These two hypocritical scumbags are the worst of the worst and killing
our country.
Opinion: Kyrsten
Sinema and Joe Manchin mull whether democracy is worth saving
By Paul Waldman
Columnist
Today at 1:00 p.m. EST
Democrats are now considering pushing negotiations
over the Build Back Better package into next year and moving immediately to
pass one or both of their voting rights bills, the John Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.
But
getting either bill passed requires a carve-out of the filibuster, the
procedural weapon Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)
seem to hold in higher esteem than anything on their own policy agendas or even
democracy itself.
Nevertheless,
the door to reform may have cracked open a tiny bit. Sinema now says she wants
the Senate to debate the filibuster — as though we haven’t been debating it for
a year and there might be some arguments no one has yet considered. But at
least she wants to talk about it.
More
troublingly, she’s still repeating a terrible argument for the filibuster. Her
spokesperson warned that
whatever Democrats pass into law could be “rescinded in a few years and
replaced by a nationwide voter-ID law, nationwide restrictions on vote-by-mail,
or other voting restrictions currently passing in some states extended
nationwide.”
In
other words, if Democrats are permitted to pass legislation, that would mean
someday Republicans could pass legislation if they’re in charge. Which would
mean Congress should simply never do anything.
But
even if your heart warms at the thought of putting Congress into an indefinite
legislative coma, we face an urgent problem right now, one that can’t wait.
Republicans around the country are waging war on democracy, not only passing
voter suppression bills but, even more dangerously, moving to make it
impossible for them to lose elections, no matter the will of the voters.
It’s a
three-pronged attack: wielding suppression measures to make it harder for
people likely to be Democrats to vote; drawing district lines so Republicans
always control state legislatures and have a disproportionate advantage in
Congress; and seizing control of voting administration to make it possible to
declare Republicans the winners even when they lose.
All of
which is why voting legislation is in a different class from other kinds of
bills, and demands a different approach, even if you’re still devoted to
maintaining the filibuster for most legislation.
To
understand why, consider the 10 Republican votes you’ll need to overcome any
filibuster in a 50-50 Senate.
On rare
occasions — as with the recently passed infrastructure bill — 10 Republicans
will see it in their own interest to allow a bill to pass, even if President
Biden might get a bit of credit for it. The debt ceiling is another example:
Ten Republicans didn’t want to send the U.S. economy spiraling into recession, or
didn’t want to see their party blamed for it, so they agreed to a procedural do-si-do that allowed
Democrats to increase the ceiling on a majority vote.
But
there is no bill that secures voting rights and majority rule that 10
Republicans will accept.
You can
offer all the paeans to bipartisanship that you want, but that is a simple
fact. It isn’t just that nearly every Republican will vote against those two
voting bills. (Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska supports the John Lewis bill, but she is
alone.) It’s that their party has put a commitment to minority rule, and the
Trumpist belief that elections must not proceed fairly if it means a Democrat
might win, at the absolute center of their identity.
They
will not be moved from this position. There is no symmetry between the stances
of the parties, and no compromise that can be reached. One party is trying to
secure free and fair elections even if it means they’ll lose a good
part of the time, and the other party is committed to nothing less than the
destruction of American democracy.
Which
leaves Democrats with two choices: alter the filibuster to pass legislation
that pushes back on the GOP war on democracy, or sit back and watch while the
pieces are systematically put in place for Republicans to steal the 2024
election, if necessary by having GOP legislatures in swing states simply
declare Donald Trump the victor no matter what the voters want.
So
Sinema can say she supports measures to secure democracy, but if she doesn’t
favor a filibuster carve-out that allows them an up-or-down vote, then she
doesn’t. You can’t say you “support” a bill when you’re actively thwarting its
passage, any more than I could say “I support you getting to work on time
today” if I’ve stolen your car keys and slashed your tires.
For all
the work that has gone into the Build Back Better bill, many Democrats now say that voting legislation is the
higher priority for the moment, and momentum is building for some kind of filibuster
carve-out. In the past few days, Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.)
and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) have called
for changing the filibuster to protect voting rights.
As for
Manchin and Sinema, the most optimistic take is that they’ll be willing to sign
on to some kind of filibuster workaround for these bills, but only after a
protracted public process that makes clear they didn’t just suddenly change
their minds.
If
that’s what it takes, so be it. If they put it off much longer, there might not
be a democracy left to save.