Black Lawmakers Rebuke McConnell Over Comments on Voting Rights: ‘We Are American’ Which Comes After Senate Filibuster on Voting Rights
Black lawmakers in the U.S. are criticizing a comment this week from Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell about the voting rights of people of color in the United States.
“The concern is misplaced because, if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” McConnell said this week, appearing to many to draw a distinction between African Americans and Americans.
First off, McConnell knows how misleading this is. He ignores all the hoops and hurdles Black voters (and the young and the elderly) have to jump through and over not only to register to vote, but to actually cast a vote on Election Day. This doesn’t even consider the millions who are being discouraged from even trying to vote.
When you’re Black in the United States, you grudgingly grow accustomed to having people deny that your existence is integral to everything that makes this country what it is. Usually, I roll my eyes and keep going in response to such nonsense. McConnell insists he misspoke; but the leader is known to choose carefully what he says. But no matter how they came about, the words are illustrative of how Black people are seen by our fellow citizens.
Rep. Donald McEachin, a Virginia Democrat, seemingly responded to the comment from McConnell on Twitter with a photo of himself and his wife, Colette, posed in front of the American flag with the caption, “We are American” and the irreverent hashtag #mitchplease.
Rep. Bobby L. Rush, an Illinois Democrat, also posted a response on Twitter explicitly spelling out the observation that “African Americans ARE Americans.”
Charles Booker, who is running for the other seat in the U.S. Senate from McConnell’s home state of Kentucky, also had a thought on McConnell’s comment, writing, “I am no less American than Mitch McConnell.”
McConnell responded to the criticism on Thursday by saying, “I have consistently pointed to the record-high turnout for all voters in the 2020 election, including African-Americans.”
He later went on to call his original remarks an “inadvertent omission.”
The McConnell remark came as the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act was falling short of passage in the Senate this week. Provisions of the bill included making Election Day a national holiday, widening access to early voting and mail-in ballots, and enabling the Justice Department to intervene in states with histories of voting-rights interference.
Attracting no votes from McConnell’s caucus, the bill was doomed by Senate filibuster rules, with two Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, both supporters of the legislation, unwilling to entertain a voting-rights exception to the 60-vote requirement.
The final tally was 49-51; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., switched his vote to bring up the matter again.
The House of Representatives last week passed the proposal 220-203.
The senator, however, has raised concerns about changing the filibuster, which Manchin contends is necessary as a force pushing the majority party to negotiate with colleagues.
“I cannot support such a perilous course for this nation when elected leaders are sent to Washington to unite our country, not divide our country,” he said. “Putting politics and party aside is what we do. It’s time that we do that hard work to forge the difficult compromises that can stand the test of time.”
Manchin gave his remarks in front of a poster stating, “The United States Senate has never been able to end debate with a simple majority.”
The Senate filibuster requires 60 senators to support ending debate on most legislation. The Senate can advance budgetary matters and nominations with a simple majority; lawmakers in 2013 and 2017 modified the filibuster to confirm nominations and Supreme Court justices with 51 votes.
“The majority rule actually is the rule of the Senate for a great manner of matters,” Daniel Weiner, the director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elections and Government Program, told MetroNews.
“I respect Senator Manchin’s point of view — and I’m sure that it is sincere — but majority rule, in fact, in the Senate more often than not is how they operate except, apparently, voting rights.”
The Senate in December approved increasing the debt ceiling with a simple majority.
Schumer proposed a “talking filibuster” for the voting rights bill; senators would have been required to be in the Senate chamber and discuss their opposition ahead of a simple majority vote. The Senate voted 52-48 late Wednesday evening for keeping the chamber’s filibuster rules; Manchin and Sinema joined Republican colleagues in opposing revisions.
