Even after yet another mass shooting, Democrats are still powerless
The US’s governing party simply does not have the numbers to pass policies that remain popular with most of the American public
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Last week, Americans were left horrified after an avowed white supremacist allegedly shot and killed 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York. And now, at least 19 children and two adults have been killed by an 18-year-old gunman at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who was sworn in weeks after the 2012 Sandy Hook Massacre in his home state, seemed to encapsulate most Democrats’ feelings in a speech on the Senate floor.
“What are we doing?” said Mr Murphy, who has spent most of his time in the Senate trying in vain to pass gun safety legislation. “Our kids are living in fear every single time they set foot in a classroom because they think they’re going to be next.”
Meanwhile, in a speech of his own yesterday evening, President Joe Biden begged the country to find the political will to do something.
“Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with this and stand up to the [gun] lobbies?” Mr Biden said. Mr Biden is nominally the most powerful man in the world, and as a senator in the 1990s he managed to pass an assault weapons ban; to hear him calling out for action to curb gun violence is stunning. Yet it also speaks to a depressing reality: despite occupying the White House, holding majorities in both houses of Congress and enjoying the support of public opinion, Democrats don’t have the numbers to actually pass legislation to do anything they actually want about guns.
Senator Chuck Schumer plans to host a vote on legislation on gun background checks, but we know how this will unfold: every Democrat will vote for it – perhaps minus Senators Joe Manchin and/or Kyrsten Sinema – and every Republican will oppose it. And if all 50 Democrats support it, then Mr Manchin and Ms Sinema will obstruct any change to the filibuster to let the legislation pass with 50 votes plus Kamala Harris’s tie-breaker, meaning the bill will effectively die.
We know this because this is exactly what happened on voting rights, even as Joe Biden’s support among Black voters continues to decline and Republican governors and legislatures pass laws Democrats fear will suppress the vote. We know this because the same thing happened when Politico published a Supreme Court draft opinion earlier this month that showed the court was getting ready to overturn Roe v Wade; in that shocked moment, Democrats held a purely performative vote on a bill that would have codified the right to an abortion, only for Mr Manchin to come out against the legislation at the last minute and rob it even of a simple majority.
Democrats have to deal with the fact that even though they nominally have the majority, they don’t have the numbers to actually do any of the things they want to do. They could “put Republicans on the record” to show how they vote against background check protections, but at the moment, most of their GOP colleagues hail from states whose voters oppose additional gun legislation. The same could have been said about voting rights and abortion rights protections.
In fact, the whole reason Democrats played a whole song and dance with Mr Manchin last year on Build Back Better was because they knew Republicans would filibuster all of the proposals they wanted. So instead they packed as many policies as possible into a single bill they could pass through the reconciliation process to sidestep the 60-vote threshold, only for Mr Manchin to summarily kill it.
No matter how many people try to bring the proposal back to life, it seems doomed to die another death; on Monday, Mr Manchin seemed to toy with the idea of reviving it again, but chances are it will be only days before he kills it again.
That powerlessness is certain to demoralize Democratic voters and make them feel like their votes are worth less than nothing. This could not come for a worse time for the party, which faces the possibility of losing as many as four Senate Seats alongside an absolute rout in the House of Representatives – this as Republican excitement at owning the libs reaches an all-time high.
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