News Desk :
Joe Biden has finally issued a full-throated, unreserved endorsement of ending the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation. But it came in the last days of the battle – less than a week before Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, plans to hold a vote on the legislation – and only after Biden’s other, superseding priority, the Build Back Better plan, flamed out. For a year, activists have been screaming and pleading and begging and getting arrested, trying to get the White House to put the full weight of the presidency behind protecting voting rights, only to be met by silence or soft-pedaling.
But finally, on Tuesday, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Atlanta to deliver forceful speeches calling on Congress to reform the filibuster and protect voting rights, all the things activists had been asking them to do for months. Some activists were so exasperated that they refused to go to the speech. Members of Martin Luther King Jr.’s family did attend, but even they said that it was a “difficult decision” because of
their frustrations with the White House’s past inaction.
When Biden fully entered the battle, the other warriors were already bloody, bruised and exhausted.
Biden said during the speech: “I’ve been having these quiet conversations with the members of Congress for the last two months. I’m tired of being quiet!” Mr. President, so are we. Your prison of quietness was one of your own construction. You were free to leave it at any time. You didn’t until this week.
The question now is whether, at the 11th hour, his foray into the battle will prove to be too little too late.
The real villains here are the Republicans restricting ballot access and reducing the voting power of people, mostly people of color, at the state level, and the Republicans in Congress refusing to stop them.
Democrats are the only ones with the power to fight back, and they said that they would. When he was running for president, Joe Biden’s campaign released a position statement entitled, “Lift Every Voice: The Biden Plan for Black America.” In it, they described how “tackling systemic racism and fighting for civil rights” had been a “driving force throughout Biden’s career in public service,” and promised that he would “strengthen our democracy by guaranteeing that every American’s vote is protected,” starting with updating the Voting Rights Act and developing a new process for “pre-clearance,” the provision that prevented states with a history of discrimination from changing their voting laws without approval by the Department of Justice.
Courtesy: The New York Times
