Coop Scoop: The Six Ways Biden Bungled The Voting Bill

Monumental malfeasance sinks The For The People Act

June 24, 2021

By Marc Cooper

If the U.S. falls into full authoritarian rule and if anybody writes a history of that slide, the date of June 22, 2021 will be one of the significant waypoints on the time line to darkness.

Last Tuesday, the Millionaires Club that meets a few days a week in the Senate chamber let the American people know they are on their own if they want to guarantee any more democratic elections.

To borrow a British phrase, the cock-up displayed by the Biden administration and the Democratic Party in trying to pass HR1, The For The People Act, has been of monumental proportions.It leaves me with zero confidence in the Democrats and it looks like a number of progressive Democrats, scores of them, are about ready to stage an open rift with the Party’s geriatric and inept leadership.

Oh, wait. Aren’t we supposed to just continue to marvel at the brilliant, strategic and flawless leadership of Schumer, Pelosi and, for that matter, Joe Biden?  Isn’t that the official line?

Not for me, thank you,

Let’s take a quick look back at how at every juncture the Democrats bungled FTPA.

The sweeping, indeed omnibus, legislation in that package was written by Democrats in the immediate afterglow of their 2018 Blue Wave midterm success. 

Dems felt the wind at their back. They figured, correctly, that Trump would be dumped in 2020.  What they did not figure on was the Big Lie, January 6th, and the ongoing Republican push to empower Red states to choose their own Presidential electors thereby demolishing majority rule.

Mistake #1

You can’t blame Democrats for not being able to read the future two years ago. And you cannot blame them for initially proposing a much-needed package – one that has turned into a mere wish list instead of serious legislation.

So, I can solidly blame them for not re-assessing the political atmosphere once the new congress was inaugurated with that thin margin of Democratic control.

Y’ think the political conjuncture is a bit different today than two yrs. ago?  Yeah, just a bit. Why submit the same bill you know is going to get thumped?

The first big mistake the Dems made with FTPA was not radically re-writing it as they came into power.   You didn’t and do not need an IQ above room temperature to know that there were not ten Republican Senators who would ever support myriad components and reforms in the bill: automatic same day registration, expanded early and mail0in voting, tougher regulation of “observers,” a curb on dark money and moves toward public financing of elections.

These are all worthy and needed reforms. They are also a brimming vial of poison pills that would never, ever, be swallowed by a Republican Party where half or more of its members are embarked in a low-level insurgency.

Mistake #2

The Democrats might have extracted the core of this bill, the simple mechanics of voting (without all the other reforms) and submitted it as a stand-alone bill that might have had a chance of passing.  ( I am assuming that is what the Dems are going to do now but it seems way too late in the game).

Mistake #3

Trusting Joe Manchin to carry this bill was truly a fool’s errand.  Why on earth would the Democrats allow themselves to be put in a situation where a reactionary like Manchin and a total and absolute clown like Kyrsten Sinema are thrust into high-profile do or die decisions with the whole party’s agenda in the balance? Was their no pre-planning and consensus before putting this thing on the floor?

Beats me. 

It seems clear to me that the Leadership probably knew they would bump up against the GOP filibuster as they did, but were sure, apparently cock-sure, that the reluctant and conservative Democrats would vote to take down the filibuster and all would be good.

By the time this vote took place, the Democrats were comfortable with it being purely performative…putting the country through all these acrobatic so they could “prove” to their own reluctant members that the Republicans were BAD BAD BAD and that they needed to crack the filibuster.

Idiotic, First, because Manchin is a total corporate sleaze and opportunist. Second, nobody really thinks Sinema is anything but a loose cannon…so go figure why you would allow these two so much power.

Even worse, people who observe Congress professionally, like Amy Walters and Norm Orenstein, figure there are as many as a DOZEN Democratic Senators opposed to banning the filibuster. Manchin, Sinema, Kelly, Coons, King, Tester and a handful or two of others.

Maybe, the Dems miscalculated on Manchin because, widely unreported, he voted to scrap the filibuster rule in 2011 precisely on procedural votes like the one on Tuesday. They might have checked with him beforehand this year that he was on board to do it again to pass FTPA. Which brings me to….

Mistake #4

The For The People Act was the Democrats’ signature bill, touching on all the principles of democratic renewal.  That’s why it was too big.

Staggering it is that the Democrats had exactly NO Plan B for this act if it failed the first time in congress and if Manchin & Co. did not immediately fall in line to bust the filibuster.

Everybody knew over the last month at least, if not the past 6 months, that this would be shot down by Republicans,  If the Democrats were depending on their own to break the filibuster, they clearly were not reading even public reports indicating that wasn’t going to happen.

That’s where we are today. Democrats totally unable to tell you what the next move is.  That’s because they don’t know. They didn’t pause to work that out beforehand.  This is monumental malfeasance and puts the lie to the myth that the Dem leadership is strategically brilliant.

Biden says he is not giving up. Klobuchar says she is going to do a “field hearing in Georgia.” Great, I am going to Outback tonight.  None of these things is a plan to go forward to get voting protections enacted..

Jim Newell in Slate detailed the fecklessness with which the Dems bungled this vote and how they refuse to tell you what’s next.

“The talking point about Republican obstructionism is on a trajectory to be the most Democrats will get on voting rights this Congress. Continued belief that Senate Democrats might possess a secret plan to pass this bill, and that they’re just in the early phases of a process, runs into a mathematical wall…”

“The internal Democratic plan to pass a voting rights bill, then, is the same as the public plan: Let time do its work. Or at least, let time, hearings, and more states passing more laws restricting the vote attempt to move Sinema and Manchin. See if something happens.”

“Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, when asked about Sinema’s op-ed defending the filibuster, said that she wouldn’t start “banging on my colleagues at the moment” because she was still hoping they would come around on reforming the rules. But she was pretty frank about the consequences of their failure to do so: that this next year-and-a-half of their majority would be their last.

“If we don’t make the changes to the filibuster,” she said, “then I think we are going to look at losing the House and the Senate.”

That’s right. Let me repeat it in case it did not sink in: Despite Democratic promises to “move forward,” there will be NO significant voting reform bill in this congress. Democratic Senators are perfectly happy to let this bill die and then use Republican obstruction as a campaign cudgel.  Thanks, guys and gals!

Mistake #5

The run-up to the vote this week saw world-scale mishandling by the Democrats.  In the past few weeks, at literally the 11th hour, Biden and then Obama himself acknowledged that American Democracy was gravely threatened.

At the same time, few Americans, fewer than we might like to think, actually understand the details of voting, vote counting and certification.

It was Joe Biden’s responsibility to have spent a good portion of the last 5 months in office having, probably, three fireside chats a week on the topic. He or someone way up in the administration (the mumbling VP?) look the American people in the eye and calmly walk though exactly what is at stake and exactly what could be done and exactly where public pressure needed to be applied to get this done i.e., a massive, a truly massive, public education campaign to build support and an active citizens’ movement to guarantee free and fair elections.

An F is not a low enough grade to give the administration on this score. Suspension or expulsion would be more in order.

Mistake #6

From the onset, the Democrats made the mistake of racializing the voter suppression issue by casting it as Jim Crow 2.0. Nice slogan but politically and factually off the mark. I don’t know that any Democrats recently checked but they might be surprised to find that 72% of the electorate is still White.

The voter suppression aspect of the state-by-state Republican bills would hurt Blacks disproportionately for sure. But it would reduce the power of everybody’s vote. And, quite obviously, the move by Republicans to empower state legislatures to send presidential electors is an attack on ALL voters.

I’m sorry to be fundamentalist about this but I will affirm that the powerful have always used race to divide the electorate. The Wokesters, unfortunately, are doing the same thing, There’s no good reason for adult Democrats to go down this rabbit hole, but they did.

What a difference it would have made if the Democrats had a) made this voting issue a universal issue not a racial one and b) if the Democrats had acted as if Democracy really was in danger instead of just paying lip service to the idea.

That Democratic messaging completely bombed on this issue can be measured by the laconic response from the voters themselves.  Call me naïve, but I think that a vast majority of the American people are in favor of free elections.  The lack of a massive civic outpouring this week and in previous weeks speaks volumes on this Democratic failure.

You are whistling in the wind if you don’t see that the Biden Presidency, at last policy wise, is on the verge of a train wreck.

He has wasted 5 months negotiating with seditionists and insurrectionists who have absolutely no intention of contributing to any Democratic legislative victories.

The Democratic Leadership has spent more time pandering to its right-wing party members than it has mobilizing its base to defend basic rights and that could have a high price in November and beyond.

And now it could be facing a major schism with progressives.  More importantly, it faces a possible future of no reform legislation passing, a discouraging of the base and a turnover of the House in 2022.

And don’t fall for the latest twist in the search for Biden Bipartisanship.  Looks like there MIGHT be an agreement among 20 Senators, including 11 Republicans to pass a $1T infrastructure bill. 

This agreement is strictly a matter of expediency and convenience for both parties and should not be mistaken as a first step toward political stabilization and legislative cooperation. It isn’t.

The Republicans have agreed, so far, because the Democrats have taken all of the human support elements out of the “skinny” package that will be approved,  The Republicans are voting for this vanilla Roads-n-Bridges bill only because they need something concrete (no pun intended) to bring to their voters as a Job Accomplished for the midterms.

In more normal political circumstances, the Republicans would refuse to go along because the Democrats have announced this is as a two-track package, saying the skinny bipartisan bill will be followed up with a massive $4 trillion bundle to be approved by a simple Democratic majority in a budget reconciliations vote. That measure would contain all the key Democratic priorities pulled from the skinny bill: universal paid and parental sick leave, universal pre K schooling, the toughest climate language in the history of congress and so on. All the items that Republicans choke on and would never approve.

Why would Republicans, then, vote for a small part of the infrastructure package knowing full well that Democrats are going to pass the other 80% that they despise without them?  Why would the Democrats burn up months to get Republicans to agree to 20% of the proposal when they know they could pass the whole thing without the GOP?

Because… both parties are using each other for opportunist reasons to create the illusion that there is some sort of comity when there isn’t.  The Republicans are still bent on rejecting any more Democratic electoral victories and undermining majority rule and the Democrats still don’t know what to do about it.

Just noting, this skinny infrastructure bill still needs approval of rank-and-file Democrats. And the fat $4T bill would need the votes of Sinema and Manchin and other conservative Democrats to pass in reconciliation. Manchin has agreed to vote yes in a reconciliation bid, but would not specify how much he would approve. Sinema has said it’s all about the amount.

Maybe Schumer knows something we don’t. but even this seems shaky. In addition, the skinny bill will not come up for a floor vote for several weeks. giving Trump and others time to lure or force two of the 11 GOP senators out and thereby killing the bill.

On Thursday night, McConnell was already making sarcastic noises about the two-track strategy of the Dems, clearly leaving himself room to try to squelch the bi-partisan skinny bill.

Hope for the best.  Prepare for the worst. ++

This newsletter will continue to be free to all but I cannot produce it for free. 

And at a time when more people are tuning out of politics and becoming apathetic, this type of independent journalism and analysis is more important than ever.

Does that mean some are going to have to do the work of others to keep it funded?
  
Yes.  

Just like in every aspect of life, it's a strategic minority that makes a difference.  

Please be someone who counts in this regard. 

So if you are a paid subscriber, think about making a gift subscription. 

Or make an extra donation via Paypal.  

I also need 10 more supporters to become monthly sustainers via the Patreon link below. It's cheap, not expensive.  

Please also forward and share this edition. And if you just bumped into us, cool. Hit the subscribe button and see your options -- including free sign ups.  Thanks much. Act now.