[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. This is The Takeaway. After President Biden's speech in Georgia on Tuesday afternoon, I have only one question. I think I'll let AC/DC ask it.

AC/DC: [singing] Are you ready?

Are you ready?

Are you ready?

Melissa Harris-Perry: I know I wasn't quite prepared for President Joe Biden 20.22, who let us know that he is all the way woke and ready.

President Joe Biden: I've been having these quiet conversations with members of Congress for the last two months. I'm tired of being quiet.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Sir, speak your truth. During a speech given in Atlanta, Georgia, the state which truly held the Senate and presidency in the balance during the last election, President Biden sounded fiery about it, and put the filibuster square in his sights.

President Joe Biden: Sadly, the United States Senate, designed to be the world's greatest deliberative body, has been rendered a shell of its former self. It gives me no satisfaction in saying that, as an institutionalist, as a man who was honored to serve in the Senate. As an institutionalist, I believe that threat to our democracy is so grave that we must find a way to pass these voting rights bill, debate them, vote, let the majority prevail. If that bare minimum is blocked, we have no option but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster for this.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For the President, this is not just a battle about this moment. It's a question of history, and of the nation's future.

President Joe Biden: History has never been kind to those who've sided with voter suppression of our voters' rights. It'd be less kind for those who side with election subversion. I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered? Consequential moments in history, they present a choice. Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis? This is the moment to decide, to defend our elections, to defend our democracy. I'm tired of being quiet.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Joining me now is our voting rights bestie, Ari Berman, Senior Reporter at Mother Jones covering voting rights. Ari, as always, welcome back to the show.

Ari Berman: Hey, Melissa, great to be back. Thank you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Also here is Barbara Arnwine, President, and Founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition. Barbara, I can't even say your name without smiling. It's so good to have you.

Barbara Arnwine: It's wonderful to be on. Thank you, Melissa. I can always give you credit for starting This Week in Voter Suppression back in 2011 when nobody wanted to talk about this. Thank you for your leadership.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Oh, listen, I was going to say, having you and Ari here to continue to talk about voter suppression, voter subversion, a decade later, on the one hand, it always makes me happy to have the two of you at my table. On the other hand, it's been a decade. Barbara, before we get to the nuts and bolts policy here, I just want to start with the rhetoric, with the language, because I do feel like, over the four years of the Trump administration, we really talked a lot in our public conversations about how important presidential rhetoric and the bully pulpit is.

When we would hear particular kinds of language from the president even if there wasn't policy attached to it, we stopped, we paused, and we said that mattered. I was a bit surprised to see that folks were kind of pooh-poohing what the president said yesterday, and saying that it didn't matter. Let me ask you, did what the president say yesterday matter?

Barbara Arnwine: It matters if the speech is a prelude to action. The speech is just a first step. What he needs to do next is to go to the Senate and give the same speech, but in a different way. He needs to walk those halls of the Senate and pump some hands and do some talks. He needs to bring people to that White House. We need to see that today, tomorrow, this weekend, Monday. We need to see real action. Nobody told him not to speak. When he says "I'm tired of being quiet," I'm like, "We've been in jail." I've been arrested three times.

We've been out in front of the White House saying, "Speak up on the filibuster." We've been arrested at the Hart building saying, "Speak up on the filibuster." We've been arrested in Phoenix, Arizona trying to get Sinema to do the right thing. He needs to take a different approach here, a much more aggressive approach to make sure that this bill is passed. The speech is one thing, action is another.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ari, let me come to you on what that strategy might look a bit like, because I wonder if there was a moment, as the President was speaking, rather than talking about Sinema and Manchin, which has been the obsession, get every member of the party together, he actually called out the 16 senators who previously had supported the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. Can you talk about, first of all, who some of those 16 are, and whether or not any of them are movable in this new political moment?

Ari Berman: I can tell you that one of them is Mitch McConnell. [laughs] Mitch McConnell led the effort to get Republicans to support the Voting Rights Act's reauthorization in 2006. He said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," meaning that reauthorize it for another 25 years. Then, of course, after the Congress voted 392 to 33 in the house and 98 to 0 on the Senate to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court gutted it seven years later, and then virtually no Republicans have supported reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act since. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to sign on to the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

I think the larger purpose of the Biden speech was, essentially Democrats have been pursuing a two-track strategy with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. They've applied a lot of internal pressure. There's been a lot of internal discussions with them about the filibuster, but what's been missing is the outside pressure from the White House. Barbara and lots of other activists have been applying the outside pressure from the grassroots level, but people have really wanted Biden to make the case of why this needs to be done now, and why Democrats have to do it alone if it comes to that. I think they've been waiting and waiting and waiting for the White House to make that case.

Biden gave a major speech about voting rights in July, but didn't mention the filibuster. Then, months and months, and months passed, and the White House basically said nothing about the threats to our democracy. There is a real question of whether this is too little too late, but I think that the words by the president matter, and speaking to this issue so directly, I think it's important not just for swaying Manchin and Sinema, but for trying to rouse the public about why this is an urgent issue as well. Because I think a lot of people paid attention to January 6th and the insurrection, but what they haven't paid as much attention to is everything that's happened since the insurrection, which has essentially been an insurrection through other means.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to walk through a couple of these. Barbara, let me come back to you on this point that both you and Ari were making here about this outside pressure that has been applied. The work of activists, of local folks, of communities, of national organizations, the kind of shouting-it-from-the-rooftops work, and as you've been pointing it out, literally in the jail cells. Yet, several Georgia groups on Monday, they announced they weren't going to attend the president's speech yesterday, they skipped the speech, and just watching some of it happen around media and social media, help me to understand that landscape of where voting rights activists and organizations are on a moment like what happened yesterday.

Barbara Arnwine: I think they are disgusted, because think about it, this week, all the groups have been going to Lincoln County. There's a petition drive there, because Lincoln County, Georgia, is trying to eliminate six of their seven polling sites, 28% African American area. That means that there'll be only one in the Downtown district, which would take a lot of people to drive, there's no lift, there's no Uber folks, there's no buses, it would be an insanely disenfranchising measure. They've been working on that all week.

They're like, "No, we don't need you in Georgia telling us what to do, especially when, while you're here, the Georgia State Legislature is voting to reduce drop boxes. You're going from 100 plus in Fulton County, to only 23 by their measure, all these disenfranchising measures. What you say in the speech won't change any of that, what will change it if you had given this speech in the Senate." They are saying, "Great speech, wrong location, wrong place."

The only people who can make the change, who can pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the only people who can pass the Freedom To Vote Act is the Senate, the senators, and that's who you need to be focusing your attention on. It's good to rile up the base. It's good to make people aware of what's happening in these states, but it's urgent, urgent, to get the Senate to take action. That's what people were saying, and I don't blame them. I understand their frustration. They're saying, "Let's get this done. Let's stop the theatrics." It is absolutely imperative that you use, not just your pulpit, but you use your presidential bully power, your presidential power to persuade and to influence and to create and generate the right votes. That's what we need right now. That's going to be the telling point of all of this work.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ari, remind us, what are the bills, what are the acts that are sitting there with the possibility of passing if they could pass with a simple majority?

Ari Berman: The two bills are the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights advancement Act. The Freedom to Vote Act would set national standards for elections so that every state would have things like online election day and automatic voter registration, two weeks of early voting, expanded mail-in voting, it would ban partisan gerrymandering. It would take aim at new election subversion laws, and it really would be the most significant piece of democracy reform legislation since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Then, of course, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would restore the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme court gutted. It would require states with a long history of discrimination like Georgia, like Texas, to once again have to approve their voting changes with the federal government. These bills together would both stop voting discrimination where it's historically occurred the most, and also expand voting rights across the country.

There was a really interesting moment during Biden's speech, as Biden was talking about the need for this voting rights legislation, at the same time, a court in North Carolina, your home state, released an opinion upholding gerrymandered, legislative and congressional maps, including a US house map that would give Republicans anywhere from 71% to 78% of seats in a state that Trump only won with 49.9% of the vote. That really underscored the urgency of this moment as Biden is talking about banning partisan gerrymandering, a court is upholding partisan gerrymandering, and that sort of tells it all right there.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes. Barbara, let's pause on that for a second, and dig in there for a moment. I think gerrymandering is sometimes that piece where we miss, right? We start talking about-

Barbara Arnwine: Yes.

Melissa Harris-Perry: -voter suppression, people get that. Being able to cast my ballot, but the idea, and particularly in a week when we lost Lani Guinier, can you help us-

Barbara Arnwine: [crosstalk] I know.

Melissa Harris-Perry: -remember why the gerrymander matters?

Barbara Arnwine: It matters because in states like Pennsylvania, states like Wisconsin, and many others, you have Democrats being the majority, I'm just using this as an example, yet the Republicans dominate because they draw the districts in ways that democratic voters cannot ever elect a candidate of their choice. That makes it frustrating for those voters. I've walked the streets with Wisconsin voters talking with them, and had hearings where they talked about how discouraging it is to know that if you're going to go to vote, that your vote's really not going to count to elect someone who you want and need elected to represent your district.

It's very frustrating. I think that Ohio, Texas, all of these states-- think about Texas, Texas got [chuckles] two additional congressional seats because of the increase of 4 million people in their state, and all of those were Latinos basically, and a few African Americans, and of course, a few whites, but it was predominantly Latino. They drew all these new districts, but not one, not one is structured where Latinos can win. That's the kind of gerrymandering we talking about. That is just wrong, it's vicious, and it really discourages people from participating in the electoral process.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ari, I was listening to the president, and listening to the ways he's speaking to different publics in that moment. Clearly, at least one part of what he was trying to do was a kind of moral suasion, an argument about history and what side you will be on. I found it fascinating. He makes this point that even Strom Thurmond voted to extend Voting Rights Act, back in 1980. I'm wondering, so if you're Senator Tim Scott, if you are a Republican, but a Republican who at least, at one point, was fighting for the soul of the Republican party and saying, "We can win based on having better ideas, we don't have to win by rigging the game." Is there a possibility to move those senators simply by the power of moral suasion?

Ari Berman: I don't think so. I think we're past the point where we can really rely on Republicans to support voting rights. I actually think that language of moral persuasion, do you want to be on the side of Bull Connor or John Lewis was really aimed at Sinema and Manchin, because that's the argument that Democrats are making to them. Do you want to be the two people that kill the last best chance at protecting voting rights for a century?

Does it make sense for you to support the rights of the minority in the Senate, but not the rights of minority voters? I think Biden's moral suasion, yes, of course, you would love Republicans to work on them, but I think they hope that this moral argument works on Manchin and Sinema because clearly the-in-the-weeds procedural stuff is not working with Manchin and Sinema. The only way to get them off supporting the filibuster is to say, "This is our last best chance to save American democracy, and if we don't do it, you two, you are the ones that are going to be blamed for it happening."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ari, I need to hear you say that one more time. Why would you support the rights of the minority in the Senate, but not of minority voters? Say that for me one more time. I want to remember that.

Ari Berman: That's the question that the Democrats are asking right now. How can you support the rights of the minority in the Senate, but not the rights of minority voters? That's it. That's the whole ballgame. We're talking about supporting the right of Republican senators to filibuster democracy legislation, but we're not talking about protecting the fundamental rights of people all across this country. I think Manchin and Sinema really have it backwards in terms of who they want to protect.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ari Berman, senior reporter at Mother Jones covering voting rights, and Barbara Arnwine, President, and founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition. Thank you both for joining us today.

Ari Berman: Always a pleasure. Thank you.

Barbara Arnwine: Thank you for having us.

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