senator manchin and senator sinema are on board with this. he needs to work in washington, d.c., to lead in the senate, the senate that he knows very well, to make sure that we can get a positive vote and move voting rights protections forward. i hear you. i hear you, and i hear what you think would be more effective than going to georgia, but again, do you think that showing this chasm in the democratic party between you and the president and the vice president who are in your state today, do you think that s helpful? georgia showed up for president biden. georgia showed up for senators warnock and ossoff. we did the work to make sure to make that happen in georgia. now it s time for the president and the vice president to work in d.c. to make it happen in the u.s. senate. we elected them to get things done. they promised they would get this done. now it s time for them to be held accountable to that, and actually get the work done in washington, d.c. they need to go back to the
to make carveouts in the rules so that things can get done here when they re gridlocked. they did it on the debt ceiling. senator warnock is one of those who is central to the voting rights conversation and who made the point during the end of last year when they made that carveout on the debt ceiling, hey, if you are going to do it on the debt ceiling why can t you do it on something as fundamental and important as voting rights? certainly that s a conversation here and part of the reason why we see grassroots groups so upset about the way the senate has handled this and other agenda item issues, it seems like they re willing to do carveouts on things that are economic related but not necessarily on something as critical as democracy and voting, which they have repeatedly said is an underpinning of the democratic agenda right now, but as you go into a voting year, i don t have the numbers of how congress spent its time but i would imagine it looks pretty similar to the way that presid
primary and in the general election. so that is another key point here of why he has to hit on this issue and the way he s doing it here especially as well in atlanta with all the tributes to martin luther king and also to john lewis here as well. let me move to ali vitali who is covering congress for us, of course. what is the senate democratic leadership s plan on voting rights that doesn t end up politically turning turning this into a democratic failure? meaning, because they don t have democratic unity on changing the rules, it will look like it s democrats versus democrats on voting rights and not essentially democrats versus republicans on voting rights? reporter: because right now that s what it is. when mike says that president biden says he wants to show he s fighting on this, he s not fighting against republicans, he s fighting against members of his own party because the reality here right now is they may have 50 democratic votes in unison behind the voting rights pac