In the face of a literal democracy emergency, Manchin and Sinema doubled down on their cynical, willful denial of what’s at stake: “Nothing to see here folks---we fully favor passing both voting rights bills; we just won’t lift a finger to actually get them passed by supporting a simple carve-out to our sacred filibuster.”
God No!---that might disturb their paymasters...or their own gigantic egos. They mighty as well kiss each other’s posterior in lame obeisance to some weird joint delusional fantasy they share of a bipartisan filibuster MacGuffin that will magically persuade the rethugs to vote for the voting rights bills.
I think this may call for a parable.
Once upon a time girls and boys, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives passed legislation to build a brand new Voting Rights Museum in Washington, D.C. The Speaker of the House forwarded the bill to the Senate for its consideration and passage.
Almost immediately, the 50 Democratic Senators publicly declared their unanimous support for building a museum on the history of voting rights in America, though a few appeared a bit less enthusiastic. The 50 Republican Senators were more openly hesitant, but most of them they came round once the RNC issued talking points that stated a Voting Rights Museum was a very patriotic thing to do for our country.
In the interim, the minority leader snickered quietly to himself as he thought---well, the devil’s in the details. But the Senate’s Democratic leadership team remained uniformly optimistic they would have bipartisan support for building this museum.
The new museum was expected to help educate and inform youngsters and adults alike about the contested history of voting rights in America, about the fraught record of our Constitutional amendments ending slavery, about the never-ending battles to expand suffrage to all persons regardless of race or gender, about the post-slavery Jim Crow laws, and about the historical use of the filibuster as a means of voter suppression that directly descended from white supremacy.
So kids, how could anyone have anticipated that as the Senate committee hearings on the bill moved forward, the Republicans, who are selectively fiscal conservatives, began to raise objections to using tax money to pay for the actual construction of the museum. They said they still supported the creation of a Voting Rights Museum, they merely balked at paying for it.
Republicans maintained civility during their backtracking, respecting the crucial Senate tradition of comity. But they held to their stance that it was more fiscally responsible to raise private money to build and run the new museum. Democratic Senators Quack and Creep paid close attention and thought about this changed proposal as well as their Republican colleagues’ feelings---a lot and very deeply too.
Then Quack and Creep each determined that it was not only reasonable, but essential to have Republican Senators support the museum bill, and thereby demonstrate to the American people that only a bipartisan agreement could get the Voting Rights Museum built. And all via the generosity of the private sector to boot---double hurray! After all, Senators Quack and Creep had long thought that Congress had spent more than enough money in passing the pandemic rescue plans and the infrastructure bill. Funny, they never mentioned the defense bill spending costs though.
And so my children, that is how it came to pass that Americans have a tiny, but shiny new Voting Rights Museum, but we have only a memory of having once had our own actual voting rights.