“The right to vote, the right to vote, to have your vote counted, is the threshold of democracy and liberty. With it, anything’s possible. Without it, without that right, nothing is possible.”
SELMA, Ala. — President Biden told a crowd gathered to commemorate the 58th anniversary of a brutal police attack on Black protesters that the right to vote was “under assault” as Republicans introduce laws to restrict ballot access and redraw voting districts….
Mr. Biden’s trip to Selma, the first he has made as president, came amid expectations that he would soon announce another bid for the presidency, a candidacy that will require the support of Black voters who were decisive in helping him win a first term….
During his remarks, Mr. Biden took aim at efforts by Republican politicians — most notably Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is pondering running for president in 2024 — to restrict how race-related issues are taught.
“We can’t just choose what we want to know and what we should know,” Mr. Biden said. “We should learn everything. The good, the bad, the truth, who we are as a nation. Everyone should know the truth of Selma.”
Mr. Biden also called out redistricting in Alabama, where activists have said votes of the state’s Black residents have been diluted.
“As I come here in commemoration, not for show, Selma is a reckoning,” Mr. Biden said. “The right to vote, the right to vote, to have your vote counted, is the threshold of democracy and liberty. With it, anything’s possible. Without it, without that right, nothing is possible.”
While in office, Mr. Biden has pushed for two pieces of voting rights legislation, including one bill named for Representative John Lewis, the civil rights icon and Georgia Democrat who was among the demonstrators beaten while trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday.
The bill named for Mr. Lewis, who died in 2020, would have restored a key piece of the landmark Voting Rights Act. The provision relied on a formula to identify states with a history of discrimination and require that those jurisdictions clear any changes to their voting processes with the federal government. Those protections were stripped away by the Supreme Court in 2013.
But the bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, failed in a Democratic-controlled Congress, and it has little chance of passing now that the House has flipped to Republican control.
The For the People Act, an overhaul of federal election laws, also failed.
The president delivered a fiery speech in 2021 warning that Republican-led efforts to restrict voting across the country constituted the “most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” But in recent months, the tone of Mr. Biden’s impassioned speeches has changed. Now, when the president speaks on the issue, his remarks have given way to something close to public acknowledgment that the fight for voting rights might go longer than he initially promised.
The president and his fellow marchers climbed to the part of the bridge where, 58 years ago, peaceful protesters were beaten with nightsticks and tear gassed by a group of white police officers. Mr. Biden stopped to listen as the group prayed for him but also reminded him that without “Selma’s shoulders” there would not be a Biden presidency.
Mr. Biden said “Amen,” and then walked to his presidential limousine, giving the marchers a thumbs up before climbing into the Beast and leaving them on the bridge.
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