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Jan. 14, 2022 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

24:57

Why The Voting Rights Act Won't Get Passed

This is an abbreviated version of our weekly Patreon show. To access the full-episode and support the pod, head on over to http://www.patreon.com/muckrakepodcast Jared and Nick discuss the methods Joe Biden is using to convince the Senate to get rid of the filibuster, and why it doesn't even matter if they get Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema on board anyway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hey, everybody.
	Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the McCreek Podcast.
	I'm Jodey.
	It's Sexton.
	I'm here with Nick Hausman.
	We got a lot to talk about before we get to the weekend.
	We've got a push for voting rights acts.
	We've got the Democratic Party in disarray.
	We've got the Republican Party basically cutting each other's throats and bathing in each other's blood.
	Nick, we got a lot of stuff going on.
	Yeah, and at least it's interesting.
	It might be a little bit new, some new subjects to talk about a little bit, which is nice.
	I think we could use a little refreshing of the pod.
	Well, you know, I think in terms of all of this, the showdown that we're getting ready to watch and, you know, we're inching up on Martin Luther King Day.
	The Democratic Party has a strategy that will supposedly pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which we'll talk about like the ins and outs of that, whether or not it might work or not.
	But the narrative is sort of refreshing a little bit because it has to.
	Things have been rough.
	It's been a little bit of a doldrum, particularly among the left and among the Democratic Party.
	I think they're trying to turn this into a story that's heading into next week, but I gotta be honest, and I hate to be the wet blanket.
	I don't like being the wet blanket.
	I like being the, I guess the opposite is a cozy blanket?
	A nice, warm, cozy blanket.
	A nice, warm, snuggie is what I like to be.
	I like to be the cool pillow.
	See, that's a good thing, too.
	I like that.
	I don't like to be the wet blanket, but there are problems, there are looming roadblocks that are along the way.
	So, now that Chuck Schumer has announced this strategy, and we'll talk about what it is, how it works, just your initial thoughts, Nick.
	Are you feeling hopeful?
	Do you see a bad moon arising?
	What are you thinking here?
	Um, you know, it's interesting that we finally get Biden using a bully pulpit a little bit to try and push this and try again to do the filibuster or eliminate the filibuster.
	But it doesn't feel like they're going to do it.
	That's not going to happen.
	OK, so there you go.
	So if that's what you're asking me.
	Listen, Biden going out and again, God, I hate being a wet blanket.
	Biden going out to Atlanta, my neck of the woods, and, you know, giving this big speech about wanting to eliminate the filibuster in order to secure voting rights was a lot of pageantry.
	There was a lot of talk about a lot of different things.
	It was the thing that he needed to do.
	But I have to tell you, Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and a whole host of Democrats have no interest whatsoever in breaking the filibuster.
	So it sounds right, and it's what the president should be saying, but no, I don't see that happening.
	Oh, but did you see Joe Manchin say, well, wait a minute, we'll look at voting rights, we can try and figure out that, and we can figure out protections for coal miners, and the environment.
	He actually went back and started saying that again, as if he's going to now, in good faith, renegotiate again.
	Well, he'll look at it!
	I mean, on his yacht.
	Yeah, if an aide, well, actually, and one of his aides printing it off and putting it on his desk, too much.
	If one of the Democratic aides from somebody else prints it off, he'll take a look at it, I assume, as he's, you know, looking at pictures of black lung or something.
	Well, no.
	While you're sitting on the back of the... what's the back of the yacht called?
	The porch?
	It's almost heaven.
	Because it's from the John Denver song.
	His yacht is called Almost Heaven.
	Oh, okay, good.
	Well, you know, almost heaven.
	You know, it's very boring on a yacht.
	You need some reading material.
	You need things to do while you're sitting in there.
	You know, and if you run out of coal in order to warm your hands, maybe you can even burn a Voting Rights Advancement Act.
	Maybe that's the way you'll do it.
	The one thing I liked about what Schumer is saying is the concept is how can local governments with a majority only vote radically change the way we're gonna do our voting system and yet we don't have that same threshold in the Senate.
	That to me resonates to some degree.
	I'm like okay that's kind of a not a bad argument to try and push the agenda through with only a majority rule.
	Well, you know, when you say it like that, it's almost like the United States Senate was set up in order to protect rich interests of white, wealthy, slave-holding men in order to maintain their profit and their slavery base.
	And almost like it's a decrepit system that people hide behind and pretend like it wasn't put there for white and wealthy men.
	Hey, if that was true, then the filibuster would have been written into the Constitution, Jared, right in the first day.
	Right in the first day.
	No, it was something they cooked up later on in order to protect white supremacy.
	Exactly.
	They're like, oh shit, this didn't work the way we thought it was going to.
	We better fix this.
	Well, which by the way, so the Schumer thing, he's exactly right.
	Like, and it's insane that we're in 2022 AD and we're still doing things in this way where there's like a gentleman's agreement.
	And by the way, anytime we start talking about gentleman's agreements, we're talking about a bunch of rich white men, like in a cloak room, right?
	Deciding to keep, you know, slavery and Jim Crow alive.
	In this case, he's exactly right.
	But he's not saying the truth here, which is the system doesn't work because it was intended not to work.
	It's supposed to keep stuff like this from happening.
	It's supposed to keep entrenched power and white supremacy going forward.
	So, Schumer's exactly right.
	This is how things should work.
	And what he's proposed, just to get into a little bit of the minutia, a little bit of the wonkiness, basically he's trying to do a workaround.
	And this is through a process that can be referred to as messaging, and that's whenever the House and the Senate go back and forth with legislation, they can amend it, and eventually you can get around the idea of the filibuster.
	Well, so this might work.
	It's crazy enough to work, Nick.
	The problem is you still need all 50 of your people to vote for it, as they understand, which They are breaking the filibuster without breaking the filibuster, right?
	It's again, wink and a nod.
	In this case, you have at least a half dozen Democrats who don't want to break the filibuster.
	And again, we've said this before, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were out there in front of a bunch of other Democrats who didn't want to do it.
	It just so happens that it benefited them politically and financially to pretend to be the only ones against it.
	Now all of a sudden you have Dick Durbin.
	Dick Durbin is the majority whip.
	And Dick Durbin, as a majority whip, it is his job to make sure that all the votes are in place.
	And let's check in with old Dick Durbin, Nick.
	You want to do that and see what he thinks about this situation?
	Sure.
	I mean, my hometown, my home state.
	So Nick, a reminder again that Dick Durbin, who is the majority whip for the Democrats, it is his job to make sure that all the votes are in place for Am I wrong here that this is one of the more important votes in the last 50, 60 years, give or take?
	Yeah, you're not wrong.
	Dick Durbin.
	Not sure where the votes are.
	Quote.
	Not sure where the votes are.
	Not great.
	Yeah.
	Not great.
	Yeah.
	Not sure is a nice way to put it.
	Not sure!
	Not sure.
	Not sure.
	That's his quote.
	Not sure.
	Well, you know, listen, there is some hand-wringing going on here from a lot of people in the notion that if and when the Democrats are not in power, you'd hate to get rid of this thing, and then they wouldn't be able to have any say.
	And we've seen, you know, listen, if you want to compare pound for pound the Republican platform and the Democratic platform, you would argue that it's much more nefarious if the Republicans are going to be able to push through all these things without any kind of blowback.
	The Democrats can push through anything.
	Let's be very clear.
	That's not who they are.
	Well, by the way, I was talking to somebody recently, like, well, you know, what happens if the Republicans get the White House and they get the Senate and they get the House?
	And I'm like, yeah, don't you remember they had it?
	And what did they do?
	Nothing.
	Tax cuts.
	Okay, they got tax cuts.
	Here's the question I have, because these are the kind of, you know, to get the Republican base all fired up, you know, abortion's one of those things and gay rights or whatever else they like to cook.
	Jewish lasers.
	Jewish lasers.
	Dr. Seuss.
	Yes, very much so.
	All the places that we will go.
	So the question I have is, will this issue of voting rights rise to that level?
	Because that's generally what motivates these politicians to push this thing like this.
	Because, needless to say, I'm old enough to remember Mitch McConnell going on the Senate floor and spouting out eloquently for minutes and minutes about how the filibuster isn't needed when majority rule is in place and we need to get rid of it to pass certain things they want to pass.
	So he was on board with that in 2007.
	I don't think for even a moment that Mitch McConnell or whoever succeeds him, don't even think for a second the Republican Party would keep the filibuster if it kept them from doing what they wanted.
	Like don't even.
	Right.
	So it's a non-issue because they'll do it, we'll both do it anyway.
	So I'm going to read here just a quick little thing from Joe Biden's remarks.
	And I want to point out, everything that you just said is dead on accurate.
	And here is the problem.
	What is it that would spur it?
	What is it that would create the passion necessary for something like this to go forward, for there to be some sort of a reforming of voting rights, right?
	Something big.
	And these are a quick few remarks from Biden.
	And he's not wrong in any of this, but I want to point out what he's not saying here.
	He says, and today we call on Congress to get done what history will judge, right?
	And as he's calling on Congress to do this, he's pointing out what the history of this is, right?
	And of course, we've got John Lewis in the title of it.
	And as he starts talking about that history, he says, in their lifetimes, the people who fought for, you know, these voting rights reform and actual voting rights for African Americans, In their lifetimes, time stopped when a bomb blew up on the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and murdered four little girls.
	Terrible tragedy.
	Time stopped when John, John Lewis, and many others seeking justice were beaten and bloodied while crossing the bridge at Selman, named after the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.
	Absolutely.
	He's completely right.
	Time stopped and they forced the country to confront the hard truths and to act, to act to keep the promise of America alive and the promise that holds that we're all created equal, but more importantly, deserve to be treated equally.
	Well, what's not being said there and what people don't like to admit is it's not that those events just in a vacuum made things better.
	It was that they were televised, that they were politicized, that the country was thrown into a crisis in which white liberals had to confront what they were a part of, right?
	What they had turned their eyes away from and what they had allowed to happen in the South.
	That's really different from this.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like just saying, oh, we need to take care of this.
	Well, sometimes you have to make people confront what the possibility is.
	That's what makes Congress, do what it does.
	That's what makes administrations work.
	Sometimes it's tragedy.
	Sometimes it's radicalizing moments.
	Sometimes it's having to take a long hard look in the mirror.
	In this case, what you just said, what is the galvanizing thing?
	You have to tell them what happens if you don't pass this.
	It's not just that you keep, you know, black Americans from voting.
	It's going to grow and grow and grow and grow.
	And where does that lead?
	You have to start talking about this anti-democratic movement and taking it seriously in order to actually stir people to action.
	Well, you know, the thing is also is you're talking about the power of images and how that's swayed the country since we've had the technology to do that.
	And what's the image?
	Like somebody walking into a voting booth?
	Like, that's not compelling.
	That's nothing!
	That's something you do on your way to work.
	Right, right.
	So they're lacking that.
	But what you're saying is, yes, we need to go to the next step of what happens after we lose our ability to vote, you know, and have our voices heard.
	And that's the cascade of awful policies that the Republicans want to pursue.
	You know, it really goes down to the notion of, you know, if you are able to acknowledge that this election was free and fair, then what is the usefulness of all of, you know, the 200 plus laws they've enacted across the country to reduce the ability to vote?
	Like, that is the real crux here.
	There's only one answer.
	There's only one motivation to why you'd want to stop, you know, a voting process that's finally They don't want you to vote.
	There it is.
	been able to get the most people we could ever get to be involved in the process.
	And then this is what their reaction is.
	That is the most telling thing, but again, it takes too many words to describe that and make that clear, I guess.
	- They don't want you to vote.
	- Yeah.
	- There it is, they don't want you to vote.
	Yeah.
	And they've kept you from voting.
	And they've said this.
	Like, that's the thing.
	This is out loud now.
	And that's the... Right.
	They don't even hide this shit.
	Like, when they're amongst themselves, we've covered this.
	They say the problem isn't not enough people voting, it's the wrong people voting.
	They've said this out loud.
	And in order to actually deal with this, and this is what the Civil Rights Movement did, the Civil Rights Movement held up a mirror and said, You need to recognize that white supremacy has just absolutely riddled this culture.
	And if you don't do something about it, these horrors are going to continue, right?
	You're watching people get their brains beat out.
	You're watching John Lewis get beaten.
	You're watching dogs sicked on people.
	You're watching hoses being turned on people.
	And suddenly you have to make a decision which is, am I okay going to bed at night having that on my conscience?
	And by the way, that happened because of television.
	That's because mass media finally took something that had been happening for years and made you confront it and look at it every night, right?
	In this case, you're exactly right.
	Just putting up a picture of a voting booth, that doesn't do it, man.
	You have to talk about actual white supremacy.
	You have to talk about the fact that they're going into your schools.
	They're gonna take away your ability to choose what you do with your body.
	They're going down the line making all this obvious.
	You can't just pin it on Donald Trump.
	Donald Trump was the mascot of this.
	He was the spokesperson for this.
	There's something more insidious underneath the surface.
	Well, that's what I loved about Biden's speech is because he did a comparison back and forth a little bit later where he said, do you want to be on the side of Bull Connor or John Lewis?
	Do you want to be on the side of, oh, he said Abraham Lincoln and, oh, I'm sorry, Jefferson, Jefferson, Jefferson Davis, Jesus.
	You know what I mean?
	I like that.
	Again, it's a little bit tough because Jefferson Davis might not mean anything that a lot of people, but actually you're in the South.
	That name is still has a lot of recognition, right?
	Oh yeah, every now and then you just look up and you're driving on Jefferson Davis Avenue.
	Because in the north, Jefferson Davis is not a name that we know that well.
	It's really fun.
	To live in the South and just, you know, you're on Jefferson Davis Avenue and then all of a sudden you turn on Main Street and all of a sudden there's a Confederate memorial right there.
	And then all of a sudden it's like Lee Boulevard and it's like, I wonder what Lee we're talking about?
	You know?
	And that is the issue that is at stake here.
	Because if you actually go down the list and we're talking, okay, so we got Mark Kelly, right?
	I'm talking about Democrats right now who are a little bit uncomfortable with, you know, messing around with the filibuster for voting rights.
	Mark Kelly, Manchin, you got Sinema, Chris Coons, you got Jon Tester, you got Shaheen, you got all these people.
	Let me tell you something.
	Most of the people who are not for this, they don't understand that down here It's still there.
	You know what I mean?
	Like that white supremacist neo-confederate culture is still churning.
	They're in the north.
	They're in the east.
	They're in the west.
	And yeah, they can catch glimpses of it.
	And maybe every now and then they see somebody with a confederate flag and they're like, oh, that's weird for that to be in Michigan.
	But, you know, it's not the constant awareness of what has happened.
	And so you're right.
	I think shining the light on that past is really, really important.
	But I gotta tell you, man, I read these articles covering Schumer's ideas.
	They're not talking about people getting beaten in Selma.
	They're not talking about, you know, your right to choose being taken away.
	It's, it's bloodless.
	Do you know what I mean?
	It's like, it's technical.
	Like, who's gonna win?
	Who's gonna lose?
	Is this technique gonna win out?
	It doesn't have, like, humanity to it.
	Well, that's the problem is, here's what I'm getting to.
	This is how deep and dark My world is becoming is I'm starting to have these ideas and we talk about this all the time where the Republicans and all those people, they're just convinced that like their platform and their ideas would make America great.
	And it doesn't matter what we have to do to get these things installed and happen.
	You will see eventually how much better it will be for everybody.
	That's what they're convinced of.
	That's why they're willing to break every law and do break every norm to do this.
	It's weird, by the way, Nick, that's also how prophets feel about religions.
	Like, you know, I've been given a vision, I know what's going to happen, and listen, if we have to kill some infidels and we have to get to the other side of this thing, you'll thank me when we get to paradise.
	I mean, it's the exact same strain of thought.
	And I admit, like, I will go down a rabbit hole and I'll look at, like, right-wing nuts, you know, Twitter feeds and what they're saying and all this kind of stuff, and I gotta tell you, I've thought about this in the sense that, like, you know what, this guy probably doesn't deserve to vote.
	And so, then you start saying, well, gosh, if I'm now willing to say, well, this person shouldn't be allowed to vote, it's the same, you know, they're saying the same thing on the other side, and, you know, and I'm starting to get this wonder, like, well, geez, like, how bad would it be if they end up taking over and putting all these things in?
	I mean, we kind of know the big ticket issues and what would happen, and that seems terrible, and it certainly wouldn't reflect the will of the people, which is like, what's our government supposed to be?
	Oh, yeah, democracy.
	So, it's supposed to be that way, too.
	But I can see this weird path of going, you know what, fuck it.
	If you guys are that willing to break every law and do this thing, Len, there's nothing we can do.
	I'm almost getting to that point where I'm like, that's how I feel.
	And then hoping that maybe it would be as reasoned and reasonable as it can be with what they want to do with the country when they do get all the power.
	Well, listen, I'm so glad you brought this up because there was something I wanted to talk about today.
	There was this article that came out in Politico, and for those who, again, maybe you're not as big as sickos as everybody else, maybe you're not looking through all this media all the time, maybe you're not focused on all the time, but I have to tell you that every liberal, neoliberal policy wonk out there who has a soapbox, right, who probably was employed by Vox at some point, they all shared this article.
	And this article from Politico, and Politico is sort of like the ESPN.com of politics, right?
	It's who won, who lost, and it's just insider stuff.
	And this is by John F. Harris, and the title of the article is, We Are in a New Civil War...about what exactly?
	And what Harris starts talking about in this is he's like, well, the Civil War was about slavery.
	That's what it was about.
	And in that, he's sort of correct, but he's not completely correct because the Civil War wasn't just about slavery, which was part of it.
	It was about economic systems that were clashing, right?
	It was about what type of way of life was going to win out in industrialized modernity.
	Right now, what you just said, what you just laid down, the lack of trust that that side will play by the rules of liberal democracy, right?
	They believe, by the way, and we've been accused of this, that we're somehow or another getting George Soros money.
	Like, and I know we joke about that, right?
	You know, I didn't get my check last month or whatever, but that's undermining the fact that, like, there are more of us than there are them.
	Right?
	And meanwhile, they're trying to tear down these democratic constructions and institutions.
	What's actually happening here is that all of the white supremacy that America was built up on, all of the Christian values that coalesced to take over power, and on top of that, the economics have changed so much and conditions have gotten so bad that we have reached the point Of possibly killing each other in mass numbers.
	We've already killed each other in different ways.
	We've got one party that is trying to take over the government in totality.
	You're exactly right to feel that way of, I don't know that I can trust these people.
	What we are in is a crisis of liberal democracy.
	We have reached the point in which conspiracy theories, in which the accumulation of capital, the exploitation by the wealthy, and white patriarchal supremacy, those things are in crisis.
	There's a reason why we're dealing with this right now. - Well, are you familiar with the notion that World War I caused World War II? - I'm familiar with my own theory that World War I and World War II were basically the same conflict extended out.
	Well, then there's some credence to the notion that the Civil War led us to where we are now.
	It caused it because they never properly dealt with it through the Reconstruction.
	We didn't solve it!
	We didn't solve the problem!
	Yeah, that's an interesting concept that people don't necessarily, I think, have wrapped their heads around and are unwilling to.
	Certainly the people who are unwilling to do that are the ones who want to make sure that schools are not teaching, you know, racism and don't make my white kids feel bad about what really happened in this country.
	It feels like those are the people who never want to, you know, reflect on what the issues for the Civil War were in the beginning.
	By the way, it's also a failing of our schools that completely failed to teach that properly.
	I mean, what's the biggest concept I took away from learning about it in, like, fourth grade was brother against brother, right?
	That's maybe the thing I remember the most.
	The other thing that we're taught, and this is telling, and it didn't occur to me until I was writing American Rule, because, like, when I write books, right, like, when I talk about a war, I talk about the reasons that the war happened and what the consequences of the war are.
	I'm not interested in who charged I'm not interested in what artillery won.
	What if we walk away from the Civil War in American education?
	Oh, there were great generals on both sides.
	I mean, you should have seen Robert E. Lee on that horse.
	He was handsome and he was a genius.
	So it is the mythologizing of it.
	Because you're exactly right.
	We didn't take care of business.
	We did not take care of what caused the Civil War.
	The founding of the country got us to the Civil War.
	After the Civil War, guess what?
	Members of both party plus also corporations and the wealthy were like, hey, we need to end this reconstruction shit and get to business.
	Right?
	Right.
	And so we haven't dealt with it.
	You're exactly right.
	So the seeds of this have been developing for a while.
	But you have people like this Harris guy and all of the commentators and pundits who are sharing this article.
	They can't get it.
	You know what I mean?
	They can't wrap their heads around why this is happening right now.
	So the only thing they can do is talk about, are the Republicans winning or are the Democrats winning?
	And everything else is outside their idea of reality.
	They cannot imagine why things are happening the way that they are right now because they don't even have the beginnings of a frame for it that match anything close to reality.
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