In an attempt to prevent the passage of racist voting law changes in Texas, Texas Democrats have fled the state in an attempt to deny quorum for a vote.
This is the second time that they have left the state house en mass for this purpose.
Let's be clear on where the Republicans as a party are on this, they believe that it is an affront that minorities get to vote:
Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives left the state Monday afternoon en route to Washington, D.C., in a bid to again deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass new voting restrictions with 26 days left in a special legislative session called largely for that purpose.They are flying to Washington, DC, where Democrats are flailing intellectually against the tyranny of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Upping the ante in both the legislative fight at home and the national debate over voting rights, most House Democrats boarded two planes out of Austin headed for the U.S. capital without a set return date. At least 51 of the 67 Democratic representatives — the number needed to break quorum — were in the process of leaving Monday afternoon, most arriving at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport Monday to board chartered flights that departed around 3:10 p.m.
The House is set to reconvene Tuesday morning, but the absent Democrats would mean there will not be enough members present to conduct business under House rules.
There are a number of ways to get voting rights protections through the Senate, but the Democrats seem to be slow walking all of them, for reasons beyond my ken.
1 comments :
My hunch that the Democrats are happy to let the Republicans restrict voting rights for three reasons.
First, it's great for their fundraising.
Second, it gives them a great excuse for not accomplishing any of the goals they claim to support (such as worker's rights, doing anything about climate change, etc.) but don't really want to do - anything that would anger the owner class.
Third, I suspect that the leaders of the DNC recognize that as things inevitably get worse, there will be a greater and greater danger that the people may get the idea that they can vote the bums out - i.e., exercise real democratic power. The Democrats are no more interested in being at the whim of the electorate than the Republicans are. More than that, they must protect the interests of the oligarchs they serve above all else. Their job is to keep we, the cattle, docile for their masters. If they fail at that purpose, their masters will be angry and may cut them loose.
Voting was a useful fiction for a long time. Now it threatens to become more disruptive to the interests of the elite than its usefulness as a distraction.
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