Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, March 26, 2021

Did Georgia Kill The Filibuster?

 Georgia's new Jim Crow Law seems likely to face some significant judicial hurdles. However, John Roberts has been fairly consistently fine with various Republican efforts to obstruct people from voting. If you're waiting on the Courts to save Democracy, you might be sorely disappointed.

So, it might come to the Senate. I overheard a typically overheated MSNBC panel attacking Joe Manchin for being a prima donna on this issue. Maybe. Probably. But that's not how you change a prima donna's mind. Getting Manchin and Sinema to embrace some sort of filibuster reform is an on-going project, and I imagine we will see something done in conjunction with the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill. 

My guess is that there will be a few reforms, including limits on unanimous consent, requiring 40 votes to block, as opposed to 60 votes to move forward and possibly some sort of decaying filibuster. The filibuster will remain, but it will be weakened. Will it be weakened enough to overturn Georgia (and other states') attempts to limit the franchise? Unknown.

Finally, the parts of the Georgia law that directly target Black voters seem unlikely to even pass muster with the Roberts' court. The inability of people to give water to voters waiting in line is absurd. Limits on early voting will likely remain, but it's unclear whether that will hurt Democrats in the future. Democrats voted early in 2020 because of the pandemic, but Republicans make extensive use of early voting themselves. As the suburbs drift from the GOP, will restricting voting even work the same?

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