to the historical commitment on part of republicans to pass voting rights. i think we need to add a bit of historical nuance. even those trump thurman supported the voting rights, and even though ronald reagan supported it, ronald reagan in 1981, supported voting rights act with the stipulation that he wanted to eat some of the requirements. reagan, although he signed embraced the voting rights act, he foreshadowed the shelby decision. opening the door for where we are now. i want to be more nuanced and how we think about previous republican support for the voting rights act, in some days when we see now, the foundation has been late for the crisis that we have in terms of policies that republicans have embraced over the last decade. professor cobb, you wrote in the new yorker, martin luther king junior spoke of the
deployment of this. this is been on his mind, we can even make a link between this in the speech that he gave on january 6th, where he was referencing the ways in which the worst parts of american history are resurrecting themselves. he was he has been harkening back to this, in the same token,. at the same time, as you well know, there are lots of people who don t want to talk about history. they want to talk about the here and now, it s a loud contingent of people who are very dissatisfied with what they think the administration is done this far. that was also a sub theme with what was happening today in london. professor, jelani cobb howard morehouse rivalry to the screen for us tonight. thank you very much for joining us, always appreciated. thank you. coming up, why the republican senators from the
support, but republicans today can t and won t. joining us, now jelani cobb, professional of journalism at columbia. msnbc political analyst. chairman of the african american studies at the prince been msnbc contributor. professor cobb, president biden offered a few different historical frames of where we stand tonight on voting rights, including that point we just heard, that even strom thurmond eventually got there. getting to a place where no republican senator stands tonight. right. first of all, i m really excited. ammo graduate of morehouse, some glad you have a president of morehouse, lawrence. happy new year. yes, i think president biden made a great point with regards
of recent history to bear on this issue. i think it was very important for us to understand that our democracy, as a multi racial democracy, we are very young, we haven t been a multi racial i would argue, lawrence, since 1965. that was barely then, because you remember took us a while to implement the voting rights act in 1965. by the time reagan is elected, it took us time to undo the gains of the civil rights movement. to go to atlanta is to give us a sense of the importance, the significance of the moment. this is why i think the president insisted that you have to choose aside if you re going to be for democracy, or if you re not. if you re going to be for voter suppression, or you re not. if you ll before voters immersion, or not. making that choice right now, lets us know the stakes of the game. professor cobb, what did you make of the presidents use of history to frame the speech today? i think it was a great