Citizens can actually accomplish the goal that the public financing claims to solve but doesn't by refusing to vote for any candidate that takes more than 200 dollars from any donor.

Millions and millions of eligible voters are already refusing to vote for any candidate at all, and even more multiple millions than that actually already are contributing zero to political candidates.

When representatives are chosen by actual voters and not by those who refuse to participate (for whatever reason), it should surprise no one that politicians will focus on those who actually cast votes. If you could somehow convince every other voter in Texas to buy into your bullshit, I'd be picking all our representatives.

Voting ain't rocket science. :)

Two words, Brother:

Stacey.
Abrams.

I say let em! When Repugs control the Senate America we'll see if the Repug agenda is superior to the Dem's. If it is, more power to them. If not we'll vote the Dems back in to take their best shot. Let them compete in the marketplace of ideas, each able in turn to realize their vision without being needless hindered by the vanquished losers, as is the case now.

And hey, if they fell for it, the voter id card would be a reasonable trade if we could get all the rest of it...

Now, as you note, it's back and it's big and it's .... still unable to pass the Senate, thanks to the filibuster and certain Democrats' disinterest in getting rid of the filibuster.

I wonder if Pelosi is leading with this one, expecting it to collapse in the Senate, so as to force the filibuster issue? After all, almost any Democrat can see the threat to their voting base that all the state-based GOP anti-voting laws are going to present in 2022, unless something stops them. If S.1 (H.R. 1's Senate counterpart) dies this spring, will the president find some way to convince Manchin and Sinema that now's the time to do the dirty, one way or another?

Lastly, you said 'Republicans are already getting a little concerned that their gigantic "Make voting as hard as possible!" campaign is going to come back to bite them when they try to get re-elected.' But you didn't give a link to any story and this is news to me. In the course of feeding my casual political news addiction, I've never heard anything about second thoughts or buyer's remorse by the Repubs about their shivving democracy in the back, in as many ways as possible, as soon as possible.

Another thing I thought, reading your extensive list of H.R. 1's provisions: what's the constitutional basis for all this? More exactly, what parts of this bill are seriously vulnerable to a Supreme Court knock-down, and which are more immune due to Congress's jurisdiction being ironclad clear?

Do Democrats know how to do that? Bring political pressure to bear, I mean.

It seems Biden is doing a pretty good job of it, so far, as he redefines what 'bipartisanship' is all about.

But, there's the rub (for Republicans) and the reason to now be in favour of ending the filibuster - if Democrats play their cards wisely (there's another rub, ahem) and Republicans continue with their nonsense - like, for example, their cult of economic failure and other bad policies for the people - then it will be Democrats who will be taking advantage of ending the filibuster for a very, very long time.

So, I think Biden might see the light on this!