Dear America,
Over the course of the pendency of the two voting rights bills in The Senate, the Republicans have unanimously stanched the Democratic effort to ensure the ability of vote to all Americans, and now, their eristic-in-chief, Mitch McConnell, has doubled down on that partisan stance with nothing but the lame excuse that the Democrats are contemplating passing the bills without them. They have engaged in the technical equivalent of a filibuster to keep the bill from even being debated because they don't want to admit publicly that they fear a surge of Democrat votes if the polls become more accessible than the state legislators who passed anti-access bills are preventing them from being. What other reason could there be for their refusal to even publicly utter their objections to the bills, senator by senator, for all their constituents to hear. If they had good reasons, they would be glad to utter them on the evening news, don't you think? After all, they utter captious partisan absurdity with alacrity; if they had something meritorious to say, they would surely be glad to say it to the nation. But the coup de grâce was the iteration by Biden and others that there are 16 senators in the Senate today who voted for the reauthorization of the voting rights act in 2006, as did all other Republicans. Yet today, they are unwilling to step over party lines to admit that they favor enhanced democracy over partisan megalomania, including those 16 who voted for it more than fifteen years ago.
The point is that any balderdash about a failure by the Democrats to work with Republicans...to practice bipartisanship...is an overt, abjectly immoral, transparent deviation from the truth. The Democrats have invited discussion and a vote on the floor of the Senate and the Republicans have not only opted to eschew the opportunity to express objections to the elements of the current iteration of the old voting rights bill, which was gutted by a conservative Supreme Court, they have interdicted the efforts of the Democrats to debate the bills and cast votes on them as well. It is obvious that they have a motive other than to vindicate bipartisanship or to maintain senate tradition by leaving the filibuster unaltered. It is notable that there are dozens of exceptions to the filibuster rule already amending the filibuster. One more, especially one that protects voters' right to vote and access to the polls is more important and indubitably virtuous than any of the rest. It is fundamental to our governance and thus to our way of life and ethos.
I don't want to belabor the issue any further, but I do want to say this. This is not some ad hominem political rant. This is a direction of attention to the true purposes of our two major political parties. One, the Democrats, wants to ensure that as many legitimate votes as possible get passed. The other, the Republicans, want to avoid that. So when you go to the polls this November, and especially in 2024, remember who is on your side.
Your friend,
Mike
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