Took Him Long Enough

Joe Biden, a man whose whole life has been a love letter to the US Senate, has given up, and he is now calling for filibuster reform to allow for voting rights legislation to pass the Senate, because Republicans just want to burn everything down.

I know that the Senate is called the, “World’s greatest deliberative body,” but it’s really jut a Petri dish for psychopaths.

I’d really like to see the Senate stripped of the right to initiate or amend bills, much as is done with upper houses in many other governments, but I’m not holding my breath.

Joe Biden on Tuesday gave his most forceful endorsement to date of changing the Senate filibuster rule in order to pass sweeping voting rights legislation, saying he was “tired of being quiet” in a high-profile speech in Georgia.

In one of the most significant speeches of his presidency so far, Biden drew a connection in history between the civil rights movement, the 6 January attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, and the unprecedented efforts in many states to restrict the vote over the last year.

He said America was at a moment to choose “democracy over autocracy”.

But despite the passion, some prominent Georgia civil rights activists, proclaiming themselves more interested in action than speeches, declined to attend the event in Atlanta on Tuesday where Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris spoke and urged progress in Congress to pass key legislation currently stalled there.

Describing himself as an “institutionalist”, Biden, who served in the Senate for more than three decades, said Republicans had “weaponized” the filibuster, turning the US Senate into a shell of what it once was.

………

“I’ve been having these quiet conversations with members of Congress for the last two months. I’m tired of being quiet,” he said, his voice rising. He also appealed to senators’ legacies, saying that those who did not stand up at this moment for voting rights would be remembered on the side of some of the most infamous racist political leaders in US history, including those supporting segregation or the Confederacy, as opposed to civil rights proponents.

“How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be on the side of Dr King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? On the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” he said.

Someone put some starch in his Ovaltine.