With less than 10 months until the 2022 midterm elections, President Joe Biden on Tuesday backed a historic change to Senate rules to allow a pair of national voting rights bills to pass, saying he supported "getting rid of" the filibuster if necessary.
"I believe that the threat to our democracy is so grave that we must find a way to pass these voting rights bills, debate them, vote, let the majority prevail," the president said, speaking in Atlanta. "And if that bare minimum is blocked, we have no option but to change the Senate rules including getting rid of the filibuster for this."
At the state level, Biden noted, only a simple majority has been required for Republicans across the country to pass restrictive voting legislation -- compared to 60% of the Senate, or 60 votes.
"State legislators can pass anti-voting laws in simple majorities," he said. "If they can do that, then the United States Senate should be able to check voting rights by a simple majority.
"Today," he continued, "I'm making it clear to protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules, whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights."
But to eliminate or grant an exception to the filibuster rule -- which requires 60 votes for a bill to advance -- would require at least half of the evenly split Senate to support doing so.
And moderate Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, oppose such a change.
Without explicitly invoking their names, Biden said "every senator, Democrat, Republican and independent, will have to declare where they stand, not just for the moment, but for the ages,"
"The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation's history," the president said.
That stark declaration did not appear to move Sinema, though.
Her spokesperson said in a statement after the speech that the senator "continues to support the Senate's 60-vote threshold, to protect the country from repeated radical reversals in federal policy which would cement uncertainty, deepen divisions, and further erode Americans' confidence in our government."
Over the past few months, Biden has expressed openness to an exception to the filibuster, or altering the rule, to allow the voting rights legislation to pass.
But he has expended much of his time and political capital on other issues -- the coronavirus pandemic, infrastructure and his "Build Back Better" social proposals.
With his Tuesday speech -- coupled with his remarks attacking former President Donald Trump last week -- he brought the issue to the forefront.
He called out congressional Republicans, he said, for turning the will of the voters into a "mere suggestion" in the case of the 2020 presidential election and not having the courage to stand up for voting rights as Republicans have in the past.
"Not a single Republican has displayed the courage to stand up to a defeated president to protect America's right to vote, not one," Biden said. "Not one."
The president's remarks came a week after he delivered a searing condemnation of former President Donald Trump's false claims that he, not Biden, won the 2020 allegation
Recalling the "violent mob" that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Biden on Tuesday characterized the attack, for the first time publicly, as an "attempted coup."
"That's why we're here today to stand against the forces in America that value power over principle, forces that attempted a coup -- a coup against the legally expressed will of the American people by sowing doubt and vending charges of fraud, seeking to steal the 2020 election from the people," he said.
"Hear me plainly," Biden told the group gathered in Atlanta. "The battle for the soul of America is not over."
"We must make sure Jan. 6 marks not the end of democracy but the renaissance for our democracy," he continued.
Biden spoke Tuesday alongside Vice President Kamala Harris from the grounds of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College.
"We will fight to secure our most fundamental freedom -- the freedom to vote," Harris said, opening for the president. "And that is why we have come to Atlanta today -- to the cradle of the civil rights movement, to the district that was represented by the great Congressman John Lewis, on the eve of the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."
Georgia is one of 19 states that have passed new restrictive voting laws since the 2020 election. There have been 34 such new laws in total across the country, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, and most of them in states controlled by Republicans.
Many of the new laws, fueled by false claims of widespread election fraud by the former president, take aim at mail-in voting, implement stricter voter ID requirements, allow fewer early voting days and limit ballot drop boxes.