Words Next to Each Other, by Kyrsten Sinema
It’s like...the reverse Murc’s Law:
In his speech, he appeared to call out Sinema and Manchin, though he did not do so by name.
“I hear all the folks on TV saying why doesn’t Biden get this done? Because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends,” Biden said.
In Tucson, Sinema reiterated her position that the filibuster is a tool that “protects the democracy of our nation” and is meant to create comity and encourage senators from both parties to work together.
“To those who say that we must make a choice between the filibuster and ‘X,’ I say, this is a false choice,” she said.
“The reality is that when you have a system that is not working effectively — and I would think that most would agree that the Senate is not a particularly well-oiled machine, right? The way to fix that is to fix your behavior, not to eliminate the rules or change the rules, but to change the behavior,” Sinema added.
“Rather than eliminate the filibuster, we just need Republicans to start acting in our interest rather than theirs through some unspecified mechanism, while making it absolutely clear that there will be no consequences if they don’t.” I see no flaws in this plan!
Ultimately, the issue here is that unless you’re a reactionary contemptuous of democracy, there is no defense for maintaining the filibuster. There is no political defense (I’m not sure how many times we have to be shown that voters care about results, not process, and kneecapping the ability of the Biden administration to pass popular things is in no Democrat’s political interest) and there is no substantive defense. Everything that Sinema and Manchin say in defense of their view that a minority faction should be able to stop the majority from governing will be nonsensical because the argument is nonsensical all the way down.