Sen. Sinema is in denial about the Republican Party's sinister intentions

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/senator-kyrsten-sinema-s-filibuster-speech-was-maddening-n1287545?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

*snip*

Here’s the problem: The Republican Party — from its most influential leader to its federal lawmakers to its state politicians — is unified in the belief that making voting universally accessible threatens its electoral strength, and that making it harder for people who aren’t Republicans to vote is crucial for maintaining power. Sinema needs to explain what kind of reform could possibly be drawn up by “listening and understanding” to a party that views a country that’s more robustly democratic as an existential threat. And she will not be able to do so, because the GOP has demonstrated that it believes voting is not a right but a privilege, and one to be extended in a way that tips politics in favor of Republicans. After all, Republicans have already used the filibuster to block voting rights measures four times since this Congress began.

In her calls for bipartisanship, Sinema is not just exhibiting indefensible naivete about the right’s anti-democratic agenda, she’s also betraying bedrock principles of democracy. "When one party need only negotiate with itself, policy will inextricably be pushed from the middle towards the extremes," she said during her Senate speech. But enacting laws ensuring citizens can cast ballots should not be a matter of policy debate where one finds some answer "in the middle." Rather, it should be understood as the upholding of a democratic state’s obligations to its citizens. Moreover, Democrats aren’t asking Sinema to defend those rights through a coup, but by exercising the power they earned by winning a majority in the Senate. Both in process and in outcome, the Democrats would be shielding the structure of democracy from a party seeking to corrode it.

Though Sinema presented her demands for 60 votes for passing any law in the Senate as a commitment to the essence of American democracy, she should remember the filibuster is not a timeless feature of American government but a quirky Senate rule which came into being in the 19th century and has changed over time. It was mostly deployed sparingly over the course of American history —and often to repress Black Americans — before increasing during the late 20th century and then skyrocketing around the Obama era. As Princeton University historian and MSNBC columnist Kevin Kruse has pointed out, the filibuster was in fact at odds with the vision of the founders of this country:

The Founding Fathers, who designed Congress to be run on simple majorities, would have seen the filibuster as a perversion of their vision for the Senate. Despite recent claims about its centrality in the Senate's working, the filibuster was not a product of the founders' work, and it has never been enshrined in the Constitution. It came about after the fact, largely by accident, enabled by a loophole in the Senate's rules and a willingness of some members to exploit it.

The name given to the new practice in the mid-19th century showed what contemporary Americans thought of it at the time. A "filibuster," in the language of the day, was a plunderer or a pirate. Those who employed the newly invented scheme to block legislation and prevent progress in the Senate were seen, metaphorically, as exactly that — pirates who had hijacked the legislative chamber and steered it to their own ends.

Bipartisanship helps our government run more smoothly, and the impulse to persuade the opposition is a good one. But bipartisanship is not proof of wisdom, and partisanship cannot be conflated with recklessness. But more importantly, Sinema isn’t being asked to be a partisan of a party; she’s being asked to be a partisan on behalf of democracy. Earning the ire of those who are trying to take it down is a good thing.

[Cha]

1. That tracks

[50 Shades Of Blue]

2. Bwah!

[Lovie777]

3. Let's move on ..

[iemanja]

4. She knows what she's doing.

[AleksS]

5. Yup. I hope she's never on a jury...

She’ll try to find the “middle ground” on murder.

[qazplm135]

6. Nah

She just doesn't care. She's focused on Team Sinema not Team Democrat.

[onecaliberal]

7. Oh please. She knows precisely what she is doing.

[Bettie]

8. I don't believe she's in denial

I think she knows full well what the score is and she just doesn't care because she's getting what she wants: attention and money.

Yes, I know the campaign funds are not "hers", but they all find ways around that. I'm pretty sure she has a sweet no-show job set up for after she leaves and "speaking fees" that will ensure that she never wants for anything. She's certainly shown that she can be bought.

Anyone who has been alive in the last 15-20 years knows that Republicans don't do "bipartisan", they just expect it of Democrats.

[Skittles]

9. no, she is COMPLICIT with them

let's get real

[Efilroft Sul]

10. Apologists need to quit ascribing her actions to ideals when she's deliberately treacherous.

She and Manchin know exactly what they're doing and who they're benefiting.