The Filibuster - Keep, Adjust, or Destroy?

[LFC]

Manchin is taking the heat.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) on Monday railed against Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) by likening the centrist senator to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in response to Manchin’s opposition to a sweeping voting rights bill and refusal to eliminate the filibuster.

“Joe Manchin has become the new Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell during Obama’s presidency said he would do everything in his power to stop Obama,” Bowman said.

Bowman then swiped at McConnell’s remarks last month saying that he is “100 percent” focused “on stopping” President Biden’s administration, before taking aim at Manchin again by accusing the West Virginia senator of working to undermine democracy.

“And now Joe Manchin is doing everything in his power to stop democracy and to stop our work for the people, the work that the people sent us here to do,” Bowman said.

Bowman argued that Manchin is not bringing Congress closer to bipartisanship, but proving that he is an “obstructionist.”

“He is doing the work of the Republican Party by being an obstructionist, just like they’ve been since the beginning of Biden’s presidency,” Bowman said.

I think if he folded then there's a good chance Sinema would too. I don't see her as one who wants to be the public holdup of ... well, everything.

[LFC]

Here's a small part of a TPM paywalled article. I'm quoting this piece since it summarizes the frustration of having to deal with Joe Manchin, and probably Kyrsten Sinema, so well. They want ... something, just nothing concrete.

All of that is the legislative process. But in this case, we have a totally separate and additional process. Will Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema allow a bill to come to a vote? There’s nothing new about needing to cater to one or two key players who hold a lot of cards. But this is different. Because it’s not clear that Manchin’s decision is really tied to particular legislative details. It’s not like Manchin is saying no tax hikes or he’ll only agree to $1 trillion in spending as opposed to $1.7. It’s down to some very black box calculus within Manchin’s head about whether something is ‘bipartisan’ enough or whether the Democrats have tried hard enough to make it one. That’s very opaque and at least from the outside seems highly arbitrary. And again, critically, it doesn’t seem meaningfully tied to the details of the actual legislation.

[jackd]

Manchin isn't taking any heat. The Democratic Party can't touch him. As Chris Cilizza at CNN points out, without him, Mitch is the Majority Leader. In short, the Democrats are screwed for any meaningful legislation until the midterms and they may well lose those.

[Deleted]

Manchin is enjoying the warmth.

[pg]

Perhaps it's important to remember that the filibuster is an act of both desperation and true belief, even patriotism. Perhaps also to remember that this a constant election "wedgie", depending on to which electorate a Senator is speaking. It's a lot like immigration. Becomes a "hot button" during an election and doesn't really come up again...Until the next election.

For folks like Manchin and Sinema? They and their staffs know that, implicitly. Know that most voters really have no idea of the history of the filibuster, but can be convinced it's "good or bad" for their side. Sorry, but neither of these so-called Senators give one whit about anything but winning an election.

For the record: I say keep it and use it judiciously. And also learn about the use of cloture, when (if?) powerful enough. I think Democrats would be short-sighted to demolish it. It will come back to bite us all in the backside. The one problem I have with progressives is that they seem at times to be child-like idealists. Learn to FIGHT, and fight dirty. Your opposition does. It's why I dig Nancy Pelosi.

And no matter party affiliation? Manchin, Sinema and the few others ALL cater to their electoral base, and are both running scared right now.

[LFC]

Jun 8, 2021 0:52:32 GMT pg said:

For the record: I say keep it and use it judiciously. And also learn about the use of cloture, when (if?) powerful enough. I think Democrats would be short-sighted to demolish it. It will come back to bite us all in the backside.

I can't fully agree because Democrats win elections by doing things, Republicans win them by saying things. Total gridlock works in their favor. If they start passing a pile of unpopular laws it will bite them and Moscow Mitch knows it. That's why when he's Majority Leader he makes sure that the Senate does as little legislating as humanly possible.

[jackd]

The problem is that the Republicans will never hesitate to waive the filibuster to get what they want. Therefore, it has no value for Democrats. Manchin and others are paying no attention if they believe otherwise.

[Traveler]

Jun 8, 2021 2:20:20 GMT jackd said:

The problem is that the Republicans will never hesitate to waive the filibuster to get what they want. Therefore, it has no value for Democrats. Manchin and others are paying no attention if they believe otherwise.

Exactamundo.  It died with Harry Reid.  Fact is, due to Dem progressives scaring the shit out of too many independents, at least two, and maybe three Senate races were lost.  Only hung on by skin of their teeth with the Georgia elections.  Quit blaming Manchin, and look in the effing mirror.  I hate self righteous idiots.  As most here do.  

[jackd]

I say it died with Bill Frist. We could make a parlor game of the issue. The important thing is that it died.

[indy]

Ah, Bill Frist. I still use the phrase 'getting Fristed' to describe people who are the target of idiotic GOP legislation.

[Deleted]

Jun 8, 2021 18:17:47 GMT Traveler said:

Jun 8, 2021 2:20:20 GMT jackd said:

The problem is that the Republicans will never hesitate to waive the filibuster to get what they want. Therefore, it has no value for Democrats. Manchin and others are paying no attention if they believe otherwise.

Exactamundo.  It died with Harry Reid.  Fact is, due to Dem progressives scaring the shit out of too many independents, at least two, and maybe three Senate races were lost.  Only hung on by skin of their teeth with the Georgia elections.  Quit blaming Manchin, and look in the effing mirror.  I hate self righteous idiots.  As most here do.  

We are facing several crises. Irreversible climate change, precipitously falling American competitiveness, advancing illiberalism and autocracy are upon us and need solutions. Left unaddressed the problems are going to exacerbate, and do so exponentially. These cannot be deferred in to the future for propitious political circumstance. Whatever be the reasons, the current situation of a 50-50 split in the Senate is the reality from which decisions have to be made.

Process, methodology, accepted best practices are good guidelines to follow under normal circumstances. However, these are not universal - they don't model all scenarios. We are at one such moment when the Republican party has no incentive to strike a deal. If a deal is not struck they lose nothing. In fact, failure is to their political advantage. Their actions have clearly indicated they're aligned with their political incentives. Under these circumstances prioritizing process, holding it to be sacrosanct, as if that is the objective, is not only misguided but singularly wrongheaded. If I can see this, so can Manchin and others who are putting process over everything else. 

What happens if we fail to initiate electrification of the economy (often dubbed electrification 2.0) on the scale needed to stem the climate crisis and hold the increase in average global temperatures below 1.5 degree Celsius? What happens if the technology platforms, markets and economic systems needed to solve this crisis are invented, developed, and perfected elsewhere, say, China? What happens when autocracy prevails and the Chinese model becomes dominant? Would that be skin off Manchin's back? Or off Republican's backs? Pointing to Republican intransigence, while giving in to it would be a Democratic choice, and would be a pathetic excuse. Again Manchin (and those of his ilk) are more intelligent than I'm to know and understand the demands of our time.

Meet the urgency of the moment.  25 years from now people would not care about the loss of filibuster if we are nearing the decarbonization targets. 25 years from now people would not care filibuster was preserved but liberal democracy was lost.

[LFC]

Jun 8, 2021 18:17:47 GMT Traveler said:

Exactamundo.  It died with Harry Reid.

So you feel that the better option was to sit helplessly while Mitch McConnell and his minority blocked an unprecedented number of judicial nominees? Because that's your only other choice. These would now be filled with Trump / Federalist judges including 3 on the D.C. Court of Appeals, the second most powerful court in the nation.

Jun 8, 2021 20:29:22 GMT jackd said:

I say it died with Bill Frist. We could make a parlor game of the issue. The important thing is that it died.

It died with The Thurmond Rule, may he burn in hell for all eternity. It is important that it died, but who killed it is also important if you actually wish to understand how politics got to where they are now.

[pnwguy]

I've been lamenting to friends that we only have 18 months of democracy left in the US. I'm wondering what country I could work from remotely. Of course the future GOP rulers will likely decide to nullify my SS benefits if I leave the country.

The GOP isn't interested in democracy -- only the power to control citizens and enrich their cronies. There's not much difference between what they want and what Putin has, except readily available Polonium.

[jackd]

I'm going to agree with LFC that it started with the blocking of Abe Fortas by Thrmond but you can be sure Thurmond had plenty of support from his Republican colleagues so he doesn't get all the credit.

[LFC]

Jun 9, 2021 20:30:36 GMT jackd said:

I'm going to agree with LFC that it started with the blocking of Abe Fortas by Thrmond but you can be sure Thurmond had plenty of support from his Republican colleagues so he doesn't get all the credit.

As I recall from that time Thurmond was a completely safe seat and he was more than happy to be the object of scorn from Democrats. He was actually quite proud of it. That allowed Republicans in potentially less safe seats sit on their hands and claim there was nothing they could do.

[LFC]

Sinema finally opens her mouth and she is all in on maintaining the filibuster.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) having a good day today.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) doubled down Monday on her refusal to blow up the filibuster ahead of the Senate’s highly anticipated vote on the For The People Act/S. 1, the Democrats’ sprawling voting rights package that Republicans are fully expected to block via the filibuster.

Sinema argued in a Washington Post op-ed that her position is “based on what is best for our democracy” and that the filibuster “compels moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings between opposing policy poles.”

Manchin? Who knows WTF he's doing or why.

Today is the day for voting rights legislation, or H1/S1. But we remain in a kind of play-acting drama. Kirsten Sinema remains steadfast in her opposition to ending the filibuster, a position she reaffirmed last night. But she’s a preening clown. More interesting, befuddling, bizarre is the stance of Joe Manchin.

As you’ll remember, a couple weeks ago, Manchin announced he was opposed to the For the People Act (H1/S1). This didn’t turn the tables too dramatically since that really only meant that the bill went from being ten votes short of 60 to eleven votes short of 60. But then a few days ago Manchin came forward with a revised version of the bill which he said he did support.

So now, in a sense, it’s his bill.

Senate Democrats and the White House have signaled they’re ready to get behind his version of the legislation. And that gets underway today. But what’s the point of the whole exercise if Mitch McConnell will not only refuse to allow a vote on the bill (conventional filibuster) but refuse to allow the bill even to be debated? Manchin says he can’t support a bill. He withdraws to his mountaintop, sprinkles the bill with the West Virginian bipartisany secret sauce and brings it back for passage. But again all Republicans refuse to allow a vote on it. So again, what’s the point? This sounds like a rhetorical question. And it is about 75% rhetorical. But there’s also a quarter of ‘hey, are we going somewhere here?’ ‘No, really. Is there a point to this?’

Filibuster reformers have been hoping – and actually laid out a scenario like this going back to January – that Manchin would eventually tire of the labor and humiliation of taking ownership of popular legislation, putting the bipartisany secret sauce on it and still seeing all Republicans saying no. At some point he’d decide the problem wasn’t the legislation, the problem wasn’t a lack of reaching out. The problem was Republicans.

And actually there have been a few tiny hints in the last week or so of something like that happening. Alas, far more likely that he’ll just get frustrated again and we’ll have to settle for the moral or pyrrhic victory or whatever else you want to call it of getting 50 votes for the legislation. In other words, an old fashioned majority (50+1) even if it goes down to defeat under Mitch McConnell rules.

[jackd]

What Manchin and Sinema routinely fail to address is the clear evidence that Republicans will waive the filibuster when they are in power for anything they feel strongly about. In other words, the Democrats in the Senate are unilaterally disarming just as some state legislatures are doing with redistricting. It has gone past naïveté to clear stupidity.

[LFC]

Jun 22, 2021 18:38:49 GMT jackd said:

What Manchin and Sinema routinely fail to address is the clear evidence that Republicans will waive the filibuster when they are in power for anything they feel strongly about. In other words, the Democrats in the Senate are unilaterally disarming just as some state legislatures are doing with redistricting. It has gone past naïveté to clear stupidity.

And as I've said before the Republicans really don't WANT to pass anything that can't be rammed through via reconciliation, like tax cuts. Killing Obamacare? Their "plan" was a disaster and they knew it. I suspect there was a big sigh of relief from leadership that Ryan's craptastic steaming pile died. Right now they get the best of both worlds. They get to do nothing and don't have to take any real responsibility for it.

[Deleted]

What is best for our democracy is to be stuck in a quagmire of electoral politics, delivering nothing, losing to our global competition and imperiling our long term future. Yeah that about sums up these responsibility shirking, timid politicians.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 25, 2021 14:02:49 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

What is best for our democracy oligarchs is to be stuck in a quagmire of electoral politics, delivering nothing, losing to our global competition and imperiling our long term future. Yeah that about sums up these responsibility shirking, timid politicians.

[LFC]

Here's some idea of how much Manchin and Sinema are obstructing with their protection of the wholly abused filibuster.

With the most promising window for action in the Joe Biden era already closing, Democrats are going all-in on advancing a sweeping infrastructure bill—at the expense of many other progressive priorities on their wishlist.

Police reform, guns, LGBTQ protections, and voting rights—they were once all near the top of the to-do list for Democrats when President Joe Biden took office and Democrats claimed control of the House and Senate. But, at the moment, none of them are going anywhere, and the packed summer schedule ahead means they’ll stay stuck for the foreseeable future.

Progressives held out hope that the dog days of summer might see momentum build toward ending the 60-vote threshold to pass bills known as the filibuster, a prerequisite to pass most of their agenda. Instead, those days will be filled with work on a $600 billion bipartisan infrastructure plan and a multi-trillion dollar package containing major expansions of health care, childcare, and education benefits that would pass along partisan lines.

In a letter released last Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) officially advised senators to clear their nights, weekends, and even the sacred August recess in order to get both prongs of Biden’s marquee policy package done. He suggested action on other fronts is possible, but Capitol Hill observers in both parties expect every minute of the schedule until Labor Day to be consumed by the infrastructure package.

“What they're saying is, economic package first,” said Jim Kessler, co-founder of the moderate Third Way think tank and a former Schumer aide. “The other pieces, as critical as they are, are going to go on their own timeline. Guns, police reform, voting rights, under the current Senate rules, the paths are very murky.”

But progressive activists—who’ve been pushing hard for election reform legislation as a priority of existential importance to the party and the country—are expecting Biden and Democrats on Capitol Hill to pour as much time, energy, and political capital into advancing their For The People Act elections bill, and changes to Senate rules, as they are into an economic package.

As if there hasn't already been a full court press to change the Senate rules. Sheesh.

[goldenvalley]

I'm not happy to see voting rights treated as something that is secondary to focusing on the economic package. Other than that I'd say the priority economic package is good for most Americans in their day to day lives.

[LFC]

Jul 13, 2021 19:16:28 GMT goldenvalley said:

I'm not happy to see voting rights treated as something that is secondary to focusing on the economic package. Other than that I'd say the priority economic package is good for most Americans in their day to day lives.

It's not. There are two categories of legislation today; one that takes 50 votes and one that takes 60 votes or is dependent on first removing the filibuster. That's it. (The only other choice, and it's not legislation, are executive orders. Like it or not that's the political world we live in.) AFAIC lumping 60-vote policies like voting rights, police reform, LGTBQ rights, or any number of other things with 50-vote economic policies is political journalism malfeasance.

[LFC]

More nudging on Manchin but I don't hold out much (any?) hope that he'll have the guts to stand up to the Republicans' assault on voting rights because he "values" (whatever that means in his case) the filibuster too much.

Vice President Kamala Harris will meet Tuesday with Texas Democratic legislators who fled the state in an effort to block a Republican-backed election bill that they say is discriminatory, a White House official told NBC News.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is also expected to meet with the Democratic members of the Texas legislature, though a date and time have not yet been set, according to a spokesperson.

Manchin did not answer Tuesday when asked if he would support a carve-out in the Senate filibuster to pass voting rights legislation, stating only that he is “anxious to meet” with the Texas Democrats. The West Virginia senator has previously expressed steadfast opposition to changing the filibuster.

[Traveler]

IF Dems won more senate seats than they did, we wouldn't be relying on Manchinnema. They would have gotten more independent votes, but the riots scared them away. That and the fact that the rioters and looters went free for the most part. Responsibility matters. Not that the POG is at all responsible in the slightest, but MSM's strawmanitis got us Dems again. I still detest the NYT editorial page.