US President Joe Biden marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a speech linking the civil rights leader’s efforts to unite Americans to his own party’s voting rights legislation, all but dismissing those against it as racists.
Biden called Americans to “commit to [King’s] unfinished work” on Monday, describing that work as “to deliver jobs and justice” and “to protect the sacred right to vote, the right from which all other rights flow.”
In the pre-recorded speech, he attempted to connect King’s accomplishments to the voting rights legislation package Democrats have struggled to pass in the face of opposition from both Republicans and two of their own senators.
Those unprepared to support the party’s legislation package were accused of not supporting “an America in which everyone is guaranteed the full protections and the full promise of this nation,” Biden said, demanding to know “Where do we stand? Whose side are we on? Will we stand against voter suppression, yes or no? Will we stand against election subversion, yes or no?”
The proposals in question would expand access to mail-in voting, impose federal oversight on states with a “history of racial discrimination” and tighten campaign finance rules, all supposedly in response to laws recently passed in Republican-led states allegedly aimed at making it more difficult for poor and non-white Americans to vote.