"One party is driving the measures to restrict voting in this country," said a union rep, "and it is the other party that is trying to do something about that."
Drew AngererGetty Images
It cannot be said that Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are responsible for placing American democracy on the edge of a cliff. This is a development decades in the making, the result of a ceaselessly radicalizing Republican Party and a Democratic opposition that has often lacked the courage and conviction to stop the slide. But now that we have truly arrived, with Republican state legislatures going all out to suppress the vote and, crucially, to make it easier to overturn future election results they do not like based on an insane lie for which they have not provided a shred of evidence, and with Republicans at the federal level blocking an investigation into an attempted insurrection following the last election result they did not like, Manchin and Sinema are playing a crucial role. They could work with the rest of the Democratic congressional caucus to arrest this slide at long last. Instead, they re sidestepping.