Biden’s speech on voting rights was full of soaring rhetoric. It may not matter.

President Biden traveled to Georgia on Tuesday to call on the Senate to do whatever is necessary, including changing the Senate’s filibuster rule, to protect voting rights and secure our democracy. He was eloquent and passionate, but soaring rhetoric isn’t likely to persuade the two Democratic holdouts whose votes will be necessary to sidestep the filibuster.

“The battle for the soul of America is not over,” he insisted. Directing his ire at the defeated former president and his supporters, Biden argued, “They want chaos to reign; we want the people to rule.” For Republicans, he said, “too many people voting in a democracy is a problem. So they are putting up obstacles.”

Biden also highlighted Georgia’s voting law that will allow partisan Republicans to replace independent election officials in vote counting, flatly accusing the GOP of seeking to subvert the vote and overriding the will of the voters. “It’s about who gets to count the vote, and whether your vote counts at all,” he said. He even mentioned his predecessor’s infamous attempt to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to flip the state’s election results, which the district attorney for Fulton County, Ga., is now investigating.