Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, this Tuesday in Atlanta. /
The president of the United States and Harris travel to Atlanta to promote a major electoral reform in the conservative southern states
In an unprecedented speech in Atlanta, Georgia, President Joe Biden announced Tuesday his intention to end Senate obstructionism to facilitate the passage of federal law guaranteeing minority voting rights in conservative states in the United States. south. “History will judge us,” he declared, qualifying the measure as defining for the country’s political future and assuring that it will mark a turning point between the prevalence of democracy and justice over autocracy and injustice. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris held a private meeting with Martin Luther King III, the son of the legendary civil rights leader, after an official visit to his father’s grave.
In the days leading up to the trip to state, the Administration has tried to smooth out friction with influential Georgia political activists, following last week’s ultimatum in which they threatened not to attend Biden’s speech without a White House plan. to pass voting rights legislation. Georgia leaders, exasperated by the lack of action, called it a “waste of time” to attend the president’s and vice president’s speech when Democrats don’t have the necessary votes (51) to pass the bill in the Senate. With the slogan of “no celebration without representation”, the coalition of the most important Georgian voting rights organizations indicated that they saw no merit in attending the event just to take a picture.
In response to questions from the press about whether he was insulted by the absence of the leader of voting rights and candidate for Governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams, Biden said he had spoken by phone in the morning with the assemblywoman and dismissed that there were differences. Between both. The president attributed his absence to a confusion between the teams that make the schedules of both.
The measure, debated endlessly and increasingly endorsed by civil rights activists, will give Democrats the momentum to put long-stalled election bills to the vote in Congress. A decision of incalculable importance that supposes a change in the rules of the political game and that, if approved, would constitute the legislative key that would allow the Biden Administration to straighten the national electoral system with federal laws. The speech in Atlanta was designed to mobilize support for legislation whose passage is still uncertain.
Republican obstructionism
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer does not appear to have the necessary votes to amend the filibuster before Monday, a date he has set as a deadline to coincide with the national celebration of Martin Luther King Day.
The Senate rule change, which would require the vote of all 50 Democratic senators plus Vice President Harris, faces uncertainty about the stance of centrist Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have so far resisted the amendment.
Manchin has indicated that he wants bipartisan support for any change in filibuster, which Republicans have repeatedly used to block voting rights bills. In a whiting that bites its tail, Democrats cannot pass the amendment without Manchin’s support. In the Republican bloc, united on a front opposing the filing of obstructionism, it seems unlikely to attract at least one vote in favor of the amendment.
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