It was a brutal week for the Democratic Party’s various factions as it became clear ahead of Martin Luther King Jr Day that the passage of voting rights legislation remains unlikely thanks to two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
As the president descended on Capitol Hill in an attempt to press the two on their resistance to alterations to the Senate’s filibuster rule, Ms Sinema took to the floor and delivered a speech outlining her continued refusal to make any changes to the rule even as unified Republican opposition means that passing legislation to combat gerrymandering and bills to restrict access to the polls with the rule intact is impossible.
