End clap for the electoral reform wanted by Joe Biden. Two days after his speech calling for the Senate rules of procedure to be lifted to allow passing laws protecting the exercise of the right to vote, the president already knows that the answer will be no. Worse, the end of inadmissibility comes to his own camp.
With our correspondent in Washington, Guillaume Naudin
She will not even have waited to discuss it directly with the president. A few minutes before Joe Biden arrived on Capitol Hill to convince the hesitant Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democratic senator from Arizona, said no. No, she will not vote in favor of a suspension, even provisional, of the filibuster rule, the filibuster, which requires a majority of 60 votes and not 51 to pass a text.
This means that the legislative proposals vigorously defended Tuesday, January 11 in Atlanta by Joe Biden have no chance of passing.
For Kyrsten Sinema, it would add to the disease of division that plagues America. The senator may call on everyone, Democrats and Republicans, to seriously discuss these issues, but she knows that the Republicans will unite.
For Joe Biden, being rebuffed in this way preventively by an elected official who is exercising her first term in the Senate is humiliating. It comes after his failed social and climate spending plan was denied by Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.
The political cost could be very high. The minorities and in particular the African-Americans absolutely wanted the presidency to fight against the laws of the Republican states to limit access to the vote. Joe Biden now has nothing left to offer them.