This week we look at statements from Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) indicating he will block passage of HR1 (The For the People Act) and the infrastructure package or The American Jobs Act as well as reforming the Filibuster, putting at risk both the American ideal of Democracy and our economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. We will discuss the ludicrous reversal of an assault weapons ban in California by a partisan judge. We have also had yet another week of the Republican party spreading The Big Lie as we face the genuine threat of sliding into autocracy. We will also delve into the historical background of the Filibuster and explain how this Jim Crowe era rule threatens to undermine our very Democracy leading to Minority Rule.
We are at a very precarious time for our country. We are facing a slide into authoritarianism fueled by hundreds of dubious “election integrity” bills that were pushed on the basis of The Big Lie by Republicans across all state legislature attacking voting rights for minorities and youth voters. White supremacy has taken over the Republican party who is focused on amplifying their grievance politics vs policy. With limitations designed to restrict access to the ballot box from doing away or greatly restricting Sunday voting to limiting the number of voting sites, to partisan gerrymandering of districts creating safe seats for Republicans. I have talked at length not only about the 1/6 Capitol Insurrection but the unrelenting attacks on voting rights from The Republican party across state legislatures but also the denigration of the Democratic ideal that is enshrined in our Constitution. As always to understand where we are today, we have to turn to our history for better context and greater understanding of the issues we wrestle with now.
I have always been dumbfounded by jurists who point to the textual interpretation of the Constitution as the only accurate understanding of how our nation should be governed. As a student of history, I believe that our Founding Fathers were both flawed and product of their times. Think about some of the specific passages and text of the Constitution. The Constitution was written during an age of slavery when we as country did not see all men as free and created equal. We counted people of color as less than a white person, specifically 3/5th of a white man for electoral purposes. Essentially, the framers set the fire that would lead to the Civil War almost 72 years later because they placed economic needs ahead of basic human rights.
That stain of slavery has tainted our country and we still today feel the legacy of that brutal calculation of a man worth. It is based in a belief that all men were not created equal. We as a country have always been striving to live up the ideal of a Democracy that was borne from an imperfect document from a time and period of history that brutalized human beings and used them as forced labor because of belief that the color of one’s skin was an indication of one’s inherent worth. The same Constitution that enshrined slavery until after the Civil War and also denied women any voice in our government allowed for generations of political, social and economic inequality that drove violence and brutality for hundreds of years. When any jurist embraces the textual intent of the Constitution, we need to force reckoning, acknowledge the fact that our Founding Fathers were imperfect, flawed and deeply racially divided. They provided guardrails that believed that citizens would send the best of us to serve in our representative government not the endless stream of corrupt, racist, and even criminal miscreants that inhabit the modern-day Republican party. So, in assuming a strict textual interpretation of the Constitution we ignore the original sin of Slavery and our countries brutal history of repressive violence that was written into a document that ignores much of our reality in the 21st Century.
We look into the historical context of the Filibuster next and guess what it is never even mentioned in the Constitution.
As Senator Manchin (D-WV) and Senator Sinema (D-AZ) declare their undying devotion to preserving the Jim Crowe era Filibuster we should first begin with clarity. Let’s start with the facts. The Filibuster is NOT, I repeat is NOT codified in the U.S. Constitution. This archaic and anachronistic rule that was incorporated into Senate Rules as a means of preventing literally talking a bill to death. That first attempt at droning on about a bill in an attempt to derail started in 1789. The only way to stop that endless debate was cloture which at the time was a unanimous vote to end debate which was then reduced to a requirement of 2/3 of the Senate chamber to bring a filibuster to close as of 1917 given its then increasing abuse. In order to amend the filibuster, it requires a change to Senate Rule 22. Now the filibuster in a divided senate makes it easier for the minority party to derail progress and President Biden’s agenda. It also puts in grave danger the very right to vote.
The Fifteenth, Nineteenth and Twenty-Sixth Constitutional Amendments, specifically require that the voting right of U.S. citizens cannot be abridged on account of race, color, previous condition of servitude, sex or age. But the Constitution gives wide latitude for state and local legislatures to manage elections. It is the systemic attempts by the Republican state legislators to pursue voter suppression laws in a continued effort to support The Big Lie and place substantial barriers in front of people of color and young voters to prevent their voices from being heard their rights to vote from being exercised.
Senator Manchin somehow believes that the filibuster ensures bipartisanship but that first assumes that the other side of aisle is acting in good faith – something that Republicans and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are not doing. Stay here for more on POLITICAL MOTIVES.
Last week California a federal judge overturned an almost 30 years old ban statewide on assault weapons. In the bizarre and frankly specious ruling, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez a George Bush appointee compared assault weapons to a Swiss Army knife. An idiotic comparison at best and painful to the families and victims of automatic weapons gun violence. Coming on the heels of a mass shooting in a San Jose light rail yard the State Attorney General, Rob Bonta, indicated he would appeal. It appears that Judge Benitez used the rationalization that since so many states allow assault weapons than California should as well. This flies in the face of public opinion who actually want assault weapons bans because of the public health threat and the continued spike in gun violence. A clear majority of American support a ban on assault weapons recognizing that these are weapons of war and should not be readily available to civilians. They are not used for hunting as no self-respecting hunter would ever use such a weapon for hunting purposes.
But what do we do counterbalance the extremist views of Republican party and Conservative jurists? Increasingly voters have turned to ballot initiatives and referendums but even those attempts to guide legislation to a more moderate and progressive path have been dealt serious blows by the conservative legislatures who have used both lawsuits and new legal restrictions to undo these attempts at addressing electoral needs.
We continue to face a minority rule that is sliding towards authoritarianism and autocracy every day. It is critical that Democratic voters, progressive groups and political activists loudly denounce Senator Manchin and demand that he stands up and fight for democracy not the obscure Jim Crowe era rules of the Senate that only serve to divide our nation. We also need to recognize that increasingly the Republican party is shrinking and that the moderates have abandoned Republican politics given their increasingly extremist views. Bipartisanship can be seen in the support for the Biden Administration’s policies outside the halls of the Capitol. If Senator Joe Manchin wants to see bipartisanship, he need only look at the will of Americans who overwhelmingly support HR 1 the For The People Act, restoring the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Infrastructure bill. Without these protections for Voting Rights Senator Manchin will have struck the greatest blow to ensuring the future of our Democracy.