Sen. Chuck Schumer defends failed push for voting rights: ‘Imagine telling Dr. King not to march’
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) gave an impassioned defense of the Democratic push to enact voting rights reforms, which collapsed when two moderates joined Republicans to block a needed change in the filibuster rule.
Invoking the travails of bygone civil rights heroes, the powerful Senate majority leader said it was morally right to bring the doomed measure up for a vote even if it meant stoking outrage against Republicans and the Democrats who sided with them.
“Imagine telling Dr. [Martin Luther] King not to march from Selma to Montgomery because he could not be sure what obstacles awaited him,” Schumer said. “Sometimes, the only right option is to move forward.”
The Senate majority leader shot down the conventional wisdom that Democrats should have cut their losses and avoided a final vote that amounted to a major political black eye for President Biden.
“The bromides of the Beltway class hold we should not have held a vote on voting rights if the outcome was not certain,” he said. “They are wrong.”
Schumer said Democratic voters and activists, who overwhelmingly back voting rights reforms, deserve to know that the party will put itself on the line for the cause, even if it means baring messy splits within its ranks.
“We lost the vote. But to have not voted would have been a far greater loss, a loss for our Democratic Party, which for generations has stood for voting rights,” he said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also heaped praise on her fellow Democrats for not backing down even in the face of inevitable defeat.
“Advancing the sanctity of the vote .. (gave) it visibility that it would never have had without having a vote in the Senate,” she said. “He had to have a vote.”
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) was arrested on Thursday for civil disobedience at a voting rights protest near the Capitol, spokesman Marcus Frias said.
Police said they arrested Bowman and about two dozen activists after they blocked an entrance to police barricades near the building and ignored warnings to disperse.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that Democrats are open to talks with Republicans about reforms to the Electoral Count Act to limit shenanigans like former President Donald Trump tried to pull on Jan. 6, 2021.
But she stressed it wouldn’t mean that measures to protect voting rights are not needed.
“It (is) not a substitute for voting rights legislation,” Psaki said.
All Democrats in the narrowly split House of Representatives and all 50 Democratic senators support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, eventually combined into one sprawling package.
But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) steadfastly refused to change their filibuster defense, which requires most laws to have 60 votes to pass.
“I am profoundly disappointed,” Biden said in a statement after the vote.
However, the president said he is “not deterred” and vowed to “explore every measure and use every tool at our disposal to stand up for democracy.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said a bipartisan coalition should work on legislation to ensure voter access, particularly in far-flung areas like her state, and to shore up Americans’ faith in democracy.
“We don’t need, we do not need a repeat of 2020 when by all accounts our last president, having lost the election, sought to change the results,” said Murkowski.
With News Wire Services
