Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer promised his Democratic caucus a month of pain and failure to start the new year. Yesterday, he began to deliver on that pledge by starting debate on two partisan voting reform bills that everyone knows are going to fail.
All 50 Democrats support both bills, but neither has the backing of even a single Republican. Schumer did take advantage of a commonly used procedural trick that allows the Senate to save time by skipping an initial vote to begin debate (this is done by having the House amend previously passed Senate legislation and send it back to the Senate as a “message”), but Senate rules still require 60 votes to end debate before Democrats can move on to final passage.
Both Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin made it clear last week that they will not vote with the rest of their caucus to change Senate rules unilaterally, not even for these two bills that they support. Undeterred, Schumer plans to force Sinema and Manchin to vote against his proposed rule changes either today or tomorrow — depending on how long other Democrats wish to speak about the legislation.
But Schumer can’t force just Sinema and Manchin to vote on his proposed rule changes. His effort to get everyone on record will also force other centrist Democrats in purple and red states to take firm votes either for or against unilaterally changing Senate rules without the required two-thirds majority.
A vote against the rule change could make Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Montana Sen. Jon Tester enemies of the Democratic Party’s increasingly radical base. A vote for the rule change, however, will be hard to defend in states where President Joe Biden lost or is very unpopular right now. This is a no-win vote for more than a few Senate Democrats.
The failed votes won’t end there. Schumer has also promised an up-or-down vote on Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, a plan Manchin said he would not vote for in December. Then, Democrats will reportedly begin breaking up the Build Back Better legislation into smaller pieces, voting on government-run pre-K, alternative energy subsidies for billionaires, and free money for nonworking parents as separate items.
Manchin will most likely vote with Republicans on each of these smaller bills as well, setting up a never-ending cascade of Democratic failure, pouring down into the spring and summer months of 2022 as far as one can see.
Voters are simply not interested in Biden’s voting reforms, nor do they feel any urgency for his Build Back Better agenda. On voting, people reject the rationale behind Biden’s bill — more believe it is currently too easy to vote than too hard. And the vast majority support voter identification, a policy the Democrats’ voting reform legislation would ban.
On Build Back Better, 70% of voters say their opinion of Biden would improve if inflation came down, but only 45% say their opinion of Biden would improve if he were to get Build Back Better through Congress.
Although Schumer’s options are admittedly limited, Democratic failure after Democratic failure is not his only path forward. There appears to be real bipartisan support for substantial reform to the Electoral Count Act that would all but guarantee that the events of Jan. 6 never recur. There is also bipartisan interest in congressional ethics reform.
But none of these options would fire up the Democratic base, which seems to be Schumer’s top concern — at least as long as it is possible that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will challenge him in this year’s Democratic primary.
