On Tuesday’s The View, co-host Meghan McCain completely shut down fellow co-host Joy Behar’s whining about Democratic Party efforts to rig the electoral system being “doomed” to fail in Congress. Behar was particularly upset by a recent poll that showed an overwhelming majority of Americans support Republican voting reforms like requiring an I.D. to cast a ballot.
“It’s looking like the Democrats’ For the People voting rights act is doomed. Okay? To be shot down by the GOP,” wailed Behar at the top of the segment. She then bemoaned: “The bill is supposed to counter new restrictive voting laws adopted in several red states....So why are Republicans making it so hard for people to exercise their right to vote?”
After fellow leftist co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro weighed in on the topic by predictably bashing Republicans, Behar turned to McCain and fretted that American people completely rejected such partisan fearmongering: “So, Meghan, a new poll found that 80% of respondents support voter I.D. laws, which has been shown, as I said, negatively impacts lower income and minority communities. Is this fair, really, to those communities, to do this to them?”
McCain noted how the Monmouth poll was “rocking people in political circles,” before hammering Behar and the rest of the left-wing media for being totally out of touch with the rest of the country:
81%, which is not just a majority, it’s a super majority statistically, say that they think voters should have an I.D. to vote. That includes 62% of Democrats....What’s fascinating to me is we have been told on shows like this and by many pundits on cable news that requiring an I.D. to show – to show and I.D. in order to vote is akin to the Jim Crow south, these two things are basically the same. And what’s fascinating is this narrative and this rhetoric is just not being sold to voters. Joy, you may think that’s true, but the vast super majority of Americans do not.
“You need an I.D. to buy alcohol, cigarettes, adopt a pet, and purchase Advil Cold & Sinus,” McCain pointed out. She then warned Democrats that they were headed for electoral defeat if they kept pushing an wildly unpopular radical agenda:
I think that’s going to be a problem for voters going forward....I kind of think of it like how defund the police, no matter how much it was explained, we’re seeing real concrete data that shows a huge majority of Americans in all states, not just red, but particularly in blue states, where we’re seeing a wave in violence and spikes in crimes right now, it is not selling. This is going to be a problem going into the midterms if your only narrative is that defund the police and having an I.D. to vote is innately racist. Those are going to be problems for Democrats because the average American just isn’t buying it.
Earlier in the discussion, Behar ranted about moderate Arizona Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema reiterating her support for the filibuster in a Washington Post op-ed: “So-called Democrat, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, is siding with Republicans yet again by saying the Senate needs to keep the filibuster or else any bill passed by the Democrats now will be overturned when the GOP gets power back.”
Later, McCain called Behar out:
And one more thing, introducing Senator Sinema as a quote, “so-called Democrat” is very disrespectful to her. Democrats and Republicans in Arizona and West Virginia, like Joe Manchin, are representing their constituents well. And to Democrats who want to continue to crap all over the two of them, if they are out, a Democrat’s not coming in. A Republican is. So you would rather have a Republican in the Senate than a moderate Democrat is exactly what’s wrong with the Democratic Party today.
Leftists like Behar are so detached from reality that they can’t understand why the American people favor common sense over their cheap scare tactics.
McCain’s reality check to Democrats like Behar was brought to viewers by Charmin and Crest.
Here is a full transcript of the June 22 segment:
11:01 AM ET
JOY BEHAR: One of your rights as an American is the hot topic in the Senate today. So pay attention, this is important. It’s looking like the Democrats’ For the People voting rights act is doomed. Okay? To be shot down by the GOP. The bill is supposed to counter new restrictive voting laws adopted in several red states. But as we’ve said before, there’s absolutely no evidence of widespread voter fraud, even though people believe there is. So why are Republicans making it so hard for people to exercise their right to vote, Sunny?
SUNNY HOSTIN: I think this is clearly a direct reaction to Joe Biden’s win, to the Democrats now holding the Senate, holding the House. Definitely the reaction to the Georgia Senate seats. No question about it. And instead of responding to those huge, historic wins with responsibly legislating on things that people really care about, like the minimum wage, like immigration, like health care, like, you know, those types of things, Republicans, rather than do that, they are trying to make sure that people don’t vote. That is, I think, the only way they think they can win. Because at this point the Republican Party is just the minority. And that is just a fact. They know very well that, you know, voter fraud is just not a thing. I don’t think they care at all about voter fraud.
And I think, when you really look at this bill, you have people like Joe Manchin, who is trying really hard to reach some sort of consensus. You have President Obama, who is now supporting this act, which now includes voter I.D., which typically does suppress the African-American vote. You have Stacey Abrams saying, “Yes, voter I.D.s, I’ll support that as making compromise.” And I think what this will do, ultimately, is show Manchin and Sinema that the only way forward is not compromising with the Republicans, because they won’t do that, but rather probably reconciliation or a filibuster – getting rid of the filibuster – or perhaps reducing the filibuster threshold to 55. That’s the only way that the Democrats are gonna get anything done. And I hope this obstructionism shows Manchin and Sinema that that really is just the truth.
BEHAR: Right. Well, we’ll see about that. Because, Ana, let’s go to you. So-called Democrat, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, is siding with Republicans yet again by saying the Senate needs to keep the filibuster or else any bill passed by the Democrats now will be overturned when the GOP gets power back. Do you think she has a point? It will be, you know, used in the future against the Democrats. That’s her point. So speak to that issue because that’s something on everybody’s mind.
ANA NAVARRO: She does have a point. And we’ve seen that happen time and again. Look, first of all, I’m happy that Kyrsten Sinema seems to be fully engaged in this. I was very disappointed she didn’t show up to vote on the January 6th commission vote. What she’s saying does have some foundation. Listen, it was in 2013 that Harry Reid opted for the nuclear option to lower the threshold in order to pass presidential nominations. A few years later, Harry Reid was in the minority, Democrats were in the minority, Mitch McConnell was in the majority, and he used it to do things, the nuclear option, the lowered threshold, to do things like get Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and pack the courts with Trump’s nominees. So, it’s true. What you do today when you’re in the majority could very well be used against you tomorrow, when you might be in the minority.
It is also true, though, that I have zero doubt that if Mitch McConnell were in the majority right now he would be doing absolutely everything, changing every regulation, using every parliamentary procedure to get his agenda through. So Democrats seem to always hold themselves up to a different standard than what I know Mitch McConnell would be doing. I think going through the motions today and proving that it’s not just theoretical that Republicans, in fact, will not play ball with Democrats and go along with bipartisanship is an important first step...
BEHAR: Okay, right.
NAVARRO: ...to looking at the other options.
BEHAR: Alright, alright. So, Meghan, a new poll found that 80% of respondents support voter I.D. laws, which has been shown, as I said, negatively impacts lower income and minority communities. Is this fair, really, to those communities, to do this to them?
MEGHAN MCCAIN: Well, the poll you’re speaking of is a Monmouth poll that came out yesterday that’s really sort of rocking people in political circles. 81%, which is not just a majority, it’s a super majority statistically, say that they think voters should have an I.D. to vote. That includes 62% of Democrats, which is also a minority. What’s fascinating to me is we have been told on shows like this and by many pundits on cable news that requiring an I.D. to show – to show and I.D. in order to vote is akin to the Jim Crow south, these two things are basically the same. And what’s fascinating is this narrative and this rhetoric is just not being sold to voters. Joy, you may think that’s true, but the vast super majority of Americans do not.
You need an I.D. to buy alcohol, cigarettes, adopt a pet, and purchase Advil Cold & Sinus. So it’s interesting to me that isn’t – that narrative isn’t expanding anywhere. I think that’s going to be a problem for voters going forward. You even see people like Stacey Abrams sort of hedging on this. In her home state of Georgia, she has obvious and she’s made very clear, political aspirations to run for office again. And I think she knows this just isn’t being sold.
I kind of think of it like how defund the police, no matter how much it was explained, we’re seeing real concrete data that shows a huge majority of Americans in all states, not just red, but particularly in blue states, where we’re seeing a wave in violence and spikes in crimes right now, it is not selling. This is going to be a problem going into the midterms if your only narrative is that defund the police and having an I.D. to vote is innately racist. Those are going to be problems for Democrats because the average American just isn’t buying it.
And one more thing, introducing Senator Sinema as a quote, “so-called Democrat” is very disrespectful to her. Democrats and Republicans in Arizona and West Virginia, like Joe Manchin, are representing their constituents well. And to Democrats who want to continue to crap all over the two of them, if they are out, a Democrat’s not coming in. A Republican is. So you would rather have a Republican in the Senate than a moderate Democrat is exactly what’s wrong with the Democratic Party today.
BEHAR: I just want to point out that it’s 0.00006% a year of fraud. That’s it. Just FYI. Sara, what do you think of Sinema’s take on saving the filibuster?
SARA HAINES: Well, I believe that Kyrsten Sinema has a good point here. But before I move on here, when we talk about the voter I.D.s, one reason Stacey Abrams was on board with this is expanding what that means. In the past, it has been very limiting and therefore disproportionately affecting people of color. But now, they’re looking at changing that to include things like a utility bill or other version, so it’s not that strict one I.D. that became limiting.
But I think Sinema’s overwhelming point is that legislation is so important that you want to craft it in a way that it stands the test of time and a simple majority does not ensure that. This law is also not reflective of where the people are. And by that I mean, parties in D.C. are holding their party line. The American people are in more agreement than not. As Meghan had mentioned, the statistic of 81% supporting I.D.s, 71% support in-person voting and increasing the ability to do mail in, which is more of a left-leaning issue. This shows there’s a lot of agreement that D.C. is not reflecting in the way they are legislating right now.
In 2017, by the way, 31 Senate Democrats wrote a letter, joining Republicans, to not overturn the filibuster because it’s there to protect the minority voice so the party in power cannot just rule by authority. So the point of the filibuster is also not to block legislation, it’s to send it back for renegotiations to make it better so it stands the test of time.
BEHAR: I think the filibuster and the way it used to be used was more of a useful tool. I mean, people had to stand up there and talk and talk and talk and talk. They don’t have to do that anymore. They’ve changed what the filibuster is. And I think that that needs to be addressed.
