Centrist Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona continue frustrating their party by protecting the filibuster, that anachronistic Senate rule that has allowed the Republican minority to stymie much of the Biden administration’s agenda. Their rationale for this obstructionism is that working with the other side is more productive than steamrolling over them.
That notion is about to be tested, as Manchin and Sinema attempt to convert that GOP goodwill they’ve supposedly earned into a deal with Republicans on meaningful gun reform following last week’s Texas school massacre. If, instead, Republicans entrench with their usual do-nothing response to the carnage (sadly, that still seems the likeliest outcome), this wayward pair should explain the point of continuing to negotiate in good faith with a party that shows none.
The filibuster, developed by accident, did serve for a time as a useful lever for bipartisanship. That’s changed in today’s era of hyper-polarization, which has seen both parties carve limited exceptions to this counter-majoritarian rule rather than work together. The GOP in particular has used it lately to thwart progress that majorities of Americans want on voting rights, health care, child care and, yes, gun reform.
Democrats could do away with the rule entirely with their slim Senate majority, but Manchin and Sinema have prevented it, saying such a move would come back to devastate Democratic priorities. As if the filibuster itself isn’t doing just that already. But now, with the recent Texas mass shooting — and Wednesday’s at a Tulsa clinic — providing the latest reminder that America’s national gun fetish is literally killing America’s children (19 of them this time), even some Republicans have cracked open the door to reform.
One plan on the table in bipartisan talks involving Manchin is a national red-flag law and universal background checks for gun purchases. Neither measure would seem to have prevented the teenage gunman’s rampage in Texas, which dramatized the need for stronger measures like raising the age nationally for gun purchases and banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Still, agreement on even those milder remedies could save lives going forward and would represent an important symbolic concession by Republicans, who have until now refused to acknowledge the need for any policy change at all.
Whatever happens with the talks, Manchin says he remains opposed to ending the filibuster, calling it “the only thing that prevents us from total insanity.”
We would argue the filibuster is actually spurring total insanity, in the form of Republican refusal to address gun violence and Democrats’ inability to overcome that obstructionism. This is one instance in which we very much hope to be proven wrong. If not, it will be the strongest evidence yet that protecting the filibuster for the sake of elusive bipartisanship is a fool’s game — and, in this case, a deadly one.
