Member-only story
Democracy in the U.S. is dying before our eyes. Like T.S. Eliot said, not with a bang but with a whimper. As Florida, Iowa, Arkansas and others pass voter suppression bills to prevent the massive turnout that helped push Trump out of office in 2020. And Georiga, a state that held a free and fair election for the first time in 18 years and wasn’t at all happy about it, adding a codicil in their bill that in addition, just in case democracy needs that little extra killing, increasing the legislature’s ability to decertify an election if they don’t like the results.
You might say but what about HR1? Dems have the House and Senate (by tiebreak) and the Presidency, can’t they protect our ability to vote if nothing else? Oh my sweet naive reader…of course they can. They simply choose not to.
To pass anything would require reforming the filibuster. (An archaic senate rule, which as modified in the 1970’s basically requires a 60 plus supermajority for most legislation.) And while reforming the filibuster would allow Dems to pass their agenda, assuming that was something they would want to do, at least one Dem Senator Joe Manchin (#Munchkin) has stated he will do nothing of the sort because…reasons.
So since Dems won’t even protect their ability to get elected, the one thing we thought they might care about besides sweet sinecures in the lobbying industry…
