Voter suppression
A casualty of the Democrats’ failure to change the Senate rules will most likely be the Freedom to Vote Act. This legislative initiative would provide new federal protections and oversight to undo state-level voter suppression and other partisan abuses of the US electoral system.
But it’s been Democrats who have been obstructing any possible changes to Senate procedure.
Democratic senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have stymied reform efforts, including the possibility of ending the filibuster. So long as the filibuster remains in place, passing legislation in the Senate effectively requires a 60-vote supermajority, and Republicans have increasingly abused it in recent years to obstruct progressive legislation and federal court appointments by Democratic presidents.
While Manchin and Sinema both claim to support federal voting protections, neither is willing to remove the filibuster in order to pass the legislation.
The Biden administration’s inability to push through its legislative agenda or to enact protections for basic democratic rights and protections – which are increasingly inaccessible to many Americans – does not bode well for the coming year, or the future beyond that.
The 2022 midterm elections will determine whether Democrats hold on to or lose control of Congress. Even if they remain (narrowly) in power, the reforms that the US needs to address our crisis of democracy seem unlikely to materialise any time soon.
Republicans have proven time and again that they are willing to destroy democracy in order to retain power over a majority of Americans who do not support their plutocratic, authoritarian agenda. How to reverse their march towards minority authoritarian rule is the critical question of our time for the United States – and the world affected by what happens in the US.
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