President Joe Biden took a major political gamble Tuesday in calling for a break in the Senate’s supermajority rule so that Democrats can override Republican opposition to voting rights reforms that he called crucial to saving US democracy.
Speaking in Atlanta, Georgia, the cradle of the civil rights movement, Biden — who called last year’s Capitol riot by Donald Trump supporters an “attempted coup” — declared “this is the moment to decide to defend our elections, to defend our democracy.”
He challenged Democrats holding a razor-thin majority in the Senate to stand up for two bills that would expand access to polls and prevent practices that Biden said are being used to suppress Black and other Democratic-leaning voters.
“Each one of the members of the Senate will be judged by history for where they stood before the vote and after the vote. There’s no escape,” Biden said.
The 50 Democrats in the Senate support the two bills. However, under current the supermajority requirement, 60 votes are needed to get them passed.
Biden said that if Republicans don’t cooperate then the supermajority requirement, called the filibuster, should be tossed to get the voting rights acts through.
Facing Republican obstruction, “we have no option but to change the Senate rules including getting rid of the filibuster for this.”
It’s a high-risk, high-gain issue for Biden, who is infuriating Republicans, while also trying to balance the more conservative wing of his party with the increasingly frustrated Black community.
