Congressional Hostage-Taking
One underrated reason we don't solve problems in this country is politicians, goaded on by activist bases, are always holding out for the unachievable
Sen. Joe Manchin just announced that he will support the restoration and expansion of the Voting Rights Act in the Senate. That gives Democrats their 50th (and with Vice President Harris, their 51st) vote to pass what would be historic legislation. And the response to that announcement has been- for Democratic and liberal activists to trash Manchin, claiming that he is the devil incarnate because he won’t support “H.R. 1”, a grab bag “messaging bill” that was never intended to become law anyway.
This is, as the saying goes, why we can’t have good things. I first noticed this sort of thing with the “Dream Act”, which was first proposed more than 20 years ago to allow people who emigrated to the United States as children (often with no choice in the matter), and who grew up here, spoke English, went to American schools and had American friends, and were in any logical sense “Americans”, to legalize their immigration status and eventually become citizens. The Dream Act should have been a no-brainer. Indeed, it was created as something of a no brainer: because, obviously, immigration bills were very difficult to pass, and “comprehensive immigration reform” faced giant obstacles, why not help this group that everyone agreed deserved assistance?
And I emphasize that last point. Sure, you can find a few right wing troglodytes who think it’s just wonderful to kick innocent people out of the country on what is essentially a technicality, but the Dream Act had overwhelming bipartisan support. Even many conservative, restrictionist organizations conceded that this group of people presented a compelling case and that it was stupid to deport someone back to a country which she had few connections to.
Yet it did not pass. Why did it not pass? Well, the problem is, the fact that everyone agreed on it became something of an albatross, because that also meant that everyone in the immigration debate saw it as a mechanism to try and get concessions from the other side. So restrictionist conservatives demanded the same border restrictions and enforcement provisions that are contained in comprehensive bills, in exchange for legalizing the Dreamers. And liberals demanded that if the Dreamers were legalized, it needed to be in a comprehensive bill that addressed other undocumented populations with less popular support. Everyone held the Dreamers hostage, and as a result, they still aren’t legalized. (Obama’s DACA program was important and useful, but it still leaves these people in a legal gray area where they theoretically face eventual deportation, 20 years later when they are working adults and some of them have American children.)
This isn’t the only issue where this has taken place. Remember the debt ceiling? Everyone in Washington agreed that the United States could not be placed in a state of financial catastrophe because it could not pay its debts. But nonetheless, Republicans in Congress saw a negotiating opportunity. “Give us stuff we want or the whole economy gets it! That’s a beautiful economy you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.” Thankfully (and cynically, because rich and powerful interests would have been affected by a debt-ceiling default), the Republicans backed down from that one.
But now we get voting rights. It’s perfectly obvious that H.R. 1 was a wish-list bill concocted while President Trump was still in office, a way for congressional Democrats to show their base how passionate they were on voting rights. The idea that H.R. 1 is a non-negotiable set of demands is nuts- it wasn’t intended as one in the first place, and it is larded up with plenty of provisions, such as campaign finance limits and same day voter registration, that are in no way crucial for American democracy. When you know a bill is not going to pass, you might as well put everything in it.
But meanwhile, what Democrats need to be actually doing is figuring out what can pass. And among all the voting reforms they have proposed, the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act is something that could plausibly pass. For one thing, it is something that a lot of Republicans have supported in the past. But, you might say, right now no Republicans are supporting it. True! But one reason Joe Manchin feels he can support it is because he has a plausible story to tell to his constituents about a 55 year history of bipartisan support for the Voting Rights Act, which is about allowing people to vote and making it hard for politicians to change voting rules to game elections. That’s a more persuasive argument to a Republican West Virginia electorate than supporting the bill Nancy Pelosi cooked up to satisfy the Democratic base, and which contains all sorts of provisions that at least in theory could make it a little easier to cast illegal votes. (Again, I am not saying there’s a massive voter fraud problem in America; I am simply saying that provisions that seemingly make it easier to cast an illegal ballot are not going to be popular among Manchin’s constituents.)
Now there are still obstacles to passing the Voting Rights Act. Most obviously, there’s the filibuster- but one way you might get past the filibuster is by writing a bill that Manchin (and Kyrsten Sinema) can present to moderate constituents as both a compromise and in a bipartisan tradition, so that they then vote to exempt the legislation from the filibuster rule. The bottom line is, there’s a route to passage of a Voting Rights Act if you do what Manchin wants. But if, instead, you take hostages, election reform will end up exactly where the Dream Act has been for 20 years; an issue that motivates Democrats to go to the polls, while the underlying problem never gets fixed.