The Daily - Lessons from the Demise of a Voting Rights Bill

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

The For the People Act, a bill created by House Democrats after the 2018 midterm elections, could have been the most sweeping expansion of voting rights in a generation.On Tuesday night, however, Senate Republicans filibustered the bill before it could even be debated.What lessons can we take from its demise? Guest: Nicholas Fandos, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: By blocking the sweeping voting rights bill, Republicans dealt a blow to Democrats’ attempts to counter a wave of state-level ballot restrictions, while also supercharging a campaign to end the legislative filibuster.In the wake of the bill’s demise, Democrats and civil rights groups have reaffirmed their resolve to fight for voting protections in Congress.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the most sweeping expansion of federal voting rights in a generation died last night in the U.S. Senate. I spoke with my colleague, congressional reporter Nick Thandos, about what we learned from its demise. It's Wednesday, June 23rd. Um, where are you? It looks like you're in a radio studio. Yeah, isn't this nifty? I'm in an audio booth in the House Daily Press Gallery

right outside the House Chamber. I come here because it's nice and quiet. So basically the House of Representatives has podcast studios. Something like that. Yeah, you've never sounded better. In fact, you've always sounded worse. Yeah, no, it's better. I'm jealous because it actually sounds better than I do.

Okay, so let's just jump in. Can you describe what just happened in the U.S. Capitol? and fighting over it, the United States Senate finally held a vote on Democrats' big gargantuan election overhaul bill called the For the People Act. And so I rise, Mr. President, with what I think is a simple request of my colleagues. Let's do our job. And let's have a principled conversation about voting rights. Let's have that conversation right here, right now. How could we do otherwise? This wasn't even a vote on the merits of the bill. It was a vote just to start debate, to consider it and potentially consider alternatives to it. The Senate will vote on

whether to advance Democrats' transparently partisan plan to tilt permanently in their favor. And what we saw happen, which was not entirely surprising, is that Republicans stood firm on a vow that they've made for months now to block this bill. By now, the rotten inner workings of this power grab have been thoroughly exposed to the light. And they all voted to prevent debate from moving forward. Today, the Senate's going to fulfill our founding purpose,

stop the partisan power grab and reject S-1. Filibustering the bill and effectively leaving it for dead, at least for now, on the Senate floor. So this is the filibuster very much in action. Yeah, we've been hearing about it since Democrats took control in January, right, that the filibuster was going to be the main obstacle to their agenda on a whole host of issues from guns to immigration to voting rights. And this was it in action today. And for those who don't quite know or have been pretending to know exactly what it means to filibuster since Democrats took control of the Senate. Can you just describe what it actually means to have done what Republicans did today, which is to use the filibuster to kill a piece of legislation?

Michael, I'm glad you asked that because it is often misunderstood, even by those who pretend to know Congress. So the Senate's filibuster rule, it's actually pretty simple. The weird word aside, what it means is that under the Senate rules, it takes 60 votes to advance or cut off debate and get to really consider the meat of a bill, which means that effectively, unless, you know, proponents of a bill control 60 votes, they can never get to a vote on its final passage. And it's been used in recent years by both parties to block the consideration of bills that they don't support. So in this case, with the voting rights bill today, Republicans didn't have to stand up there and give speeches all day. They didn't have to prove any endurance tests. All they had to do was deny this bill, that's 60 votes, to move

forward. And with the Senate split 50-50 and Republicans all opposed to this, that was not that hard to do. Right. They did it by a wide margin. That's right. It was quickly slapped down by Republicans who have more than enough votes. Okay. So, Nick, now that this bill, which has been described by many people as Democrats' most ambitious plan to protect voting rights, now that that has gone down in flames, I want to talk about why the bill failed and the larger meaning and the lessons of its failure. So what would you say that those are? Sure. Three things come to mind, I think. And the first one just has to do with how big and sprawling and, you know, frankly, imperfect this bill turned out to be for this present moment. What exactly do you mean?

So this was written after the 2018 midterm elections when Democrats, if you remember at the time, ran and won back control of the House on kind of an anti-corruption, good government, we're going to put a check on Donald Trump and what we see as his corrupt presidency. And this bill is just huge, Michael. I mean, it's like 800 pages and touches almost everything you could think of in the electoral process. You know, it eliminates state voter ID laws. It creates automatic voter registration across the country. It would give the right back to millions of former felons to cast their votes. It would require super PACs to disclose their donors.

It would require the president to release his tax returns. You know, the list goes on. It would eliminate partisan gerrymandering in congressional districts. So this is a really expansive bill. Yes. And that size is because, frankly, you know, this bill was written at a time when it was essentially meant to be a messaging bill, a wish list of democratic priorities that was not ready to become law. So there are often a couple types of bills on Capitol

Hill. There's what we call messaging bills, as I just referred to this, and then there are substantive bills that might become law. And messaging bills are usually written to make political points. And so they may actually be hard to implement or parts of them might be contradictory or, you know, maybe a senator says I'm willing to support that in theory because they know it will never become law. Right. It sounds like you're saying this bill was never really designed to go from being a piece of symbolism to a piece of law. Yeah, it was not, another way of putting it, it wasn't exactly ready for prime time. But fast forward to January of this year, Democrats had won back the White House. They knew they had held on narrowly to the House. And on January 5th, they win two runoff elections in Georgia and claim the sparest of Senate majorities.

And all of a sudden, for the first time in a decade, they've got control of all of Washington. And so, you know, what was a hypothetical becomes a real possibility. Now, at that point, many of the advocacy groups who have made this bill one of their top priorities decided this is actually our opportunity now. And at the same time, Republicans in state houses across the country start under the auspices of Trump's election lies, moving forward with restrictive voting laws that make it harder, experts say, for people of color, for young people to vote, that shift power to partisan legislatures, in some cases, rather than nonpartisan election authorities.

And Democrats start to feel an urgency to move on this. Right. So they reach back into their legislative satchel, where they have this massive but quite imperfect messaging bill on voting. And it sounds like they decide to put that forward. Yeah, that's right. And so the House quickly passes it in the spring, and then it kicks over to the Senate, where Democrats always knew they were going to have a fight on their hands because Republicans had no trouble opposing this thing at the outset. But as it happened, it wasn't just Republicans that all of a sudden were looking at this bill and thinking, I'm not so sure about this. Again, when you take a messaging

bill and try and make it a real one, concerns emerge. So the most notable senatorial objector who we're all familiar with, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, had actually been a co-sponsor of this bill in the last Congress. But this time, when it was reintroduced, he held his name off of it. And Manchin said, hey, I've got some issues with this bill. And what were those issues given he had previously co-sponsored it? So on the one hand, he said, well, first of all, we're just in a different moment here. There's all kinds of doubt about our elections. And I think that one of the worst things we could do right now is move forward with a bill on a partisan basis.

It's going to end up backfiring on us and making trust in elections less. But then he also says, you know, this bill is just too sweeping. He didn't like specific provisions that would have essentially neutered all voter ID laws in states across the country. Manchin likes voter ID laws, as it happens to a lot of voters, including Democrats. He didn't like a provision that would have set up a campaign financing system for congressional candidates. Nick, the inevitable question would seem to be, why didn't Democrats just rewrite this old election bill that was first introduced as a messaging bill in 2018 and make it more of a real world bill that could actually pass in the Senate?

Yeah, it's a great question, especially looking back from this vantage point. But I think there were some different factors going on. So one is that this bill really mashed up a lot of different interests that are represented by powerful advocacy groups on the left, groups that are interested in dark money, groups that are interested in voting and redistricting of congressional districts. All these different groups had an interest in this bill and locked arms and said, you know, we need all of our pieces to stay in it. We need all of our issues to continue to be represented here. And they also know in the context of this pitch battle that, you know, Republicans are not going to be more favorable to a narrower, more tailored voting

bill. I mean, it's just not going to win more votes in the United States Senate. So, you know, if we're going to go forward, let's go forward big with what we believe in. We can try and address some of the technical flaws and amendments along the way, but we're going to try to get this whole thing across the finish line. The other thing going on is that, you know, they know that looming at the end of this may be a battle over the filibuster. And I think the theory is that the bigger, the bolder, the more impactful this bill is for the left, the more force it gives as it crashes into the filibuster. And maybe, just maybe, that will be enough to create some cracks and lead Senate Democrats who have been uncomfortable with this so far to change the rules. We'll be right back. Nick, of course, as we now know, Democrats did not come together to try to change the rules of the Senate to kill the filibuster in order to try to pass this voting rights bill.

Right. So I think that brings me to my second takeaway from today, which is that Democrats at this point at least don't really seem to have much of a chance of getting rid of the filibuster rule. They had argued, you know, really going back months now, that this legislation, given its moral weight, it's dealing with the foundations of democracy and the vote itself, was the best argument that they could make. It's the tip of the spear colliding into the filibuster that would create a rationale to convince all 50 Senate Democrats and the vice president to change the Senate rules, to bring that vote down, the threshold down from 60 votes to 50 votes

so that a simple majority can start debate and vote to pass a bill. And Democrats, in essence, could go around Republicans to enact not just this big voting bill, but other planks of their agenda as well. But instead, what we saw on Tuesday as this vote was filibustered on the floor of the Senate is that Democrats could not organize themselves, at least not all of them,

around this idea of getting rid of the filibuster and did not seem to actually be any closer to doing so. So if Democrats can't lock arms and get rid of the filibuster over this issue, then the thinking goes, and the Nick Fandos takeaway would be, that Democrats are now going to be locked into a dynamic where Republicans can and probably will filibuster almost every major piece of the Biden legislative agenda. Exactly. And the result is that, you know, but for a few types of issues that can move through the arcane budget reconciliation process, Democrats are going to be looking at a pretty unified Republican bloc of opposition

on this whole range of issues that, you know, is central to their political platform and to President Biden's administration. And so, Nick, how do the Democratic senators who refuse to offer up the decisive votes to end the filibuster on an issue like this voting rights bill, this election bill, how do they explain their decision to, in many people's eyes, kind of seal their party's fate for the next three years and kind of sentence themselves to a world in which they will get filibustered and blocked over and over and over again, even on issues

that their party considers to have the highest moral calling. Yeah. So I think that we should look at the two most outspoken defenders of the filibuster here in the Democratic Party. So that's Joe Manchin from West Virginia, who we were talking about earlier, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Both of them argue essentially that the filibuster is an important tool for promoting civility, bipartisanship, and lasting policy in the Senate, that it tempers the partisan vigor of both parties and leads to better policy down the line. And so they would argue, yeah, voting rights is hugely important to us. Cinema has been a vocal proponent of this legislation. But, you know, if we pass this now, if we change the rules and we pass this now without Republican support, what's to stop them in the future from getting retribution, from not only reversing all of these things but putting in place draconian national voting laws when they win back power?

It's not good for long-term policymaking and continuity of government to be flip-flopping like that. And we'll rue the day that we got rid of the filibuster. But in any case, they have laid down a pretty clear line months ago, and they've been unwilling to cross it despite, you know, millions of dollars being spent in TV ads, rallies being held in their states, you know, the full force of the left pushing on their backs to try and get over that line. So for senators like Manchin and Sinema, their view is that when it comes to the moral high ground, that is in not changing the rules of the Senate to end the filibuster, rather than changing the rules to pass something that many people in the party say has the greatest moral weight, which is passing an election reform law.

Right. They seem to think that the principle of the filibuster is more important in this moment than this particular sweeping elections bill. So, Nick, what is your final takeaway from the demise of this election bill? It's a more substantive one to this bill, Michael. And it's that, you know, for months, Democrats had put all their eggs in this big national voting rights fight into this bill and the idea that Congress could roll it back. And with them essentially pushed to the sideline for now or maybe permanently, I think it means that these states that have already passed laws, there's 14 Republican states that have passed, you know, some versions of restrictive voting laws or changing voting rules,

those are going to stand uncontested by Congress. And other states that may have similar proposals in the hopper, and there are many of them, will be able to proceed, you know, without the threat of Congress coming in and overriding them. And so what does that look like on a practical level when it comes to election laws and election restrictions? It means that across the country in states, and many of them key battleground states where Republican legislatures have passed these new laws, it's going to be harder to, in some cases,

request a mail-in ballot. It'll be harder to find a drop box to drop your ballot in. It means that it might be harder to vote on Sunday when Black voters often go to the poll. You know, in aggregate, it means that in all these little ways, Republicans in many of these key states are putting in place a set of rules that,

especially in a close election, could tip the balance in their favor and benefit Republican candidates, make it easier for their voters to get to the polls, and harder for the type of people who vote for Democrats to cast their ballot or to win election challenges and contested cases. Right. And with congressional legislation now foreclosed, it would seem the only option left would be the courts, and our colleague Adam Liptak told us earlier this week that it looks to him that the Supreme Court

is likely to uphold these Republican-led restrictions that you just described, and so taken together, it would look like neither of those branches of government are going to step in and challenge these state restrictions. I think that's true on a big scale at the moment. I mean, Democrats in Congress are sure as heck going to keep trying on this issue. But for all the reasons we laid out, it's hard to see how they'll have success anytime soon, certainly before the 2022 election. And in the courts, you know, there's all kinds of institutional groups and state legislators that will continue to sue to try and block these.

And they may win some piecemeal victories. But it's kind of a losing game of whack-a-mole, I think, for those who are trying to stand in the way of these things. Maybe they'll be successful here or there. But overall, there seems to be a green light for Republicans, you know, in favor of these kind of restrictions to just keep stacking them up. And practically speaking, that really only leaves Democrats with a couple of options. One is really just to try and make this a political issue,

to put democracy on the ballot in the next elections and say, Republicans are not only standing in the way of all these popular policy positions that we think you as voters want to see your government do, but they're stopping us from even protecting your right to vote. And they don't deserve a seat at the table. You got to vote them out. You got to bring us back in bigger numbers

so we can get this done because your very ability to vote and have your government be responsive to you is on the line. So perhaps that explains why Democrats even held this vote in the Senate on Tuesday, knowing full well that they would lose, knowing full well that this was not going to be the impetus to get rid of the filibuster, because they wanted to put it on record that Republicans opposed this bill so they could use it as an issue

in the next set of elections? Yes. Failing, you know, this creating the kind of pressure they need to get rid of the filibuster. Democrats are very much looking down the pike here at the next election and are trying to, you know, portray the Republican Party as an anti-democratic force, you know, still in league with Donald Trump and out to undermine the system of government and portray themselves as Democrats as protectors of that. Hmm. But the dilemma would seem to be that between now and the next election, Democrats may get locked into this dynamic we just described, which is that they really can't get much passed because of the filibuster, which wasn't changed because of this bill. can't get much passed because of the filibuster, which wasn't changed because of this bill.

And therefore, they need to wave their failures around to voters and say, we were never given a chance because Republicans wouldn't give it to us. And will voters side with them? Or will voters say, you didn't get anything done, we should give Republicans a chance? Yeah, I think that that's a question that's causing a lot of anxiety for Democrats right now. You know, they were quick out of the gate to pass this whopping $2 trillion stimulus bill, and they did it fast, and it was very popular. But, you know, it's starting to look very quickly like they may not have much luck getting much of their agenda through the Congress. They may be able to get a big infrastructure and jobs bill through. But after that, progressives say, our voters are going to look at us in 2022 and say, hey, we gave you all three levers of government. We turned out

in huge numbers last time, and this is all we got for it. I think with a hand of cards that they've been dealt, Democratic leaders feel like we've got to at least try to play this political card and hang it on Republicans. But the question is, how powerful and effective politically can Democrats claiming the moral high ground as the protector of democracy really be in a contest where Republicans who have backed these restrictions are writing the rules of the election itself. Thank you, Nick. We appreciate it.

Thanks for having me, Michael. On Tuesday, the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, moved his state closer to adopting sweeping restrictions on voting. Abbott called a special session of the state's legislature, during which Republicans are expected to pass a bill that would make it harder to vote by mail, ban both drive-thru and 24-hour voting, and give much greater power to partisan poll watchers. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. So how are we doing? Today, I want to drill down on the numbers that show where we have made the most progress and where we have more work to do. On Tuesday, the Biden administration said that it would miss its original goal of getting at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to 70% of adults by July 4th. Where the country has more work to do is particularly with 18 to 26-year-olds. During a news conference, the president's COVID-19 coordinator, Dr. Jeff Zients, said that it's proven harder than expected to convince younger Americans to take the vaccine.

The reality is many younger Americans have felt like COVID-19 is not something that impacts them, and they've been less eager to get the shot. Older Americans continue to take the vaccine at high rates. 87% of those 65 or older have gotten at least one dose. Today's episode was produced by Annie Brown, Nina Potok, and Stella Tan. It was edited by MJ Davis-Lynn and engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.