ATLANTA | Strong symbolic load, big political risk: Joe Biden promised Tuesday, on the lands of Martin Luther King, to dynamite if necessary the parliamentary rules in order to protect the access to the vote of the African-Americans, threatened de facto in of many conservative states.
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“I have had quiet conversations with members of Congress for two months. I’m tired of being silent ”in the face of the Republican opposition’s blocking of two crucial electoral reform projects, the American president lost his temper in Georgia, a state he called the“ cradle ”of the struggle for civil rights.
“To protect democracy, I support any change in the rules of the Senate, whatever it is, to prevent a minority of senators from blocking progress on access to the right to vote,” Joe Biden said in a speech virulent and full of historical references.
After the Capitol last week, where he had already delivered a plea for democracy, the US president further increased the symbolic charge on Tuesday.
It was by speaking with the children of Martin Luther King and then by meditating on the grave of the civil rights icon that the president began his visit to Georgia, a former slave state, emblematic of past and present battles against the racial discrimination.
“Turning”
Speaking of a “turning point” for the United States, the 79-year-old Democrat assured that “every member of the Senate would be judged by history”.
“History has never been lenient towards those who sided with restricting access to the vote. Nor for those who sided with the subversion of the elections, ”warned Joe Biden, speaking in Atlanta to students from universities historically linked to the African-American community.
He wants to harmonize at the federal level the conditions under which Americans vote, from registration on electoral registers to the counting of votes, including postal voting or identity verification.
These are all parameters that several southern Republican states, including Georgia, have undertaken to modify to, they say, increase ballot security.
In fact, these reforms complicate access to the ballot boxes for minorities and particularly African-Americans, who mostly vote for Democrats, while strengthening the grip of local authorities over voting operations.
Joe Biden called them Tuesday “Jim Crow 2.0” laws, in reference to the so-called “Jim Crow” laws that codified racial segregation in the South American states after the Civil War.
“Filibuster”
“The goal of the former president and his allies is to disqualify anyone who votes against them. It’s that simple. The facts will no longer be worth anything. Your vote will no longer be worth anything, ”warned the Democratic President, now determined to attack Donald Trump head-on and his baseless theories on a massive fraud in the last presidential election.
Joe Biden wants the Senate to respond by adopting the “John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act” and the “Freedom to vote Act”, even if it means dynamiting the “filibuster rule”.
This rule requires that the Senate gathers a reinforced majority (60 votes out of a total of 100) to put to the vote most of the texts. But the Democrats (51 votes in the Senate including that of Kamala Harris, against 50 for the Republicans) can pass in force and vote by a simple majority.
Enough to scream the conservative opposition but also to jostle some Democrats, for whom this rule of 60 votes, supposed to promote dialogue between the two parties, must be protected.
The American president, a former senator attached to parliamentary traditions, has long hesitated to support a forced passage through the Senate.
But the unpopular Joe Biden needs to breathe new life into his tenure ahead of legislative elections in the fall that could cost him Congress.
Civil rights activists await him around the corner. “President Biden has certainly given a vibrant speech today, but it is time for this administration to follow words with actions”, reacted the president of the NAACP, association for the defense of civil rights.
“Protecting access to the vote should not be a priority, it should be THE priority,” said Derrick Johnson.