Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema can't hide behind the filibuster

[marmar]

Feb. 15, 2021, 5:33 AM EST
By Hayes Brown, MSNBC Opinion Columnist


I'm willing to admit it sounds like it can be pretty hard to be a member of Congress at times. You're forced to have a position on literally every piece of national public policy, even if what you believe and what your constituents believe don't exactly line up.

But that's the job. It's what you signed up for when you ran for election. Except, as it stands, members of the Senate have an out. And Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., is using it for all it's worth.

In a Politico profile published Friday, Sinema doubled down on her belief that the filibuster's imposition of a supermajority hurdle to legislation not only is right — it should be the basis of all legislative votes.

....(snip)....

Lofty rhetoric about the Senate's historical support for the minority's rights aside, as I told Peacock host and fellow MSNBC Daily columnist Mehdi Hassan on Sunday, it's not hard to see why Sinema and Manchin are the biggest holdouts in their party when it comes to the filibuster. As the Politico article emphasized, Sinema's political support in purple Arizona depends on her political image as a maverick who isn't beholden to her party's leadership. (In this way, she's drawn many comparisons to the late Republican Sen. John McCain.)

Manchin, meanwhile, is consistently described as the most conservative member of the Senate Democratic caucus. He is serving his third term representing a state that has become only more solidly Republican since he was first elected, and the common wisdom is that if he weren't in the seat, it would be an easy GOP pickup. That has positioned him as kingmaker in Democrats' extremely narrow majority, in which every member's vote will be needed to pass anything with Vice President Kamala Harris' tiebreaker. ............(more)

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/joe-manchin-krysten-sinema-can-t-hide-behind-filibuster-n1257916?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

[BradAllison]

1. Ms. Sinema should look to her junior Senator who has no such reservations. (n/m)

[JustAnotherGen]

3. Agreed

[dlk]

2. The political landscape in Arizona is evolving

Granted, there are still extremely red areas in the state, but over time, Arizona is trending blue.

[JustAnotherGen]

4. I've changed my position on the filibuster this past year

I'm far more concerned about what WON'T get done - if we don't remove the filibuster.

At minimum - Chuck Schumer needs to use the nuclear option every single time they try to obstruct.

[Yavin4]

5. The big problem with bipartisanship is that the Republicans are not interested in governing.

From two Trump impeachments, through the pandemic, through almost any issue, the Republicans simply don't want to govern because they don't believe that government should help people.