So how is it, exactly, that Democrats are supposed to have a reasonable, good-faith negotiation concerning voting rights with a party that worked aggressively to overturn Biden’s free and fair victory? No wonder progressives are eager to do plow forward and abolish the filibuster to pass the bill.
Because it is not clear that there is any way to get 10 Republican senators on board with any voting rights bill. It’s not because of any specific objections to this or that part of HR 1. It’s because, writ large, Democrats and Republicans do not have the same interests when it comes to the act of voting. One party wants to make it easier to vote. The other is on record trying to stop opposition votes from being counted at all. When those are the parameters of the voting rights debate, there’s no room for compromise. There’s nothing to discuss.
The best hope for pro-democracy conservatives, uneasy with totally abolishing the filibuster, is to push for filibuster-weakening measures, and advocate that the most objectionable (and possibly unconstitutional) aspects of the bill be stripped out.
Because with the stakes what they are following the 2020 election, it’s tough to make a good case as to why Democrats should let the authoritarians in the GOP filibuster democracy itself.
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