CNN's Inside Politics host John King appeared to realize on Tuesday that the Democrats' "voting rights" bill was doomed, and he channeled despondent Democrats calling the impending defeat "policy and political Armageddon."
King began the show by touting "today's big test vote in the United States Senate. Voting rights is a critical piece of the Biden and Democratic Party agenda, even more so now that Republicans from coast to coast are moving to make it harder to vote."
Later in the show, King returned from commercial with a warning (and an admission about how partisan the Democrat bill was):
KING: A giant piece of the Progressive agenda is poised to die in the Senate today. Republicans promised there will not be enough votes to bring a sweeping Democratic elections bill to the floor. This is not just another Washington political squabble. The Democratic legislation is designed to counter some of the big Republican political advantages of the moment. Whether that question is redrawing congressional districts after the 2020 census, or benefitting in the 2022 midterms from voting restrictions enacted in more than a dozen states now."
Instead of focusing on the fact that Democrats have lost control of many state legislatures, so now they are trying to change the rules, King quoted a desperate-sounding Sen. Jeff Merkley: '"We are going to lose the opportunity to basically enact legislation for the people for a decade. The Oregon Democrat goes on to say 'it's very, very, very bleak. It is policy and political Armageddon.'"
After that melodramatic quote, King welcomed Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) and provided more sensationalist quotes from progressive lawmakers, "One of your colleagues, Ayanna Pressley, one of your friends, just tweeted moments ago, 'the people did not give Democrats the House, the Senate and White House to compromise with insurrectionists. Abolish the filibuster,' she says."
Rather than point out the falseness of Pressley's tweet (the general election and the Georgia runoffs happened before January 6), or ask why Democrats are trying to change the rules just because they keep losing, King quoted another black congressman from New York, Mondaire Jones, admonishing President Biden from the left: "our democracy is in crisis, and we need the president of the United States to act like it." King asked "Is the president of the United States absent in this big debate?"
CNN likes to tell us that apples are not bananas and King started to do that, but, when push came to shove, he ultimately could not bring himself to call the bill a banana.
John King's melodrama on voting rules and "Armageddon" was brought to you by Grubhub.
