In case you were thinking that the Democratic Party will no longer feature the kind of internal strife we were used to until recently, think again. There may not be many left, but as long as a handfull remain, we’ll have to deal with stuff like this.
Former President Barack Obama has called on the Senate to do away with the filibuster, but that won’t happen if West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has anything to say about it.
“I will do everything I can to prevent it from happening,” Manchin, a Democrat, told Yahoo News in an interview on Wednesday. “We will not have the democracy we know today if that [filibuster elimination] happens, I can assure you.”
Debated in Washington for years, the idea of eliminating the filibuster received renewed attention last week after Obama, during his eulogy for civil rights icon John Lewis, described the procedural rule as “another Jim Crow relic” that should be overturned.
Manchin said he sees the filibuster as an essential feature of the Senate and vital to the institution’s role as a deliberative body where members must work toward compromise. He said he didn’t see Obama’s full eulogy, but when asked about the former president’s contention that the filibuster has been used to quash civil rights legislation, Manchin fired back that it has been used to stop many kinds of legislation.- ADVERTISEMENT –
On Thursday, former Vice President Joe Biden signaled his willingness to do away with the filibuster, but cautioned that it “has also saved a lot of bad things from happening too.”
For Manchin, however, keeping the filibuster in place will ensure stability no matter which party prevails in the November elections.
“My view on the filibuster has been my view from day one,” Manchin said. “We should be able to talk to each other, we should be able to sit down and work through our differences and we should find a compromise. … We’re not going to run this country from the extremes, and if you do away with the filibuster as we know it and basically the 60-vote rule, then you’re going to have the Senate no different from the House — it can go to the fringes to the right or the left.”
When they’re in the majority both parties have to deal with their Susan Collins’. I don’t know who they will be in the Democratic Senate aside from Manchin but there will be a few of course. The difference between the GOP and the Democrats in the past has always been that the Republicans generally make sure they have the votes so they can let their Collins and Murkowskis do their thing but keep thin in ine when they need them. Democrats have tended to be less successful at that. If you want to see how it goes for them just look back at the painful, torturous Obamacare negotiations which took place entirely among Democrats since Republicans just sat in the corner and pouted. You’ll recall that it wasn’t any easier than dealing with Mitch McConnell.
It’s always better to have the majority, even if you have to put up with people like Joe Manchin. You have the power to set the agenda, which is huge. But it doesn’t mean you can completely control these egomaniacs, all of whom look in the mirror and see a president looking back at them.
So get ready people. If the Democrats win back a governing majority it’s still not going to be a cakewalk. The Manchins will always preen and pose and leverage their power to screw everything up.