What a Garbage Speech

In his wisdom, Joe Biden has decided to declare there’s a crisis in our democracy that can only be fixed if two bills pass in the next several days that aren’t going to pass. Maybe for some perverse reason he likes appearing weak and ineffectual. Regardless, he has now done more than his share to undermine faith in our electoral system.

He tried to make Georgia the poster child for voter suppression based on last year’s election reform. Biden’s case was, predictably, incredibly weak. Georgia has limited drop boxes! Well, yeah, it took a pandemic-driven innovation and made it permanent, although on a more limited basis. It has long lines! Sure, in certain places, but this is a local issue, often in cash-strapped, small jurisdictions (and the new law has provisions attempting to address it). It’s making it harder to vote by mail! No, it’s moving from signature match on mail-in ballots, which Abrams had criticized, to the more reliable driver’s license or state-ID number. (I went through all of this in detail here, by the way.)

And all of this is supposedly forcing Biden, who assured us he’s “an institutionalist,” to call for changing the filibuster after a decades-long career passionately supporting it.