Wednesday on MSNBC, ReidOut host Joy Reid peddled the farcical narrative that the For the People Act was necessary for “democracy protection.” With help from former AG Eric Holder, Reid insisted “the GQP” doesn’t want people to vote and, with help from the supposedly racist Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), have been the only ones keeping the “Jim Crow relic” known as the filibuster alive because they love racism more than democracy.
Reid and Holder never acknowledged the facts of this legislation, which would (among other things) allow inaccurate voter rolls to proliferate, curb political speech, gut the ability for there to be any sort of voter ID, open voter registration to become a target for hackers, and sic the IRS on non-profits an administration might deem unworthy of tax-exempt status.
Instead, they painted any and all objections as racism disguised as cries for ballot security.
Following a repulsive gun segment, Reid said in a tease that “voting rights are under attack all across this country” with senators like Ted Cruz “want[ing] fewer people to vote, basically admitting today that, if all eligible voters vote, Democrats will win elections for the next 100 years.”
Reid began with a soundbite of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) saying S. 1 (and HR. 1) would “rewrite the rules of our political system” before lashing out at McConnell’s claim by countering that it “would roll back draconian, voter suppression legislation that is sweeping through Republican legislatures across the country.”
She then suggested McConnell was willfully lying because he was born in Alabama and was therefore born a racist hellbent on preventing African-Americans from voting or succeeding in life due to the filibuster. She also lampooned Manchin and Republicans were wanting to keep Jim Crow America alive (click “expand”):
Apparently, the Kentucky senator spent so much time in his shell that he missed the roughly 250 bills in 43 states that are targeting black, brown, AAPI, and young voters, nearly very where that the GQP has legislative control. Mitch's willful ignorance of the fact is a recurring theme for him. Just yesterday, this native Sheffield, Alabama, born in the 1940s Deep South as Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr., claimed that the filibuster, a Jim Crow relic, has no racial history. McConnell and his Republican cohorts are mounting, frankly, a hysteria-laced and basically fact-free campaign against a number of popular pieces of legislation, including the For the People Act, which would expand voting rights and roll back the repressive measures that Mitch’s fellow Republicans are passing in the states.
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Republicans who are better at cutting taxes for the rich than they are at passing meaningful legislation for the working class called this bill a power grab. They’re getting backup from West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, who told reporters he did not want to pass voting legislation solely along party lines. Despite Manchin’s now-commonplace obstinance, people close to President Biden are telling Axios that he’s feeling bullish on what he can accomplish and that he’s fully prepared to support the dashing of the Senate's filibuster rule to allow Democrats to pass voting rights and other trophy legislation for his party. Senator Dick Durbin, the head vote counter for the Democrats, had this warning to all the conservative Democrats like Manchin skeptical of undoing the ol’ Jim Crow filibuster, which was most prominently used historically to try to stop voting rights for black Americans and they're trying to convince him to help pass in legislation, said Durbin: “Show me the Senate can operate with the filibuster and still do things that make the U.S. a better mediation nation.”
Holder concurred with Reid’s narrative, saying that it “was used throughout the 20th century to frustrate the passage of civil rights bills” by “southern Democrats.”
That led Reid to insist they were no longer Democrats but Republicans and it’s “interesting...that there are still southern Democrats and conservative Democrats who are still clinging to the filibuster, a very bad, old thing from the old Democratic Party as you point out.”
The nonsense dragged on as the two White House allies continued the left’s crusade against Manchin, insisted Republicans were repulsed by non-whites voting, hilariously said Republicans are the ones who care about “power,” and said Cruz’s opposition was rooted in a “pro-white supremacist argument” (click “expand,” emphasis mine):
REID: But we are at the point in the game when Joe Manchin is essentially saying he will not allow anything to pass unless Republicans are on the bill. Do you believe, having dealt with these — a lot of the same senators that there are ten Republicans who would vote for a bill that would make it easier to vote, because demographically, if more people can vote, more people of color are coming online as voters, and they don't do so well with people of color. There’s no political interest for them to let more people vote. Do you believe there are ten Republicans who would in any universe that we live in vote for SR. 1?
HOLDER: No and let me be clear when I say pressure will be brought to bear, I mean on Democrats, not on Republicans. They made up the determination that they can't win elections where more people vote. And so, they’ve made a determination what they're going to do is to try to change the rules. They are happy being a minority party that exercises majority power and they are okay with that and so — I don't expect any pressure to be brought on Republicans sufficient to get ten Republicans to vote for any of this — this vote reform legislation.
REID: Yeah, let me listen to one of those Republicans. Here’s Ted Cruz making his argument against the law, against the For the People Act.
CRUZ: This bill is the single most dangerous bill in committee has ever considered. This bill is designed to corrupt the election process permanently and it is a brazen and shameless power grab by Democrats. [SCREEN WIPE] They do this by instituting a bill that will promote widespread fraud and illegal voting. [SCREEN WIPE] Apparently the Democrats have determined that if millions of illegal aliens get to vote, if millions of criminals get to vote that that will benefit Democrats because they understand that criminals and illegal aliens are much, much likely to vote for Democrats.
REID: Given the fact that Ted Cruz is a man of color, this is probably the most ironic, pro-white supremacist argument I’ve ever heard about voting. What do you make of the fact that someone like Ted Cruz someone in his own family includes, you know, people of color from a Latino country, would just boldly make the argument that the people of color who might be allowed to vote are basically just a bunch of criminals and that the only reason Democrats want people to vote is that they think they're going to handout voting cards to the undocumented, who by the way, if they become citizens they shall be able to vote if they're citizens, right?
HOLDER: Joy, this is all about power. It's all about power. The maintenance, the retention of power. The Republicans understand demographics of changing, that the ideology of the nation is changing, and it’s moving away from them. And they're not going to change their programs. They're not going to change their policy perspectives and so the only way in which they can stay competitive in the game is to somehow frustrate the desires of people to vote — people of color, primarily — and so that's what he is talking about. They'll try to say it's about voting fraud. They've been saying this stuff about voter fraud for decades now without any proof that there is any widespread voter fraud. Study after study has shown that to be a false claim. Nevertheless, it is the foundation for all that they try to do. They say that, but the reality is they are just going to try to maintain hold on to power.
Before Reid closed by inviting Holder to give a pep talk to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Holder (which he implored Garland and his team to be “warriors for democracy”), Holder ascribed the worst motives to opponents of the For the People Act and those who want to keep the filibuster:
Do you care more about the filibuster or do you care more about democracy protection? That really is — is the question and my hope will be — and I think the pressure will be brought to bear on those who say that they don't want to do something with the filibuster, that there will be both a price to pay and that’s just not something that I think Democratic senators ultimately — ultimately will — will — will follow. That's at least my hope. But as I said, the pressure is intensifying, but the pressure will be at its maximum after the bill has passed.
Reid’s gaslighting against those that don’t vote like and PR segment for radical legislation that would centralize elections and damage election security was sponsored by Cadillac, Sandals, and Tractor Supply Co. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
