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Democrats will show Manchin and Sinema over and over bipartisan legislation fails due to the filibuster: analyst
June 23, 2021
Speaking to CNN's Don Lemon on Tuesday, senior political analyst Ron Brownstein predicted that one of the things Democrats in the leadership might be doing is holding these votes over and over again to show Sens. Joe Manchin (R-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema that good, bipartisan legislation continues to die as a result of the filibuster.
Thus far it's happened with the COVID-19 stimulus, the Jan. 6 Commission bill, and even Manchin worked to make the voting rights legislation more conservative and Republicans still wouldn't stand with him.
"The only lever they have to address what is happening in the states is to set a nationwide floor of voting rights and I think, you know, to represent the argument that S1 and HR1 was too sweeping, we'll get a test of that Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) who will be on later told me today that the Democratic response to this is going to be to negotiate a slimmed-down bill based on the compromise Mansion offered a few days ago and basically all Democrats will unify behind something like that and then ask Mansion and Sinema and others who claim this can be done whether they can find ten Republicans. And if they can't, it becomes another proof point in what is really this process, Don, that will go all the way on for quite a while of trying to move Mansion, Sinema and others off the resistance of changing a filibuster by demonstrating to them time after time that there are not ten Republicans willing to come to the table."
He explained that rather than promoting compromise and negotiation, the filibuster makes it so much easier to stonewall because they know they can block everything Democrats do.
"If they knew it would pass then they might feel more pressure to actually negotiate," he explained.
Former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) agreed that the filibuster is clearly broken and that his former colleagues have perverted it into some fake constitutional law that is responsible for upholding all of democracy. It isn't and it never was.
See the discussion in the video below:
Dems to show Manchin and Sinema over and over bipartisan legislation fails due to the filibuster www.youtube.com
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Mitch McConnell is coming close to declaring victory on stopping 100 percent of Biden's agenda: columnist
June 22, 2021
Writing for the Washington Post Tuesday evening, award-winning reporter Peter Stevenson writes that the Democrats are running out of options after the Republicans blocked the debate on the voting rights bill.
Despite their best efforts, no Republican was willing to support the bill. While Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said that she was willing to move forward for a bipartisan option, he bill will be just as pointless until she can deliver nine votes along with her.
The only saving grace, if there can be one, Stevenson said, is that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) voted with the Democrats. A few provisions that Manchin wanted were included and others removed, earning his support. Despite the bipartisan agreement with the requests from him, Republicans still refused to debate the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that Republicans "don't even want to debate it because they're afraid. They want to deny the right to vote, make it harder to vote for so many Americans, and they don't want to talk about it. They want to sweep it under the rug and hope Americans don't hear about it."
Republican moderates even proved that they didn't fully understand what was in the bill. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) claimed that it was a partisan power play, a GOP talking point. At issue for Republicans is that the bill calls for non-partisan redistricting commissions to be set up. Not Democratic, not liberal, not progress, non-partisan. Neither party.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain tweeted that President Joe Biden isn't done with pushing the legislation.
Twitter: Is @POTUS working on voting rights? 👇 https://t.co/Kb8pUhoDXR— Ronald Klain (@Ronald Klain) 1624389866.0
While Klain hasn't indicated what Biden is willing to do to ensure voting rights passes, one of the biggest things he can do is shop the law to the states where Republicans are up for reelection in 2022 or 2024 and possible swing-vote Republicans. Republicans found that their own voters support the majority of the things in the voting rights legislation. A Morning Consult poll from early June also showed that Americans overwhelmingly agree that Biden is working on bipartisanship.
"On voting rights, on infrastructure and on their other big legislative priorities — including climate change and immigration — Democrats are pushed up against the limits of their razor-thin Senate majority," wrote Stevenson. "Republicans have shown they can and will shut down bills they see as partisan, using the filibuster. And the way things work right now, there just isn't much else Democrats can do to pass new laws."
The truth, however, is that Republicans have also proven that they'll try and shut down any bill whether or not it is bipartisan. In the case of the COVID-19 stimulus, Republicans blocked it too. Democrats were forced to use budget reconciliation to pass the bill. The same was true with the Jan. 6 Commission bill, which enjoyed bipartisan support and may actually have passed with the GOP demands, but a slate of officials left town for the vote.
Ultimately, it does little to deliver confidence to Democrats that making a deal with one or two Republicans like Murkowski or Collins is worth it if they can't deliver the ten votes necessary to break the filibuster.
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Kyrsten Sinema cares more about being seen as ‘a quirky maverick’ than her actual policy positions: NYT writer
June 22, 2021
On Tuesday's edition of MSNBC's "All In," New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg zeroed in on what she believes to be the real motivation of Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), following her new Washington Post op-ed defending the filibuster rule.
"I think the starting place for analysis for understanding this is to understand that Kyrsten Sinema believes these things and isn't making a third-order calculation," said anchor Chris Hayes. "I mean, Mark Kelly's not doing this and he's got the same electorate to face. Tammy Baldwin is not doing this. This is just how she thinks things should be."
"I think that Kyrsten Sinema believes in herself as a quirky maverick more than she believes, necessarily, what she's saying about the filibuster," said Goldberg. "She was an opponent of the filibuster as a Green Party activist. And so much of what she writes in this latest Washington Post op-ed is just transparently not true. She says that without the filibuster, when Republicans are in power, they would be able to defund agencies that Democrats care about. They would be able to privatize Medicare. But Republicans can do that on the rules we have right now. They can do that under reconciliation. And a quick fact-check would have said that this is just incorrect. Similar to what she said when she defended the filibuster in the past, it's something that the Senate created to encourage comity."
"So, I don't know if it's just that she believes facts that are wrong about the filibuster as much as she believes in maybe being the fulcrum of power in the Senate and sort of not being just another loyal Democrat," added Goldberg.
Watch below:
Kyrsten Sinema www.youtube.com
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