for that?”
Biden said that it wasn’t and that he wanted to see voting rights legislation passed, but then said:
“What I don’t want to do is get wrapped up, right now, in the argument of whether or not this is all about the filibuster or — look, the American public, you can’t stop them from voting. You tried last time. More people voted last time than at any time in American history, in the middle of the worst pandemic in American history. More people did.”
This is patently false. You absolutely can stop people from voting. We have seen this over and over again throughout American history. And, these laws won’t harm all Americans. They’ll harm minorities in America. They are aimed at liberal cities where the populations are often heavily Black and Latino.
Biden is basically saying here what Black America has heard forever: No matter how high they make the hill, your only choice is to climb it. I applaud your ascension. My God, aren’t your legs strong.
Black people are eternally disgusted that they always get the hill and others don’t. There is nothing glorious in Black people waiting hours in line to vote, sometimes into the wee hours of the morning, while people in whiter precincts breeze in and out. This is wrong. This is outrageous. This is a time tax. Don’t pat us on the head; take us down the hill.
Lemon later asked Biden about the filibuster: “If it’s a relic of Jim Crow, it’s been used to fight against civil rights legislation historically, why protect it?”
Biden responded, “There’s no reason to protect it other than you’re going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done.” What?! Getting rid of it to protect Black people’s ballot access is getting something done. Something enormous.
But Biden is focused on the other elements of his agenda, the ones he tied himself to before the wave of voter suppression became clear.
“For example, wouldn’t my friends on the other side love to have a debate about the filibuster instead of passing the recovery act?” he continued at the town hall. “Or wouldn’t they love doing it instead of being in a position where we provide for — how many of you have children under the age of 17? Raise your hand. Guess what? You’re getting a lot of money in a monthly check now, aren’t you?”
Biden wants to be the Robin Hood of the working class, a swashbuckling blue-collar savior. He wants to go down in history as the president who rebuilt America. In that grand vision, risking it all to save voting access for Black people comes up short. It’s a nuisance, a horrible inconvenience.
[italics in original] If Biden cared, he'd be moving off the dime. Talk is cheap.
And it is not just Black people being squeezed. It is poor people who live in less affluent areas than their brothers and sisters in the burbs. It is progressives, who are demeaned by Biden's "You are getting a check, be happy." The man is intentionally tone deaf to the people and the issue. His talk is cheap. His talk is off point. His talk seems intended to be diversionary. Ineptly so.
Saying, "Gee, look at last election's turnout," hones in on exactly what the Republicans are trying to sabotage. They looked. They fought it. They lost. They deny losing. And this clown basically says little beyond, "So what?"
While Dem inner party types like Tom Perez are barely a cut better than inner party Republicans, both are corrupt and money-centric self-first climbers. Nonetheless, voters deserve better than being lied to and jollyied along ineptly, "Election's over. Go away."
Had Jan. 6 been about intolerable DC-wide careerist politician and consultant corruption, it would have been deserved. The mob on that theme could have occupied the Supreme Court too. K-Street and the big law firms. Being about Trump, indeed, incited by Trump, it was off target. That is the major error. Not that it happened but that it was wrongly aimed. Capitol Police there to hold the people away from the process.
"Election's over. Go away." And Pelosi is shocked. SHOCKED!