Would The Bills Really Save Democracy?
Plus: A batch of this-is-not-normal news
“Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert?” — Abraham Lincoln
You perhaps did not have this on your anti-vax bingo card:
“This has been around for centuries,” [“Vaccine Police” leader Christopher Key] added….
“This vaccine is the worst bioweapon I have ever seen,” he concluded. “I drink my own urine!” Reached for comment by The Daily Beast on Sunday night, Key doubled down on what he calls “urine therapy” and railed against “foolish” people who took the COVID-19 vaccine, which is safe and effective.
Happy Tuesday.
Joe Biden heads to Georgia today, to push for voting rights legislation. But, as Politico Playbook reports this morning, there is already some awkwardness in the Peach State.
Multiple high-profile voting rights leaders are planning to skip President JOE BIDEN’s speech on the matter in Atlanta today, dismissing the address as too little too late. “We’re beyond speeches. We’re beyond events,” said LATOSHA BROWN, the leader of Black Voters Matter. (h/t Sam Gringlas from NPR’s Atlanta bureau)
“We do not need any more speeches, we don’t need any more platitudes,” former NAACP of Georgia President JAMES WOODALL told NYT’s Nick Corasaniti and Reid Epstein. “We don’t need any more photo ops. We need action, and that actually is in the form of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, as well as the Freedom to Vote Act — and we need that immediately.”
STACEY ABRAMS won’t be there either, citing a scheduling conflict.
“So much for unity.”
I have questions.
While most of the political speculation continues to swirl around the push to abolish the filibuster (or create a voting rights carve out), this needs to be asked:
Would any of the bills on the table prevent what Donald Trump tried to do to the 2020 election? Would any of the bills actually block a coup like the one Trump tried to orchestrate on and around January 6?
And would any of them prevent a repeat in 2024?
Spoiler alert: With the possible exception of a fix to the Electoral Count Act, I suspect the answer is: no, because they deal primarily with the casting of votes… not the counting.
This doesn’t mean that the bills don’t have important and salutary provisions. They do.
But it seems worthwhile asking whether the legislation Biden is touting today in Georgia actually meets the moment?