Last week, United States Senator Kyrsten Sinema expressed ongoing support for the filibuster, arguing that “it is a tool that protects the democracy of our nation” and prevents our country from “[ricocheting] wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies.” Then, over the weekend, Joe Manchin echoed a similar sentiment, writing that Democrats have “attempted to demonize the filibuster and conveniently ignore how it has been critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past.”
Sinema and Manchin have been rhapsodizing over the filibuster and the virtues of bipartisanship for months, so these arguments are far from surprising. One obvious problem is they fly in the face of overwhelming evidence that bipartisanship is (mostly) dead. However, there’s another, more troubling problem that warrants our attention.
Sinema and Manchin maintain that the filibuster protects not only our democracy, but also the Democratic Party. If we rely on a mere majority for legislation, the thinking goes, any leftward movement will be met with an equal rightward shift when the GOP inevitably returns to power. Thus, we are to believe that the filibuster not only ensures stability, but, in the long run, actually protects Democratic Party’s legislative interests. Continue reading.