WASHINGTON (AP) — There was a closed-door huddle by an embattled President Joe Biden with his own party’s senators, apparently for naught.
WASHINGTON (AP) — There was a closed-door huddle by an embattled President Joe Biden with his own party’s senators, apparently for naught. An eyebrow-raising speech on the Senate floor by a recalcitrant Democrat. And a defiant news conference by the top House Republican. Each event occurred Thursday. None was helpful for Democrats. And all were snapshots from a day that underscored the divisiveness and futility washing over a largely gridlocked Washington during this jaggedly partisan time. “I hope we get this done. The honest to God answer is I don’t know whether we can get this done,” Biden admitted to reporters after a lunchtime meeting with Senate Democrats, where he sought support for the party’s latest foundering priority: voting rights legislation. Biden said that even if the voting measure failed — as seemed certain — he’d stay in the fight “as long as I have a breath in me.” Even so, the day’s events illustrated his limited political capital at a time when his polling numbers are in the dumps and Democrats have almost no margin for error in a Congress they control by a hair’s breadth. Biden’s party is focusing much of its energy these days on the voting rights bill and an investigation of the Jan.6,2021, attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump trying to prevent lawmakers from certifying his reelection defeat. Both efforts are running headlong into GOP opposition. In the case of the voting legislation — aimed at blunting GOP-passed state laws limiting access to voting, often by minorities — Democrats have pushed it through the narrowly divided House. But things are different in the 50-50 Senate, where they need unanimity before Vice President Kamala Harris can cast her tie-breaking vote. Republicans have been blocking the voting legislation by filibusters, procedural landmines that take 60 votes to overcome. So Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.
