Conway vs. Manchin, Biden Blues, and the CW Fire Sale

Greetings from all of us at The Daily Courant. Here’s what’s new at Puck:

Today, Teddy Schleifer reports on the messy, ego-fueled battle between Silicon Valley’s most influential donors over Joe Biden’s doomed voting-rights push. For months, the cynics cautioned activists that they would never be able to bring Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to their side. But behind the scenes, tech royalty Ron Conway and Karla Jurvetson rallied Democrats for one final pressure campaign, with potentially momentous consequences.

Plus, below the fold, catch up on last night’s What I'm Hearing. Matt Belloni takes an inside look at what Hollywood will lose (and who’s likely to win) as Greg Berlanti’s young-adult entertainment juggernaut, The CW, goes on the auction block.

Silicon Valley’s Doomed Pursuit of D.C. Nirvana

Behind the scenes of the voting-rights drama, Democratic super-donors organized a furious pressure campaign to get Manchinema to “yes.” Then reality intervened.

For more than a year, the Democratic Party’s most powerful donors have been locked in a high-stakes debate over the future of American elections. Democrats in Washington largely agree on the importance of new laws to expand early and mail-in voting and weaken voter identification laws, among other things. But behind closed doors, among the bundler set and the aides that serve them, the mega-donors who try to shape the party’s agenda have been sharply divided on strategy. On one side are more idealistic contributors who view voting rights legislation as a nonpareil priority, the only thing that can protect American democracy from backsliding. On the other side of the argument are more pragmatic donors who have worried that, in a 50-50 Senate, election reform would wallow in gridlock and steal valuable time from the rest of the progressive agenda. I’ve been talking to both sides regularly, curious as to who would be proven right.

Democrats, after all, need to break a filibuster in order to pass practically any legislation, let alone a sweeping voting reform package that is flatly opposed by Republicans. The clock is ticking before the G.O.P. likely retakes the House in November. And the Senate’s two most conservative Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have been saying for months that they won’t support modifications to the chamber’s filibuster rule, even a carve-out just for this particular bill, no matter what Joe Biden and some big donors may want. That legislation, as of today, is now looking dead.

Nevertheless, over the last week, a group of Democratic donors made something of a Pickett’s Charge to prove the haters wrong. On Wednesday evening, I’m told, over 200 donors piled into a “strategy call” with Chuck Schumer....

FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT