Lisa Lerer, The New York Times:
Well, the reality in the Senate is the same reality that it’s been for the past year or so, which is that Democrats need basically every single one of their members to get something through on voting rights.
As Lisa mentioned earlier, there’s only one Republican who’s showing any inclination to support either one of these bills. So that means what would need to happen here for any of — either of these proposals to actually become law would be an upending or a changing of the filibuster rules. And we really have no indication as of yet that the people that these issues always seem to come down to these days, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have any will to do that.
So some of what’s happening here is a political contrast that the White House is trying to draw. I think the president and the administration spent much of the first year, not exclusively, but trying to hold back some of their harshest criticism of Republicans.
And now, as the country is starting to move a little bit towards midterms, the White House is certainly starting to think more about the midterms, you see Biden and Harris trying to draw that sharper contrast to start framing up these midterm elections that we will have in less than a year now as a choice between their vision of the country and a Republican vision of the country.
So I think part of this is, sure, he wants to get something done on voting rights, for sure. But I also think there’s something going on here about laying the early sort of political arguments for the election to come.
