A Sobering MLK Day

That arc of the moral universe is looking especially long right now—but one can also tell a more hopeful story.

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This was supposed to be the week President Biden and the Senate leadership would celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day by announcing a plan to suspend the filibuster and at last enact voting rights. Instead, the legislation appears blocked, at least for now. These failures feed on themselves, producing the picture of a failed administration.

But it took several tries to enact the original Voting Rights Act of 1965, which in turn came a century after African American men were supposedly guaranteed the right to vote. It’s too easy to pronounce both voting rights and the Biden administration dead in the water, as the media seem to revel in doing. There is also a hopeful story to tell.

Let’s get the dismal story out of the way first. Biden’s two signature plans are stymied—voting rights and Build Back Better. The omicron surge has everyone panicky, and taking out frustrations on the administration’s not-always-clear policies. The partisan Supreme Court piles on.

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Politically, attention keeps getting focused on Democratic disarray, personified by Sens. Manchin and Sinema, rather than on the Republicans who are the main source of the unremitting blockage. The economy is having its most robust economic growth and job growth in decades, but inflation that is mainly the result of supply shocks gets most of the attention.

Without voting rights legislation, Republican voter suppression will only increase, all but guaranteeing a blowout in the 2022 midterms. Right?

Well, maybe. If we let it happen.

The alternative story is that the blockage of voting rights will produce a massive mobilization, as it did in 1964 and 1965. That mobilization is one of the prime reasons we celebrate Dr. King.

In those years, there was an outpouring of young people to make sure people voted. The same could happen in 2022.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act, for which John Lewis bled, has been gravely weakened by the Supreme Court’s gutting of its preclearance provision. But the Justice Department still has plenty of residual powers to challenge flagrant suppression of the right to vote.

Don’t we owe it to John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. to keep struggling until we overcome?

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