The NPR Politics Podcast - Democrats Are Headed For A Clash Over The Filibuster

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Senate Democrats are bringing new voting rights bills to the floor this week. There's just one problem: They don't have the votes. That could have consequences for the 2022 midterms, and it's setting up a public showdown about the future of the filibuster.This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico MontanaroConnect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Anne, and this is Patrick at Missouri Baptist Hospital in St. Louis. Today, our newborn son is being discharged from the NICU, and we get to take him home to reunite with his twin sister. This podcast was recorded at? It is 1.52 p.m. on Tuesday, January 18, 2022. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we'll still be grateful for all the NICU nurses and doctors who give these tiny humans the best possible care. Okay, on with the show. Oh, congratulations. Twins. My goodness. Wow. God bless them. God bless them. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Senate Democrats are forging ahead with their plan to pass two major voting rights bills. Of course, the issue today and is the same as it was yesterday and the days before that is that they do not have the votes. They do not. Majority leader Chuck Schumer pushed a vote on this issue from last week to this week because he didn't have votes. And it doesn't seem like anything has changed, but they're moving ahead. So, Kelsey, where do things stand now? Well, they started debate on this bill because they came over, a very technical explanation is they came over from the House in a way that allowed them to avoid the first filibuster that would have prevented them from starting debate. But they would still have to overcome one more 60-vote threshold filibuster to actually pass this bill.

So they are debating right now, and they expect to kind of come up on that confrontation about getting 60 votes, coming up to the confrontation about the filibuster in general sometime later this week. We don't know exactly when, but they do plan to wrap things up before they're done this week. What are they hoping to accomplish with that as a move strategically? Is any insight there from leadership? Well, I mean, essentially, they just need to show that they tried and they need to show who was not with them, right? They are proving this, you know, for two different reasons. One, they're proving who was with them and who was against them on voting rights. And they're trying to prove who was with them and who was against them on the filibuster, which, you know, is a message that goes beyond voting rights. Because we have heard from activists and members of the base for Democrats for a long time saying that the only way to move

legislation in this environment and legislation that Democrats deem progressive enough is to get rid of the filibuster. Now that we're talking about things that range from dealing with the Supreme Court and abortion rights to voting rights and even potentially things like social spending. So this is a broader fight that they're trying to kind of, you know, make a point about in the context of voting rights. When it comes to the filibuster, can you go over, Kelsey, the main changes that are on the table? I mean, it's not just completely getting rid of it. I mean, is that on the table or there's also the idea of like maybe tweaking it, right?

So this is a situation where they're talking about different tweaks. We actually, at this point, don't know exactly what they're going to vote on. They have talked about different options, things like moving to a talking filibuster or slightly changing the ratio necessary to get onto a bill to start debate. But we're waiting right now to see exactly what options Democrats are going to have to vote on. And I mean, at this point, Kyrsten Sinema has said she does not support changing the filibuster at all in any way, shape or form. And Joe Manchin is not on board. Right. But there are other maybe more quiet senators who also are just kind of letting Sinema and Manchin kind of take the heat? Yeah, well, Manchin has hinted that he might be open to some types of changes, but there's really no incentive for him to, you know, get on board and

vote for those changes in a situation where they're not going to actually pass. You know, it's like they talk about it as kind of walking the plank, right? He's not going to walk the plank on a politically difficult thing when there's not a potential for an outcome. Most Democrats are on board with this idea about changing the filibuster. The vast majority of them are. But there are a few people who have been quiet. One of the other people that we're watching right now is Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. We don't exactly know where he's going to land on all of this. Yeah. No, I mean, Mark Kelly doesn't seem to be somebody who, you know, wants this debate. You know, he's also comes from the same purple state as Kyrsten Sinema does in

Arizona, which Biden won by only about 10,000 votes. So it is, you know, they feel like precarious. And you had Mitt Romney, the Republican from Utah, who voted for Trump's impeachment twice, come out over the weekend and say that Biden hasn't called him about voting rights. And that, you know, going the route of getting rid of the filibuster, he says it would become an issue in the 2022 midterm elections. Although I'm not 100% sure a lot of people are going to be voting on a procedure in the Senate. Right. And, you know, honestly, midterm elections are base elections. And if the Democratic base isn't fired up, then, you know, then it's pretty hard to withstand

the quote unquote red wave that may be coming. Yeah. And that goes back to something that I know we've talked about before, Kelsey, is like without the votes, and it's clear they want to get people on the record. But there also was, you know, this whole Build Back Better legislation that they were trying to get through and all this other stuff that they have to get through in this very limited amount of time. Why did voting rights at this moment become absolutely imperative?

Well, Democrats say it's because state legislatures are passing restrictive voting laws and, you know, various Republican-run states. They say that's why it has to be done right now. You know, some of it is also that they have a fairly limited time frame to do this. This is an election year. They need to start campaigning. And to be frank, Build Back Better doesn't seem to be in a position where they could quickly turn to it and suddenly make it resolve. They can't just snap their fingers and make Joe Manchin suddenly love that bill. So some of it might just be a question of, you know, political timing. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll talk more about this when we get

back. And we're back. So moving from the politics of this to the policy, like the reason why voting rights activists have been sounding an alarm on this is because of all of these bills that have been passed in all of these states that they say limits ballot access. And basically that it does make it more difficult to vote. Republicans have tried to make the argument that that's overblown and that this is the federal government trying to step in on what's really a state's rights issue or a state's issue, to put it in a different way. But Kelsey, what are some of the implications of if you don't get a federal voting rights bill, what happens at the state level? Well, the thing that we often hear from

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is he talks about 33, he says at least 33 new laws have been passed that would either make it harder to vote, harder to register to vote or empower, as he leader Chuck Schumer is he talks about 33, he says at least 33 new laws have been passed that would either make it harder to vote, harder to register to vote or empower, as he phrases it, potentially empower partisans to arbitrate outcomes of future elections. So basically, Democrats say that without federal rules, these state laws could be, you know, creating a patchwork of access both, you know, to registration andwork of access both, you know, to registration and to voting and could, you know, allow for partisan interference in elections. Kelsey, what are some of the provisions of these state laws that Democrats are concerned about? They're talking

about laws that would reduce polling hours and polling locations or limit access to drop boxes or make it harder for people to register to vote. You know, Democrats often point to laws in states like Florida, Kansas, Iowa, Texas, and Indiana and Georgia as main places where some of these laws are going into effect. I guess I'm wondering, like, is there, I mean, this is a little bit of the politics of it, but like, if this doesn't get done, which right now there doesn't seem to be a path for it. Like, what does this mean for for getting Democrats out to vote or even like our Republicans worked up about this? Does this mean that, you know, Kyrsten Sinema might have some issues? Are there repercussions

for this not happening? I mean, these are all good questions. I think it's something that obviously we're all looking at. I mean, there's been a lot of people who've been trying to say that Kyrsten Sinema should be primaried in Arizona because she's not standing up for the base. It's a little tougher to do that with Joe Manchin in West Virginia, a state where Joe Biden won less than 30 percent of the vote and Trump won by 40 points. Right, getting to the left of Joe Manchin isn't really going to bring out a lot of new voters. Yeah, it's a difficult situation for Democrats. You know, I hear from some Democrats who, you know, are irritated with Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader from New York, who think that he should be tougher on Manchin and that he should strip him of his

Energy Committee chairmanship. But, you know, what a lot of others on Capitol Hill will say, and, you know, Kelsey, correct me if I'm wrong, but the potential problem there is that Manchin could bolt to become a Republican. And you could have Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell make him a promise where he gets to maintain his position on the Energy Committee. And then what for Democrats, right? They don't be able, they're not able to bring anything to the floor. The answer here is numbers. The Democrats, in order to pass this stuff, need more senators. Nothing big has ever

happened in the history of American politics, really. You know, sweeping changes. Think about FDR's New Deal, LBJ's Great Society measures, even Obamacare. None of that stuff was passed without big majorities. You know, one of the things that I think about a lot was that a person who works in Democratic politics, who works on reelections and campaigns, said to me early on after the 2020 election, they were worried that they told voters that what they needed in Washington was a majority in the Senate, but what they really needed to say was we need a super majority in Washington. And because it's a lot harder to go back to voters and say, okay, so we told you that we could do this. But what we really meant was this other thing. So could you please give us more Democrats to finally fulfill the stuff we promised?

That's a hard sell. That's a hard thing to say on the campaign trail. Yeah, I agree. And I think that that's a big piece that you're hitting on here. This is the reality of unreal expectations that Washington is kind of running into, or voters are running into seeing Washington deal with. Because part of the expectations, on the one hand, are from Joe Biden, who went out there, needed the support of African-American voters, especially in South Carolina, to win the primary. He tends to make very big, bold promises because he was being pushed by a bold group of candidates on the left. So he made pretty big promises himself and maybe set those expectations too high. He's still setting the expectations too high, frankly, by saying, you know, we're going

to get some of this stuff done. He's not tamping a lot of it down. And then I think there's the unreality of great expectations put on him from people on the left who want him to fight, want him to fight harder. They want something to be done. But then the question is, if you can't get this done because it's only 50-50, then who do you protest against? Are you going against Manchin only? Are you going against Biden? Are you taking Republicans to task? Are you going to do the work that it takes for years

to get bigger numbers and majorities in the Senate, which I know it's sort of a chicken and an egg? I guess to take one step back really quickly, Kelsey, is that Biden has been making this appeal that people need to be on the right side of history. And you had even Vice President Harris saying that, you know, every senator has taken their oath of office to protect democracy, that everyone needs to be held accountable. And, you know, this is right after Martin Luther King Day. Yesterday, Martin Luther King III called on the Senate to honor his father's legacy by taking action. And say no more empty words.

Don't tell us what you believe in. Show us with your votes. History will be watching what happens tomorrow. your votes. History will be watching what happens tomorrow. Black and brown Americans will be watching what happens tomorrow. I mean, do you think that any of that messaging has done anything or made anyone think anything about the larger picture here, the historic picture here? I think if people were already inclined to view it that way, they probably view it that way. And if they were already dis were already inclined to view it that way, they probably view it that way. And if they were already disinclined to view it that way,

they remain disinclined to view it that way. All right, well, let's leave it there for today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow, a little bit later than usual, because President Biden is holding a news conference, the first one in a while. And we're going to be, you know, in your feeds talking about

that. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.