Very Nice, Uncle Joe. But You Only Told Us What We Already Know.

OK, how?

See, this is the enduring problem with Democrats. They seize the moral high ground, often with great eloquence. But unlike their craven opponents, all too often they bring squirt guns to a shooting war.

By nature Democrats prefer to play nice, somehow believing that honeyed words will dissipate evil. They prefer to follow the rules rather then bend them to best advantage. They shrink from using muscle. That’s laudable on many levels, but the problem right now is they’re confronted with a cult that worships nothing but brute power.

Nowhere in his speech did Biden even suggest that perhaps the Senate Democrats should explore the possibility of carving out an exception to the filibuster – which, by dint of reactionary tradition, prevents the chamber from passing crucial voting rights bills with a simple majority. The filibuster appears nowhere in the Constitution, yet Biden continues to revere it despite the fact that we’re in the midst of a constitutional emergency.

The Republicans basically stole two Supreme Court seats by eliminating the filibuster rule for high court nominations (just 51 votes are needed to confirm, no more 60-vote threshold). But somehow, when democracy itself is imperiled, the filibuster rule is still deemed sacrosanct by the president who’s sounding the alarm.

So instead of muscle, we’re still getting mush:

“We will be asking my Republican friends – in Congress, in states, in cities, in counties – to stand up, for God’s sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our elections and the sacred right to vote. Have you no shame?”

Um, no. This we already know.

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Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com. Copyright 2021 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.