Democrats know Sinema was right about the filibuster. They won't admit it. | Opinion
To see progressive Democrats today embrace a Senate tool they once described as outdated and racist is, above all, clarifying.
Looks like more and more Democrats are returning to their roots.
They’re siding with Jim Crow.
What else to conclude when they embrace the same legislative tool their Southern forerunners – the Dixie Democrats – used to deny civil rights to Black people.
Or perhaps something else is afoot.
The Democratic Party is reformed. It gave up cones and bedsheets a long time ago. Then it started calling Republicans “racist” and the true heirs to the Dixiecrats.
Democrats attack two of their own
But they didn’t just go after Republicans. A few years ago, they pulled out their paint brushes and began to apply the stain of America’s racist past on two of their own who would not get out of the way of their legislative agenda.
Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin refused to help their party abolish the legislative filibuster in the U.S. Senate to make way for the passage of single-party, multitrillion dollar spending bills, voting reforms and the codification of Roe v. Wade.
The filibuster is an age-old tactic that gives senators the right to stop votes with unlimited debate. To stop that debate the majority must have a 60-vote supermajority, thus making 60 the threshold for most Senate bills.
It’s a tool that protects the minority from getting steamrolled by the majority while, in theory, promoting bipartisanship.
When the Democrats were in the Senate majority recently, they hated the filibuster. They said it had a sordid history because Southern senators had used it to block early civil rights legislation.
AOC, Obama, Biden indict the filibuster
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., described it as "a cherished tool of segregationists.”
Former President Barack Obama called it “a Jim Crow relic.” President Joe Biden heartily agreed.
Also, back in 2022, Robert Reich, former Labor secretary in the Clinton administration, harrumphed that Democrats must “Abolish the Jim Crow filibuster.”
So it was with no small amusement that Kyrsten Sinema greeted Reich’s tweet last Friday. He had encouraged Capitol Hill Democrats to filibuster the Republicans' continuing resolution and thus shut down the government.
Sinema responded on X: “Glad to see you’ve joined the filibuster admiration club!"
Democratic leaders ignored Reich. They struck an agreement with the Republicans to keep funding the government. Had they not, they feared the Republicans would have gone scorched earth eliminating more and more of the federal bureaucracy.
This infuriated Ocasio-Cortez, who expressed her "deep sense of outrage and betrayal” that her party leadership had joined Republicans to invoke cloture and prevent a filibuster.
Sinema was again delighted. She’d found a new friend.
"Change of heart on the filibuster, I see!” Sinema tweeted.
She also attached a screen grab of this badly aged AOC tweet from 2022: “We could protect Roe tomorrow, but Sinema refuses to act on (killing) the filibuster. Until that changes she can take a seat talking about 'women’s access to health care.' "
Now liberals gravitate to filibuster
With all the progressive Democrats turning into groupies for the filibuster, Sinema tweeted up a storm Friday night and into Saturday morning, welcoming them to her squad.
And look who showed up.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who tweeted: “Vote NO on cloture and NO on final passage of Republicans’ bad bill.”
Sinema responded, “Just surprised to see support for the 'Jim Crow filibuster' here.”
Of course, it’s only the “Jim Crow filibuster” when it helps Republicans.
Sinema predicted in a 2022 speech that Democrats would one day be glad she stopped them from destroying the filibuster: “Eliminating (the filibuster and) the 60-vote threshold will simply guarantee that we lose a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy from threats in the years to come.”
Some will call the former senator a hypocrite for voting for a filibuster carve-out in 2021 that allowed the U.S. government to raise the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion and avoid default.
But that was an unusual Senate moment when then-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell struck an agreement to increase the debt ceiling without the possibility of a filibuster. It was carve-out in service to bipartisanship and thus palatable to Sinema and Manchin.
Now, to see progressive Democrats embrace a Senate tool they once described as outdated and racist is, above all, clarifying. It shows you how the political left – the Democratic Party – exploits race to advance its politics.
When the Republicans are the minority and employ the filibuster, it's KKK!
When the Democrats are the minority and employ the filibuster, it's A-OK!
Phil Boas is a columnist for the Arizona Republic, where this column originally appeared. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com