— On voting rights, the Democrats are bringing stuffed animals to a machine gun fight.
In July, President Biden called Republican efforts to undercut voting rights across the country a “21st-century Jim Crow assault” and “the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”
“We’ll be asking my Republican friends — in Congress, in states, in cities, in counties — to stand up, for God’s sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our elections and the sacred right to vote,” he said. “Have you no shame?”
So, “asking” was the plan for the party holding the presidency and both houses of Congress, albeit narrowly, in response to a Republican assault on voting and civil rights?
That certainly seemed to be the battle strategy of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who had one job: persuading 10 Republicans to get behind a compromise Freedom to Vote Act that would have expanded vote by mail, made Election Day a holiday and established automatic voter registration.
Predictably, not a single Republican could be persuaded to even allow Manchin’s plan to come to a vote.
Forget failing to stand up. Republicans are on their feet and gleefully marching the country backward on voting rights. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, this year 19 states have passed some 33 pieces of legislation making it harder to vote.