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I feel sheepish admitting this. But after seeing Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) comments on the Sunday shows yesterday I felt pretty optimistic that this year might be significantly different than I’d anticipated and that the legislative possibilities are more expansive than I’d imagined. More than optimistic – I felt a hint of excitement. Yes, yes, there might as well be a bible verse that says ‘Put not your faith in Joe Manchin!’
But it’s not quite like that.
Part of this is that I don’t expect and have never expected the Senate to push through the whole Democratic party wish list on party line votes. As we saw with the $15 minimum wage the real problem wasn’t so much the filibuster as disagreements or at least hesitation within the Democratic caucus.
What makes this a big deal in my eyes is that this isn’t a flash in the pan comment. Manchin went on at least three Sunday shows yesterday to make this point. Very much by design and according to a considered plan. When you do a tour like this this isn’t just off-the-cuff in response to questions that happened to get asked. More importantly, as I wrote yesterday, this is the other piece of the puzzle placed into a framework articulated and advocated by the cadre of former staffers and politicos who’ve been pushing filibuster reform for years.
They weren’t surprised or terribly disheartened by Manchin’s embrace of the filibuster right out of the gate in January – or Sinema’s tag-along. They saw this as a process that would unfold over months, as the depth of Republican wrecking and intransigence played out.
I mentioned yesterday that far from being a tool to create bipartisanship, the current filibuster is actually a primary obstacle to it. To me, we don’t need more bipartisanship. We need majority rule in the Senate. That means allowing Democrats to pass the agenda they ran on when they win an election. (And it means the same for the GOP.) But to the extent that you actually want more bipartisanship, ditching or significantly weakening the filibuster creates more incentive for it, not less. Why negotiate when you can simply say no and you automatically win?
I suspect Manchin’s preferred outcome is to ramp back or simply threaten to ramp back the filibuster and in so doing shape versions of the big bills which shift bills a bit to the right and have a more centrist center of gravity. So maybe bills which lose some votes on the left of the caucus but pick up some Republican votes in the center. Once Republicans know they can’t block legislation they will have more incentive to get on board to shape it more to their liking. Whether it plays out that, I don’t know. I’m skeptical but I don’t think it’s impossible either. I’m pretty sure, though, that’s his ideal outcome. It fits both with the brand he plays to in West Virginia and his ideological comfort zone.
If we move toward some version of reform that changes the filibuster from an easy flat no to anything that can’t muster 60 votes to something more like a stopgap the minority can use to slow down and make a spectacle of legislation but is yet inherently limited I think we will marvel at how broken we let the national political process become before we made the change.
