The Biggest Challenge –– Voting Rights Reform

Republicans control key state legislatures, but they can’t win control of Congress and the White House without pervasive gerrymandering and voter suppression laws targeted at likely Democratic voters. The right-wing dominated Supreme Court can almost certainly be counted on to be supportive of them in their efforts. Congress, which Democrats control by the slimmest of margins, could pass voting rights legislation that would thwart the Republican anti-democratic agenda, but only by eliminating the mechanism called the filibuster, which requires a 60-40 vote in the senate for voting rights reform to pass. Eliminating the filibuster would require only a majority vote, and Democrats could accomplish that if two Democratic senators, who have opposed eliminating the filibuster, can be persuaded that the fate of American democracy may turn on whether voting rights reform can pass and that this term of Congress may be the last one in which that will be possible.