SAVE America Act - Interesting take by center-left pundit

Matthew Yglesias wrote the following excerpt. His point is that both dems and republican senators use the filibuster as a way to pretend to support bills that are popular with their respective bases, and they don’t want to lose that campaigning trick.

His main point here is that dems could trade the SAVE Act for ending the filibuster. He believes that the SAVE Act won’t hurt dems in elections because it will suppress a lot of republican voters who are married women with licenses that don’t show their new name. Ultimately it comes down to whether you believe dems are massively cheating. (I do; he doesn’t).

quote:

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The SAVE America Act is a bad bill with questionable provisions that at least a few Republican senators seem to have significant doubts about. But the core concept of requiring voters to use photo ID when they vote is fine.

Meanwhile, the White House and a handful of senators like Lee are wildly overstating the importance of this bill and encouraging Republicans to nuke the filibuster. That’s not going to happen on a party-line G.O.P. vote. But if progressive opponents of the filibuster come to the table and say they’re willing to provide the extra votes needed to scrap it, they could get it done.

The SAVE America Act might pass as a result, its implementation would be a mess, and Democrats could point at that mess and say, “We told you so, vote these morons out.” Alternatively, with no filibuster in place, the Republicans who know this bill is a mess might need to stop hiding behind the filibuster and actually say, “Hey — we support voter ID but we need to roll back the implementation timeline and bring the rules into alignment with current practice.” If they do that, I think Democrats should vote for the revised bill. But one way or another, the world won’t end, and future Congresses will be able to proceed with more sensible rules.

The fundamental stakes of the filibuster are just much, much larger than the rather small stakes of the SAVE America Act. People should think about how they’re going to feel in 2029 and act accordingly today when the prospects for change are better.

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