The NPR Politics Podcast - Will Democrats Change The Senate Rules To Pass Voting Rights Legislation?

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Another high-profile voting rights push has failed because it did not attract enough Republican support to reach the de facto 60-vote threshold needed to pass legislation through the Senate. Will Democrats change the rules to pass their civil rights legislation with a simple majority?This episode: demographics and culture correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, politics and racial justice correspondent Juana Summers, and White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.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 Leticia. Right now, I'm walking my dog Manila, named after one of my favorite contestants of RuPaul's Drag Race, in the beautiful countryside of Umbria, in central Italy, where I've lived for a long time. This podcast was recorded at 1.17pm on Wednesday, October 20th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. They will definitely have changed for me because I'm moving to Portugal next month. All right, here's the show. Ciao. What a life. Our listeners are taunting us at this point with all of these exotic timestamps.

I don't like it. Hey there, it is the NPR Politics Podcast. I am Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover demographics and culture. I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics and racial justice. And I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover demographics and culture. I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics and racial justice. And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And today we are talking about voting rights. The Senate is about to vote on a voting rights bill,

but Democrats don't have enough support from the 10 Republicans they would need to pass it. In fact, by the time you hear this, spoiler alert, the vote will have failed. So let's start with what's in the bill and what it would do. Yeah, Danielle. So the bill is called the Freedom to Vote Act, and it was negotiated by a big group of Senate Democrats. And it's actually a scaled down version of a bigger voting rights bill that folks may be familiar with that was actually filibustered by Republicans earlier this year.

The bill that lawmakers are voting on today does a lot of things. Among them, it would establish Election Day as a national holiday. It would set some national minimum standards for early voting and vote by mail, and it would create new requirements for some groups that are not currently required to disclose their financial donors. It also includes something that was a big priority of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, which is including standards for states that require voter identification. Now, the one big thing that we should be clear about here is that Democrats are so intent on pushing federal voting legislation in an attempt to counteract a wave of new restrictions from Republican-controlled

state legislatures across the country. Democrats say that these laws are making it harder to access the ballot for many people in this country, particularly for people of color. And so I do remember that this was a negotiation between Democrats. There had been some talk of trying to get some Republicans on board, but Republicans obviously did not sign on to this. Why are they against it? Sure, that's a great question. And there was an attempt to find Republican support for this, though I should point out that we do not believe we will see any Republican backers for this legislation. That is something that Senator Joe Manchin had tried to do. He spent the last couple of weeks in conversation with Republicans here on Capitol Hill, trying to see if he can find any sort of support for this legislation. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch

McConnell made clear yesterday when he spoke to reporters that that's not something that we should expect. So it is my hope and anticipation that none of us will vote for this latest iteration of Democratic efforts to take over how every American vote all over the country. He and other Republicans that I have been speaking to have characterized this bill as a political power grab by Democrats and an attempt by Democrats, as McConnell put it, for the federal government to take over state elections. So if Democrats know that this bill can't pass, that they can't get those 60 votes, why bring it up for a vote? Well, one of the reasons they want to do that is to make a point that Democrats now are united, something that was not the case in earlier voting rights

bills, at least in the Senate. Take a listen to what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said. This bill is a compromise, but a good one. It's a bill that every Senate Democrat is united behind enthusiastically. And another thing that I've heard Democrats make a point of is that they hope that when this vote does fail, that it would make a point to their colleagues who are not yet supportive of changing the filibuster to pass laws like voting rights legislation. They say that it will illustrate that Republicans are not interested in any sort of a bipartisan compromise on voting rights, and that perhaps it'll persuade lawmakers like Manchin that there's no alternative to pass a law

like this one other than changing the body's rules. So this naturally raises the question, if and when this fails, will Democrats try to eliminate the filibuster? Do we know what happens next? We don't know what happens next, but what I can tell you is that there are a lot of activists outside Congress and even some Democrats within Congress that hope that that's the next beat of this story, that this will create more pressure to eliminate the filibuster, perhaps create some kind of a carve out for voting rights, because many of those folks don't believe there's any other way to get things done. I mean, you've even heard Senator Schumer, the majority leader, say that inaction is not an

option when it comes to voting rights. And walking away from this bill and letting it fail and not do anything else would pretty much be inaction. And I know, you know, when I know you talk to a lot of civil rights groups, I know when I've talked to them as well, they have, you know, when I know you talk to a lot of civil rights groups, I know when when I've I've talked to them as well, they have, you know, frustration with the White House because they want the White House to come out really strongly in favor of, you know, changing the filibuster or getting rid of it to do something, you know, when it comes to voting rights. But the White House has so far, while they have said they would support maybe, you know, changing the filibuster to more talking, you know, making it more difficult, they have not made changing the filibuster a top priority. And, you know, part of the issue is likely that the support is not there in the Senate to do that. Yeah, that's exactly the point that these activists make when I talk to them. And we should point out that even as recently as this week,

we did not hear the president or White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki say that the filibuster had been a part of the president's conversations with lawmakers here on Capitol Hill. While Psaki described this as a must-pass priority of the White House, there was no talk of any sort of change to Senate rules being something that the president was going to step out on. Well, like you say, this was a must-pass priority of the White House. Voting rights were so central to Democrats' agenda in and after 2020. So before we break the big blunt question to me is, is this latest voting rights push dead? What do you think? Well, it certainly looks like Democrats are

not going to be able to get this bill right now across the finish line. Recently, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont introduced a separate voting rights bill that carries the name of the late congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis that I expect to see him pass. The challenge here is, though, it's difficult, given the comments we've heard from Minority Leader McConnell, given what I have heard from other Republicans here on the Hill, it is difficult to see a scenario for me in which Democrats can find 10 Republicans to go along with much of some provisions of a bill such as this one passed. But a big sweeping package like this that they had hoped to pass, it doesn't seem likely. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, more about Biden's agenda, racial equity and the filibuster. And we are back. And let's talk about how activists are feeling about voting rights in the Biden administration.

Juana, I know you've been talking to a few. What have they told you? Yeah, I have. I spent much of my Tuesday outside of the White House, actually. There's a group of activists that have been gathering there pretty regularly over the last few weeks, trying to be a visible presence to push President Biden to do more on voting rights, to push him to come out in favor of ending the filibuster. And one of the people that I spoke to on Tuesday is Joseph Giebergis, who is the executive director of Our Revolution, which is a group aligned with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. And he told me that if Congress cannot find a way to move on the issue of voting rights,

the consequences could not just be stark for democracy, but also for the Democratic Party. At the end of the day, I think what Joe Biden understands is the filibuster is not written into the Constitution. It is tradition. And tradition evolves and changes. And in this moment, amending this tradition of the filibuster is in his self-interest. If we don't pass the freedom to vote legislation, Democrats are going to get slaughtered in 2022 and 2024. Do we have any sense of whether the White House or a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill do see this legislation as a must-pass in order for Democrats to win in 2022 and 2024? Do they see it as starkly as that? You don't hear the White House talking about it that way. They do say it is must pass. They say it is a top priority and that voting rights is, you know, inaction is not

acceptable. They're going to do something. That is what they say. Obviously, the complaints are that the actions aren't backing that up. I think what the White House has said is, look, the White House has done what it can do. And now people should be pressing Congress, not the White House, for action, that Congress is what's holding everything up and that Congress is the one that should face the heat. I think in terms of the political cost here, the way that I kind of hear that brought up often is when people are talking about the census data that was recently released, which will then inform redistricting processes that are happening in states across the country. When I talk to some liberal lawmakers in particular, as well as activists outside of the Capitol, they tell me that they feel that a bill like this should have been passed yesterday

because those mapmaking processes, those district lines are already being drawn, and they feel that they are being drawn in such a way that will disadvantage Democrats in future elections that could have an impact for the next decade or for even longer in the future. And Aisha, I want to come back to you. Voting rights is a major pillar of Biden's racial justice and equity agenda. Is there more that we can expect from them on that? Well, the White House says that they have tried to put equity and racial justice and all of these things in every part of government. I've been talking to a lot of activists and people who are looking at economic inequality and looking at what the

White House has done on that. And a lot of this comes down to what is going to happen with this, you know, large bill that they're trying to put together that would include all of these provisions that will, they say, make a difference in people's lives. Of course, that is now up for negotiation and a lot is being cut. So there is a lot of concern about where things are headed on the equity agenda economically. And then you have all these other issues that haven't really come to pass, like you said, voting, police reform, all of these issues. So Aisha, from that answer right there, it sounds like a lot of the racial justice components, racial justice bills that have been put forward in the Biden administration have kind of fallen by the wayside. Is that a fair assessment? Well, there are things that they just haven't delivered on, right? You know, Biden promised

Black people, not just, but he specifically called out Black people because he said that they got him the presidency. But, you know, he has obviously, you know, talked about all other communities, marginalized communities. But what he has said is that he was going to deliver for people of all races, all backgrounds. And when it comes to some of these very key things, whether it's voting rights, whether it's whatever's going to happen with the economic proposals, there are questions about whether they will get done. And I think this also raises a big political question too, right? Is not only is there a feeling among many within the party space that President Biden and Democrats must deliver, there's a feeling that they have to deliver and

they have to deliver soon. It's late October. The midterms are really just around the corner. And I think that there is some fear that some of the key constituencies, like Black Voter, other marginalized groups that are part of that broad, big coalition that elected President Biden and delivered Democrats to the House and Senate, they may not show up in strong numbers in an off year if they don't see some of those promises kept. All right. Well, with that look ahead to 22, we'll leave it there. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover demographics and culture. I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics and racial justice.

And I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.