President Biden delivered a forceful speech yesterday on the urgency of election reform, which must begin with filibuster reform — and in that, his speech was delivered to but a handful of Senate Democrats. Assuming progress on the filibuster score, itself a nearly insurmountable hurdle, both congressional chambers could then, it is to be hoped, pass a full restoration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as well as pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which, as the Brennan Center for Justice summarizes it, would "protect our elections from voter suppression, partisan sabotage (a provision that needs further strengthening), gerrymandering, and dark money."
Biden's address was robust — and tardy. On that, we can all agree.
Yet this was no one-man delay. Congressional Democrats, especially the progressive wing, joined the administration in neurotically chewing up the calendar over the unredeemable Build Back Better plan, while ground zero of America's future lay elsewhere: in hellish, swing-state Trumpian enclaves, diabolically bent on stealing local, state and federal elections. Of course it must be acknowledged that had BBB negotiations been dropped sooner, Biden and his congressional allies would have then suffered deafening, torturous condemnations for having neglected that particular ground zero of America's future. Here was a classic, political squeeze.
Whatever the manifold causes — for there was more than one; again, see: the Senate — of President Biden's tardiness on the supremely pivotal issue of election reform, we can also agree that such tardiness is to be regretted. Of much higher criticality, though, is that that is now history, properly left to tomorrow's historians. Today's political urgency lies in a wholly united and altogether single-minded Democratic offensive against the authoritarian, antidemocratic forces of Trumpism.
Which is what made this NYT report of yesterday so distressing. "Several leading voting rights and civil rights groups are pointedly skipping [Biden's Atlanta] speech," related the Times, "protesting what they denounced as months of frustrating inaction by the White House — which they said showed that Mr. Biden did not view Republican attacks on voting rights with sufficient urgency."
Bellowed James Woodall, Georgia's former NAACP president: "We do not need any more speeches, we don’t need any more platitudes." Groused Ian Bassin, executive director of Protect Democracy: “When you’re diagnosed with cancer, you don’t wait a year to start treatment." (Georgia's Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams also excused herself from attendance, citing a "scheduling conflict." When one's own party president comes to town, there is no such thing as a superseding, absence-requiring appointment. Abrams did "[express] support for the event on Twitter," which is like sending a condolences card to your mother's funeral gathering.)
Woodall's thermodynamic objection to an historic presidential speech on voting rights and fair elections is merely baffling; hence, being baffled, I can offer no coherent counter-objection. But as for Bassin's thumping complaint — leading to his, and Woodall's, dramatic refusal to show up — about Biden so belatedly seeking treatment for a political cancer, I can only observe that seeking no treatment, whatever the timetable, would be the quintessential act of reckless indifference. (Let's face it, though: To some folks, self-righteous preening always trumps pragmatic action. Always has, always will. And for folks who raise money on self-righteousness, well ...)
Indeed, even the belligerent Mr. Bassin came around to agreement on that. Said he in addition: "The White House and Senate are starting to act with greater urgency, and there’s still time, but the president better be bringing a plan for chemo and radiation to Atlanta, because time is running out."
Still, in sum, my gentle advice to Bassin, Woodall et al. would be to knock it the fuck off — all the bitching about those yesterdays and what wasn't. This isn't the time for that. In fact it's the worst time. What's now needed, as noted, is a full-scale, full-throated, intensely unified Democratic & Allied attack on the Trumpian contract killers of America democracy.
Damn not only the torpedoes; damn the hindsight as well.