I say “Relative Optimism” because this voting rights business is a source of great anxiety for me. I really do think this is a major crisis in the history of American democracy, with some really bad possible outcomes.
But “Relative Optimism” because the people I read seem to be way too certain that the game is lost. I.e., that it is impossible the Democrats will get it together to pass good voting rights legislation to counter the Republicans’ national scheme — acted out in Republican-controlled state legislatures — to institute their minority rule by illegitimate means.
I agree that avoiding that terrible outcome requires Congressional legislation. And I’ve been following closely all the discussion surrounding the obstacles to achieving that — i.e. surrounding the issue of the filibuster, and the words of those two puzzling Democratic Senators — Manchin and Sinema — whose positions seem to make no sense.
(“No sense” — because not only do their statements about the value of the filibuster seem to have no relation to the actual use to which it has been put in our times, but also because their current statements are so incompatible with their own recently uncovered statements not so many years ago that seemed to show they understood fully the dangers of the filibuster and the unacceptability of allowing that to paralyze the nation.)
Because those two Democrats’ conduct makes no sense, it follows that their motivations are unclear. And from the lack of clarity about what each of them is up to, it follows that it is impossible to predict what might motivate them to continue to treat a largely disreputable Senate rule as more important than protecting the Constitution to which they’ve taken an oath.
So, my optimism about how this will play out is tempered.
It also gives me pause that a variety of people I respect have lately been declaring — in the Washington Post, in the New York Times, and on MSNBC — that the possibility of voting rights legislation passing this Congress is dead. That it can’t happen because the Republicans are sure to obstruct and the Democrats are sure to fail to achieve the 100% unity necessary to change the rules.
Yet, while I respect those analysts, I can’t see how they can feel so sure. Despite their being professionals, on the Washington beat, I doubt that they have any major, relevant inside knowledge that I lack that makes it clear that Manchin and Sinema won’t come around.
I doubt it because, in a matter like this, there’s surely an important difference between what the main political players put out for public reporting, and what’s going on behind the scenes.
In terms of “behind the scenes,” there are several possibilities:
Perhaps the wayward Democrats are unfolding a drama for their own purposes, planning that — when the larger scenario plays out further, and the time comes for them to save America -- they will do their part.
Perhaps people like Biden and Schumer (and Clyburn) already know about such plans, and are assured that Biden’s call that “We must act” will eventually be matched with action.
Alternatively, perhaps the issue of what the recalcitrant will do remains unresolved, and the effort to bring them on board is ongoing.
Admittedly, I can’t rule out the darker possibility: that Biden, Schumer, and Harris do already know that the chances are zero, and they are just going through the motions.
But that scenario of “knowing they will fail” is not how it looks to me. There’s too much sense of the stakes being huge for them to accept that the voting rights battle is lost without having created a lot more drama about it.
So here’s what I picture: the chances for success are real, or at least cannot be ruled out based on what’s knowable from the outside.
And that makes me “Relatively Optimistic” in the following sense:
- If there were a future’s market on this issue, and
- If the pessimists I’ve read typified those who would bet on that futures market,
- I’d estimate the market would lay odds of 8:1 or 9:1 against a good outcome.
- And at those oddsI would put my money down on the side of hope.
And even at tighter odds.
The scenario I am imagining, in this optimistic assessment, is that the Democrats are going through a process of accomplishing things in a strategic sequence. The two Infrastructure bills are moving forward in a promising way, and it seems likely that the time will come — by September? — when Biden and the Congress will have achieved another huge accomplishment to go with the Covid Relief bill back some months ago: the bi-partisan Infrastructure bill for about $1 trillion and the Reconciliation Infrastructure bill for some $3.5 trillion.
Getting things accomplished — getting popular things accomplished — is an important foundation for making bolder and riskier moves. And these infrastructure measures are of such great importance that it makes some sense to getting them through the pipeline and into law. And then, and only then, bring the voting rights/Senate rules issue to the fore.
And at that point, the “winning team” comes together, changes the Senate rules enough to create that “constitutional carve out” that Clyburn is pushing for, and passes voting rights legislation sufficient to thwart the Republicans’ present effort to steal future elections.
(I’m assuming that there’s no reason why the voting rights bill can’t wait a few months. I’m assuming, that is, that the bill will be just effective -- if passed in the fall — in preventing the Republican election-stealing apparatus from being utilized in the 2022 election.)
How confident am I? If the cost of the bet were 40 cents to get a dollar back — in other words, if the futures market declared that success were almost as likely as failure on this — I would hesitate to put my money down, but I’d probably still do it. But that’s about the probability I see.