ATHENS — Proving once again that the pen is mightier than the sword, Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, signed into law on March 9 the first of what could be a nationwide avalanche of voter suppression laws that surpasses anything like this since the Jim Crow era.
With 253 similar bills being pushed by Republican legislatures in 43 states, the assault against democracy by the increasingly desperate Grand Old Party continues.
The Republicans have become a minority party that cannot win elections unless it suppresses the vote of constituencies that are likely to vote Democratic. That is why it promotes such tactics as gerrymandering and redistricting, elimination of early voting and mail-in ballots, and reducing the number of voting centers as part of an effort to reverse a trend where they have won the popular vote for president only once since 1992.
The racist and anti-democratic nature of the Republicans has become much more pronounced in recent years and took a quantum leap to the fascist right with the presidency of Donald Trump.
Although Trump's authoritarian tendencies were demonstrated in a variety of ways, perhaps the most alarming example was his daily assault on truth and reality. (“Just remember what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening,” he said in a speech in 2018.)
This assault reached a treacherous crescendo with his invention of the Big Lie - his baseless claim that this past election was stolen from him - and the Jan. 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capital that it inspired.
Not coincidentally, Trump has also ignited the recent voter suppression efforts in state legislatures to prevent people -largely people of color, poor folks, and youth - from voting.
What can be done to arrest this potentially fatal threat to majority rule and the right to vote - the basis of a functioning democracy?
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On March 3, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, the For the People Act, which the Brennan Center for Justice described as “the most significant democracy reform legislation in at least half a century.” The bill addresses gerrymandering and other voter suppression techniques that many states are trying to enact.
But its fate in the Senate is not promising at this point.
Republicans have vowed to kill the bill - which they can do, even while in the minority, by resorting to the filibuster. If they are successful, and thus prevent the Democrats from blocking the Republicans in rigging the system in their favor, “The nation will, in effect, become a one-party state not unlike the one that controlled the American South from the 1870s to the 1960s,” Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us.
The Senate must pass the For the People Act quickly, before redistricting is used to produce gerrymandered maps around the country.
That is to say, the filibuster must be immediately overturned. This is the only way to reform the political system and make it more responsive to the needs of all voters.
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The filibuster is a tactic that Republicans can employ to prevent any measure from being brought to a vote when one or more Senators speak for as long as they wish. This can only be stopped if three-fifths of the Senate vote to close debate by invoking cloture.
Given the razor-thin majority that the Democrats currently enjoy - one that would require a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris just to get to 51 votes - a 60-vote majority for this bill would obviously not happen.
A way to eliminate the filibuster, however, would be to create a new Senate precedent.
Colloquially known as the “nuclear option,” eliminating the filibuster can be accomplished with only the support of a simple majority of Senators. Assuming the support of all 50 members of their party (which doesn't exist at the present time), the Democrats united could pull this off.
President Biden has opposed this option - though he has shown recent signs of softening his stance - because it violates his pledge to seek unity with the Republicans, while some Democratic Senators are not in favor because they fear it could come back to bite them when the Republicans are in power.
These considerations are lame, at best.
First, unity is not a reasonable goal to pursue with a party that has declared war on you, demonstrated its purpose is to destroy the very heart of democracy, majority rule, and has allowed itself to be hijacked by authoritarian, if not fascist, elements.
Secondly, Democrats could worry less about falling out of power if they began to respond to the needs of working- and middle-class folks and demonstrate that government can be their ally by providing jobs, education, and training for highly skilled occupations, health care, child care, and so on.
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Surveys indicate that supermajorities of everyday folks in both parties want an activist government that addresses the damage they've suffered because of globalization and technological innovation. These majorities are very angry because it hasn't done so.
This scenario represents a golden opportunity for Democrats to finally act as a real alternative to the Republicans. If they fail to do so, however, the 2022 elections could easily return control of both houses of Congress to the Republicans.
Any attempt to make the political system more democratic and responsive to the entire potential electorate will undoubtedly provoke implacable opposition from a Republican Party seeking minority control of the body politic.
Meaningful change cannot be won, much less endure, unless democracy is strengthened against its enemies.
This task comes first.
As Richardson observed, “The future of the nation depends on H.R. 1; the future of H.R. 1 depends on the filibuster.”