McConnell may have just lost his filibuster barricade:
President Joe Biden on Thursday in his first formal news conference since taking office blasted Republican-controlled state legislatures that are seeking to restrict voting access, labeling those attempts “sick” and “un-American.”
“This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle,” Biden said, referring to laws that enforced racial segregation in the South. “This is gigantic, what they’re trying to do, and it cannot be sustained.” Biden said he would “do everything in my power” to prevent those changes from going into effect.
Strained analogies aside (wouldn't an eagle be more dangerous?), I'm glad to see the President is not only angry about this, but angry for the right reasons. This is not just political maneuvering on the part of Republicans, it is an age-old effort to suppress the rights of African-Americans and other people of color, using disingenuous points of attack. Here's more from a real President:
He pledged to help the U.S. Senate to pass a sweeping elections bill drafted by Democrats, which would expand voting rights and block some of the actions underway in GOP state legislatures. That bill, known as H.R. 1, passed the House in early March, but it faces an uphill battle in the evenly divided Senate, where it would need some Republican support to win approval.
Asked if there’s anything he can do beyond passing legislation like H.R. 1 to block the state-level proposals that would limit voting access, Biden replied: “The answer is yes but I’m not going to lay out a strategy in front of you and the whole world now.”
As for the filibuster, Biden, a former member of the Senate, said the rule has been “abused in a gigantic way,” and that the tactic should once again require lawmakers to be physically present and speaking on the Senate floor to block a vote from proceeding.
He was asked if the filibuster is a relic of the Jim Crow era and said “Yes.”
Which of course is true. Southern Senators have abused it from mid-19th Century until today, and our country has suffered for it.
Comments
How about Jim Dove,
carrying an olive branch. Or maybe Jim Parakeet? Tiny little beak, can't even break the skin on a human finger? No?
See, this is why I'm not a political speech writer.
I think the "Jim Eagle" thing...
was to imply that compared to what they're doing now, the past attempts were almost patriotic, democratic, and American. Thus the symbol of the eagle as a symbol of American democracy. It was a pretty strained metaphor to be sure, but he meant well, as Uncle Joe usually does.
Oh yeah, I got it
My mind just works in mysterious ways. ;)