Biden Sidesteps Filibuster Reform in Major Voting Rights Speech

President Joe Biden delivered a landmark speech about the importance of voting rights to the United States on Tuesday, calling out recent Republican efforts to restrict voting as an assault on our democracy.

Notably missing from the speech, however, was any discussion of reform of the filibuster—a Senate procedure that many experts say must go if Democrats hope to pass the For the People Act, or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Republicans currently hold 50 Senate seats, and if they can deploy the filibuster and require a 60 out of 100 majority, Democrats don't have a clear path to protect voting rights at the federal level.

When reporters asked Biden about the filibuster issue's absence from the speech, the president appeared to sidestep the issue, answering only "I'm not filibustering now."

Biden strongly attacked President Donald Trump and his supporters' continuing efforts at overturning the results of the 2020 election, saying "In America, if you lose, you accept the results. You follow the Constitution, you try again. You don't call facts 'fake' and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you're unhappy. That's not statesmanship. That's selfishness."

Biden referred to efforts to overturn the election as "dark" and "sinister" and "human nature at its worst," saying "Bullies and merchants of fear, peddlers of lies, are threatening the very foundation of our country."

"Supporters of democracy will continue to organize and advocate, but we cannot organize our way out of this threat," Biden said in his speech. It is possible for Democrats to organize an exception or removal of the filibuster rule, however, as many tweeted on Tuesday.

Following his speech on Tuesday, several Democrats took to Twitter to vent their belief that the filibuster must go. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon tweeted "President Biden is right: protecting our freedom to vote is a national imperative. The Senate must reform the filibuster to make it happen."

Reverend Al Sharpton tweeted a picture of himself and the president with the caption "Talking w/ @POTUS after his historic Voting Rights speech at Independence Hall. I told him that the speech was great and I was happy to hear him constantly bring up the racist elements of the voter suppression drive. I told him we must deal w/ the filibuster and complete HR 4."

Newsweek reached out to the White House Press Office for comment on what appeared to be Biden's avoidance of the filibuster issue and was directed to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki's July 12 press briefing from the day before the speech, with no new comment.

She stated that "it requires the majority of members in the Senate to support changes to the filibuster," in response to reporter questions about whether Biden would do any "arm-twisting" to get Senate Democrats to move forward with filibuster reform since it seems to many to be the only obvious way forward for voting rights protections at the federal level.

When asked about a possible exemption carved out for voting rights Psaki said "We don't have any new position on that either."