Biden Must Get Manchin and Sinema to Fall in Line

America is at a turning point on voting rights – one that’s almost as critical as the mid-1960s when the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed. 

The present choice is whether to expand voting rights and strengthen our democracy, or allow the GOP to enact even more restrictive voting laws and partisan gerrymandering — cementing themselves in minority rule for years to come. 

Just as in the mid-1960s, presidential leadership will be a decisive factor.

Across the country, state Republicans have introduced over 250 bills restricting the right to vote. As a lawyer for the Arizona GOP recently admitted before the Supreme Court in seeking to defend the state’s voting restrictions, if they’re eliminated, “it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.”

Democrats in Congress are fighting back against this anti-democratic agenda with their For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. 

These bills would automatically register new voters, outlaw gerrymandering, expand early voting, ban restrictions on mail-in ballots, reform campaign finance laws, and restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Mitch McConnell calls it a “power grab.” It is a power grab – grabbing power back for the people.

Yet although Democrats now possess a razor-thin majority in the Senate, these efforts don’t stand a chance unless Democrats overcome two obstacles there.

The first is the filibuster, a rule requiring 60 votes to pass regular legislation. The filibuster is not in the Constitution and not even in law. It’s just a Senate rule, which Democrats can and must end with their 51-vote bare majority.

The filibuster has historically been used against civil rights and voting rights. So it’s appropriate that Democrats finally end it in order to protect and expand these rights in the face of state efforts to restrict them.

Which raises the second obstacle. Two Democratic senators – West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema – have said they won’t vote to end the filibuster, presumably because they want to preserve their centrist image and appeal to Republican voters in their states.

Well, I’m sorry. The stakes are too high. We are talking about the future of civil and voting rights — critical to fighting racism and preserving American democracy. There is no excuse for two Democratic senators to allow Republicans to stomp on our democracy and entrench their minority rule for generations.

And there is no reason President Joe Biden should let them. It’s time for him to assert the leadership that President Lyndon Baines Johnson asserted more than a half-century ago.

When someone tried to persuade LBJ not to waste his time on civil and voting rights, he replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Johnson worked to break the southern filibuster – lobbying recalcitrant senators and pressuring their colleagues to do the same. As Senator Hubert Humphrey later described it, “the president grabbed me by my shoulder and damn near broke my arm.”

Historians tell us that Johnson’s efforts may have shifted the votes of close to a dozen senators, breaking the longest filibuster in Senate history and clearing the way for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

We are once again at a crucial juncture for civil rights and voting rights, one that will shape our nation for decades to come. Joe Biden must learn from LBJ, and wield the power of the presidency to make senators fall in line with the larger goals of the nation. Otherwise, as LBJ asked, “what the hell’s the presidency for?”

In 1963, when the newly sworn-in Lyndon Baines Johnson was advised against using his limited political capital on the controversial issue of civil and voting rights for Black Americans, he responded: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”

America is again approaching a crucial decision-point on the most fundamental right of all in a democracy – the right to vote. The result will either be the biggest advance since LBJ’s landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, or the biggest setback since the end of Reconstruction and start of Jim Crow in the 1870s.

The decisive factor will be President Joe Biden.

On one side are Republican lawmakers who now control most state legislatures and are using false claims of election fraud to enact an avalanche of voting restrictions on everything from early voting and voting by mail to voter IDs. They also plan to gerrymander their way back to a House majority.

After losing the Senate and the presidency, they’re determined to win back power by rigging the rules againstlikely Democrats, disproportionately Black and brown voters. As a lawyer for the Arizona Republican party put it baldly before the Supreme Court, without such restrictions Republicans are “at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.”

On the other side are congressional Democrats advancing the most significant democracy reform legislation since Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights and voting rights laws – a sprawling 791-page “For the People Act” establishing national standards for federal elections.

The proposed law mandates automatic registration of new voters, voting by mail, and at least 15 days of early voting. It bans restrictive voter ID laws and purges of voter rolls – changes that studies suggest would increase voter participation, especially by racial minorities. It also requires that congressional redistricting be done by independent commissions and creates a system of public financing for congressional campaigns.

The legislation sailed through the House last week on a party-line vote. The showdown will occur in the U.S. Senate, where Republicans are determined to kill it. Although Democrats now possess a razor-thin majority, the bill doesn’t stand a chance unless Democrats can overcome two big obstacles.

The first is the filibuster, requiring 60 votes to pass regular legislation. Notably, the filibuster is not in the Constitution and not even in law. It’s a rule that has historically been used against civil rights and voting rights bills, as it was in the 1960s when LBJ narrowly overcame it.

Democrats can – and must — finally end it now, with their 51-vote majority.

But if they try, they face a second obstacle. Two Democratic senators – West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema – have said they won’t vote to end the filibuster, presumably because they want to preserve their centrist image and appeal to Republican voters in their states. A few other Democratic senators are lukewarm to the idea.

Well, I’m sorry. The stakes are too high. If Democrats fail to enact the “For the People Act,” Republicans will send voting rights into retreat for decades. There’s no excuse for Manchin and Sinema or any other Senate Democrat letting Republicans pull America backwards towards Jim Crow.

And no reason Biden should let them. It’s time for him to assert the kind of leadership LBJ asserted more than a half-century ago on civil and voting rights.

Johnson used every tool at his disposal, described by journalist Mary McGrory as “an incredible, potent mixture of persuasion, badgering, flattery, threats, reminders of past favors and future advantages.”

He warned Georgia Senator Richard Russell, a dedicated segregationist, “Dick, I love you and I owe you. But….I’m going to run over you if you challenge me on this civil-rights bill.” He demanded his allies join him in pressuring holdouts. Senator Hubert Humphrey later recalled “the president grabbed me by my shoulder and damn near broke my arm.”

Historians say Johnson’s importuning, bribing, and threatening may have shifted the votes of close to a dozen senators, breaking the longest filibuster in Senate history and clearing the way for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

We are once again at a crucial juncture for civil rights and voting rights that could shape America for the next half century or more. Joe Biden is not LBJ, and the times are different from the mid-1960s. But the stakes are as high.

Biden must wield the power of the presidency to make senators fall in line with the larger goals of the nation. Otherwise, as LBJ asked, “what the hell’s the presidency for?”

Donald Trump formally anointed himself head of the Republican Party at Sunday’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Grand Old Party, founded in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin, is now dead. What’s left is a dwindling number of elected officials who have stood up to Trump but are now being purged. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s popularity has dropped 29 points among Kentucky Republicans since he broke with Trump.

In its place is the Trump Party, whose major goal is to advance Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Its agenda is to exact vengeance on Republicans who didn’t or won’t support the lie or who voted to impeach or convict Trump for inciting the violence that the lie generated, and to keep attention on his grievances.  

As the Trump Party takes over the GOP, anti-Trump Republicans are abandoning the party in droves – thereby weakening it for general elections while simultaneously strengthening Trump’s hand inside it.

It’s great news for Democrats and Joe Biden.

Democrats couldn’t hope for a more perfect foil – a defeated one-term president who never cracked 47 percent of the popular vote, left office with just 39 percent approval and is now hovering at an abysmal 34 percent, whom most Americans dislike or loathe, and a majority believe incited an insurrection against the United States.

The gift will keep giving. Courtesy of the Supreme Court, Trump’s tax returns will soon be raked across America like barnyard manure. Expect more of his shady business dealings to be exposed – more payoffs, cheats, and cons – as well as civil and criminal prosecutions.

The Trump Party isn’t interested in appealing to the nation as a whole, anyway.  It’s interested only in appealing to Trump and the base that worships him.

All this is making it nearly impossible for congressional Republicans to mount a strong opposition to Biden’s ambitious plans for COVID relief followed by major investments in infrastructure and jobs. Lacking unity, leadership, strategy, clarity or a coherent message on anything other than Trump’s grievances, the Trump Party is irrelevant to the large choices facing the nation. Democrats in Washington have the public square all to themselves.

Biden is in the enviable position of getting most of America behind his agenda – and he can do so without a single Republican vote if Senate Democrats end the filibuster.

Democrats have proven themselves capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But if they and Biden use this opportunity as they should, by this time next year COVID will be a tragic memory, and the nation will be in the midst of a strong economic recovery propelling it toward full employment and rising wages. With the GOP in disarray and rabid Trumpism turning off ever more voters, the 2022 midterm elections could swell Democratic majorities in Congress.

But the emergence of the Trump Party is deeply worrisome for America. It is a dangerous, deluded, authoritarian, and potentially violent faction that has no responsible role in a democracy.

Its Big Lie enables supporters of the former president to believe their efforts to overturn the 2020 election were necessary to protect American democracy, and that they must continue to fight a “deep state” conspiracy to thwart Trump. This is an open invitation to violence.

The Big lie also justifies Trump Party efforts to suppress votes considered “fraudulent.” In 33 states, Trumplawmakers are already pushing more than 165 bills intended to stop mail-in voting, increase voter ID requirements, make it harder to register to vote, and expand purges of voter rolls.

Democrats in Congress are responding with their proposed “For the People Act,” to expand voting through automatic voter registration across the country, early voting, and enlarged mail-in voting.

The incipient civil war pits a national Democratic Party representing America’s majority against a state-based Trump Party composed of a defiant and overwhelmingly white, working-class minority. It’s a recipe for a harsh clash between democracy and authoritarianism.  

Plus, there’s the small possibility Trump will run again in 2024 and win.

What’s good for Biden and the Democrats in the short run is potentially disastrous for America over the longer term. One of its two major parties is centered on a Big Lie that threatens to blow up the nation, figuratively if not literally.

The Only Way Democrats Will Get Anything Done

Mitch McConnell may no longer be Senate Majority Leader, but Republicans can still block legislation supported by the vast majority. That’s because of a Senate rule called the filibuster. If we have any hope of safeguarding our democracy and ushering in transformative change, Democrats must wield their power to get rid of the filibuster – and fast.

The filibuster is a Senate rule requiring a 60-vote supermajority to pass legislation. Which means a minority of senators can often block legislation that the vast majority of Americans want and need. 

It’s not in the Constitution. In fact, it’s arguably unconstitutional. Alexander Hamilton regarded a supermajority rule as “a poison” that would lead to “contemptible compromises of the public good.” 

Even without the filibuster, Senate Republicans already have outsized influence. The 50 of them represent 41 and a half million fewer Americans than the 50 Senate Democrats. Wyoming, with 579,000 people gets two senators. California, with 40 million also gets two senators. 

Meanwhile, Republican-controlled states are gearing up to pass even more restrictive voting laws along with additional partisan gerrymandering that could enable Republicans in Washington to maintain power for the next decade. 

The best way to prevent this is with national election standards through the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act – but these important bills are stymied as long as the filibuster remains in place.

The filibuster is rooted in racism. In the late 19th century, Southern senators crafted the “talking filibuster” – in which a member could delay the passage of a bill with a long-winded speech – in order to protect the pro-slavery Senate minority. 

The current version of the filibuster, requiring 60 votes to end debate, was popularized in the Jim Crow era by Southern senators seeking to prevent passage of civil rights legislation. From the end of Reconstruction to 1964, the filibuster was used only to kill civil rights bills.

Senators can now use a process called “reconciliation” to pass legislation on budgetary matters, requiring a bare majority of 51 votes. But the filibuster can still stop bills on voting rights, the climate crisis, campaign finance reform, and other crucial legislation Americans need – and on which Joe Biden has based much of his presidency.

Getting rid of the filibuster is also good politics. As long as the filibuster is intact, Senate Republicans could keep the Senate in gridlock, and then run in the 2022 midterms on Democrats’ failure to get anything done. 

The good news is the filibuster is a Senate rule. As I said, it’s not in the Constitution. It’s not even in a law. Like any other Senate rule it can be changed by a simple majority of senators. 

With Vice President Kamala Harris now serving as the tie-breaking vote, Senate Democrats can and must abolish the filibuster. 

There are a few conservative Senate Democrats who don’t like the idea, but Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer can get them to fall in line. That’s what leadership is all about. They must end the filibuster and get America moving. Now. 

Texas’s prevailing social Darwinism was expressed most succinctly last week by the mayor of Colorado City, who accused his constituents – trapped in near sub-zero temperatures and complaining about lack of heat, electricity, and drinkable water – of being the “lazy” products of a “socialist government,” adding “I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!” and predicting “only the strong will survive and the weak will perish.”

Texas has the third-highest number of billionaires in America, most of them oil tycoons. Its laissez-faire state energy market delivered a bonanza to oil and gas producers that managed to keep production going during the freeze. It was “like hitting the jackpot,” boasted president of Comstock Resources on an earnings call. Jerry Jones, billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, holds a majority of Comstock’s shares.

But most other Texans were marooned. Some did perish.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the flow of electric power, exempted affluent downtowns from outages – leaving the thriving parts of Austin, Dallas, and Houston brightly lit while pushing less affluent precincts into the dark and cold.

Like the poor across America and much of the world, poor Texans are getting hammered by climate change. Many inhabit substandard homes, lacking proper insulation. The very poor occupy trailers or tents, or camp out in their cars. Lower-income communities also are located close to refineries and other industrial sites that release added pollutants when they shut or restart.

In Texas, for-profit energy companies have no incentive to prepare for extreme weather or maintain spare capacity. Even when they’re able to handle surges in demand, prices go through the roof and poorer households are hit hard. That’s what’s happened in the wake of the deep freeze. If they can’t pay, they’re cut off.

Rich Texans take spikes in energy prices in their stride. If the electric grid goes down, private generators kick in. In a pinch – as last week – they check into hotels or leave town. As millions of his constituents remained without power and heat, Senator Ted Cruz flew to Cancun, Mexico for a family vacation. Their Houston home was “FREEZING,” as his wife put it.

Climate change and income are together splitting Americans by class more profoundly than Americans are split by politics. Yet the white working class has been seduced by conservative Republicans and Trump cultists, of which Texas has an abundance, into believing that what’s good for Black and Latino people is bad for them, and that whites are, or should be, on the winning side of the social Darwinian contest.  

White grievance helps keep Republicans in power, protecting their rich patrons from a majority that might otherwise join together to demand what they need – such heat and drinking water.

Lower-income Texans, white as well as Black and Latino, are taking it on the chin in many other ways. Texas is one of the few states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving the share of Texans without health insurance twice the national average, the largest uninsured population of any state. Texas has double the national average of children in poverty and a higher rate of unemployment than the nation’s average.

And although Texans have suffered multiple natural disasters stemming from climate change, Texas Republicans are dead set against a Green New Deal that would help reduce the horrific impacts.  

Last Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott went on Fox News to proclaim, absurdly, that what happened to his state “shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States.” Abbott blamed the power failure on the fact that “wind and solar got shut down.”

Rubbish. The loss of power from frozen coal-fired and natural gas plants was six times larger than the dent caused by frozen wind turbines. Texans froze because deregulation and a profit-driven free market created an electric grid utterly unprepared for climate change.

In Texas, tycoons are the only winners from climate change. Everyone else is losing badly. Adapting to extreme weather is necessary but it’s no substitute for cutting emissions, which Texas is loath to do. Not even the Lone Star State should protect the freedom to freeze.

Unrigging the GOP’s Minority Rule

The Republican Party is shrinking. It’s lost the popular vote in seven of the past eight Presidential elections. Since Trump’s attempted coup, more Americans are abandoning it every day. 

No Compromising with the GOP Cult

I keep hearing that Joe Biden has to govern from the “center.” He has no choice, they say, because he has razor-thin majorities in Congress and the Republican Party has moved to the right.

Rubbish. First, there is no “center” between the reality-based world and the conspiracy-fueled, hate-filled world of today’s Republican Party. Second, the problems the country is facing cannot be solved with milquetoast, centrist solutions – they demand immediate, bold action.

I’ve been in or around politics for 50 years. I’ve served several Democratic presidents who have needed Republican votes. But the Republicans now in Congress are nothing like those I’ve dealt with.

Today’s Republican Party is a cult.

93 percent of House Republicans voted against impeaching Trump for inciting an insurrection, and Senate Republicans refuse to convict him. This is after Trump’s insurrection threatened even their own lives.

The 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are facing backlash from their colleagues, with some even calling to remove Liz Cheney from her leadership position. 

But hardly any have condemned the vile conspiracy theories spouted by Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has claimed that the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings were “false flags” and that the deadly California wildfires were sparked by a Jewish space laser, among other wild lies.

All of this marks the culmination of the GOP’s growing lunacy over the last four years. With Trump at its head, the Republican Party has embraced blatant white supremacy, and now inhabits a counterfactual wonderland of lies and conspiracies.

Even by mid-January, polls show three out of four Republicans don’t think Biden won legitimately. 45 percent support the storming of the Capitol; 57 percent say Trump should be the Republican candidate in 2024.

And a growing fringe – including some Republicans in Congress – openly talk of redressing grievances through violence.

With this Republican Party, Biden cannot be a “centrist.” 

Instead, he must deliver bold change for the American people, refusing to compromise with violent Trumpism. Barring Trump from ever holding public office again. Expelling Trump’s co-conspirators from Congress. 

Don’t listen to people claiming this would be a “distraction” from Biden’s agenda. There is no healing without accountability. If we let those who incited this insurrection off the hook, we’re inviting it to happen again. And next time they might succeed.

It should all be part of Biden’s agenda. Biden must fight for democracy and against authoritarianism – including strengthening voting rights, getting big money out of politics, and taking on the Republican Party’s anti-democratic agenda of gerrymandering and voter suppression. 

There is no longer a “center” in American politics. No middle ground between lies and facts. No halfway point between civil discourse and violence. No midrange between democracy and fascism.

We either have a future based on lies, violence, and authoritarianism – or on unyielding truth, unshakeable civility, and democracy. Biden and the Democrats must fight for the latter. And we must make them.

While most of official Washington has been consumed with the Senate impeachment trial, another part of Washington is preparing the most far-ranging changes in American social policy in a generation.

Congress is moving ahead with Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which expands health care and unemployment benefits, and contains one of the most ambitious efforts to reduce child poverty since the New Deal. Right behind it is Biden’s plan for infrastructure and jobs.

The juxtaposition of Trump’s impeachment trial and Biden’s ambitious plans is no coincidence.

Trump left Republicans badly fractured and on the defensive. The Republican Party is imploding. Since January 6^th, growing numbers of Republicans have deserted it. State and county committees are becoming wackier by the day. Big business no longer has a home in the crackpot GOP.

Republican infighting has created a political void into which Democrats are stepping with far-reaching reforms. Biden and the Democrats, who now control the White House and both houses of Congress, are responding boldly to the largest social and economic crisis since Great Depression.

Importantly, they are now free to disregard conservative canards that have hobbled America’s ability to respond to public needs ever since Ronald Reagan convinced the nation that big government was the problem.

The first is the supposed omnipresent danger of inflation and the accompanying worry that public spending can easily overheat the economy.

Rubbish. Inflation hasn’t reared its head in years, not even during the roaring job market of 2018 and 2019. “Overheating” may no longer even be a problem for globalized, high-tech economies whose goods and services are so easily replaceable.

Biden’s ambitious plans are worth the small risk, in any event. If you hadn’t noticed, the American economy is becoming more unequal by the day. Bringing it to a boil may be the only way to lift the wages of the bottom half. The hope is that record low interest rates and vast public spending generate enough demand that employers will need to raise wages to find the workers they need.

A few Democratic economists who should know better are sounding the false alarm about inflation, but Biden is wisely ignoring them. So should Democrats in Congress.

Another conservative bromide is that a larger national debt crowds out private investment and slows growth. This view hamstrung the Clinton and Obama administrations as deficit hawks warned against public spending unaccompanied by tax increases to pay for it. (I still have some old injuries from those hawks.)

Fortunately, Biden isn’t buying this, either.  

Four decades of chronic underemployment and stagnant wages have shown how important public spending is for sustained growth. Not incidentally, growth reduces the debt as a share of the overall economy. The real danger is the opposite: fiscal austerity shrinks economies and causes national debts to grow in proportion.

The third canard is that generous safety nets discourage work.

Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson sought to alleviate poverty and economic insecurity with broad-based relief. But after Reagan tied public assistance to racism – deriding single-mother “welfare queens” – conservatives began demanding stringent work requirements so that only the “truly deserving” received help. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama acquiesced to this nonsense.

Not Biden. His proposal would not only expand jobless benefits but also provide assistance to parents who are not working – thereby extending relief to 27 million children, including about half of all Black and Latino children. Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah has put forward a similar plan.

This is just common sense. Tens of millions are hurting. A record number of American children are impoverished, according to the most recent Census data.

The pandemic has also caused a large number of women to drop out of the labor force in order to care for children. With financial help, some of them will be able to pay for childcare and move back into paid work. After Canada enacted a national child allowance in 2006, employment rates for mothers increased. A decade later, when Canada increased its annual child allowance, its economy added jobs.

It’s still unclear exactly what form Biden’s final plans will take as they work their way through Congress. He has razor-thin majorities in both chambers. In addition, most of his proposals are designed for the current emergency; they would need to be made permanent.

But the stars are now better aligned for fundamental reform than they’ve been since Reagan.

It’s no small irony that a half century after Reagan persuaded Americans that big government was the problem, Trump’s demise is finally liberating America from Reaganism – and letting the richest nation on earth give its people the social supports they desperately need.

Cancel Perks for the Worst President in History

How should the nation respond to an ex-president who has incited an insurrection, brought our democracy to the brink of destruction, and left so much pain and suffering in his wake?

In addition to being convicted in the Senate, which could bar him from running for office again, he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the cushy benefits former presidents receive.

These benefits were created under the Former Presidents’ Act of 1958, which was drawn up after Harry Truman told the House Majority Leader that he was going broke. 

The benefits in the Former President’s Act now include a yearly pension of over $200,000, an annual $1 million travel budget, an annual $500,000 travel budget for spouses, an office “appropriately furnished and equipped,” and staff to operate that office – for the rest of the former president’s life.

But what about a twice-impeached former president who did everything he could to attack Black and brown communities, and ended his presidency by inciting an insurrection against the United States government? 

Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think someone with that record should receive millions in taxpayer-funded benefits at all, let alone every single year for the rest of his life. 

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to happen: A simple majority in Congress can pass a law barring this ex-president from the normal perks afforded to former presidents. For the sake of the country, Congress must do so. 

He should also be barred from receiving national security briefings now that he’s left office. There is no reason that someone this dangerous should be privy to the highest levels of intelligence as a private citizen – especially given his looming legal and financial entanglements with foreign entities. He was already a national security risk in office; as a private citizen, there’s no telling what he would do with classified information. 

Fortunately, it doesn’t take an act of Congress to cut off access to briefings: It’s up to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden alone. He has the power to prevent his predecessor from receiving any and all national security briefings. For the sake of America and the world, he must do so.

Regardless of how the impeachment trial in the Senate ends, one thing is clear: Someone who has disgraced the office of the president so maliciously should not reap its amenities for the rest of his life.

No cushy benefits. No national security briefings. No perks for the worst president in history.

Here’s my reunion with Wall Street titan Asher Edelman, 33 years after we duked it out on the PBS Newshour.