As Townhall reported Thursday morning, President Biden declared at the end of his trip to Europe that the legislative filibuster should be removed as an obstacle in order to allow Democrats to pass federal legislation permitting abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs.
We have to codify Roe v. Wade into law.
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 30, 2022
And as I said this morning: If the filibuster gets in the way, then we need to make an exception to get it done.
It's not the first time Biden called for the filibuster to be cast aside as an obstruction in the evenly-divided U.S. Senate to allow his party's leftist policies to skate through to a tie vote that would inevitably be broken by Vice President Kamala Harris. But previous calls from Biden and other Democrats to force radical legislation through the upper chamber by eliminating the filibuster's hurdle have all been shot down by...Democrats. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have stood against radical attempts to destroy the filibuster because they understand the importance of the procedural tool.
So on Thursday, after Biden again called for the filibuster to be cast aside in order to allow radical pro-abortion legislation to be forced through the narrowest of congressional minorities, all eyes moved to Democrat Senators Manchin and Sinema.
And, predictably, both Manchin and Sinema are holding fast to their principled opposition to eliminating the procedural guardrail that prevents slim partisan majorities from rolling minority resistance, something that was intended to make the Senate more deliberative than the House of Representatives and require legislation passed by the upper chamber to receive broad support.
According to staff for both Sinema and Manchin, their positions on the filibuster's importance have not changed since the Supreme Court released the Dobbs opinion or because pro-life trigger laws began to take effect in states nationwide.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s office says the Democratic senator is still opposed to gutting the filibuster on any topic including on reproductive rights.
— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) June 30, 2022
Sinema's staff pointed questions to an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in June of 2021 declaring "[w]e have more to lose than gain by ending the filibuster." Then, as now, Sinema's position on the legislative filibuster is crystal clear:
It’s no secret that I oppose eliminating the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. I held the same view during three terms in the U.S. House, and said the same after I was elected to the Senate in 2018. If anyone expected me to reverse my position because my party now controls the Senate, they should know that my approach to legislating in Congress is the same whether in the minority or majority.
A spokesperson for Senator Manchin also reiterated that the West Virginia moderate remained in opposition to the idea of changing the legislative filibuster, even with President Biden's call for such action to be undertaken.
Manchin’s position opposing reducing 60-vote threshold for filibuster also hasn’t changed despite Biden’s comments, per spox
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 30, 2022
Democrats, in their power-hungry disarray, don't care about breaking norms or shattering precedent — even when they do so at their own long-term disadvantage. They're scrambling ahead of the rapidly approaching midterm elections in which they are set to lose a number of seats and potentially their majorities in both chambers of Congress. Despite the fact that a looming red wave in November should be more reason to leave the legislative filibuster intact, Biden and radical Democrats are still trying to blow up the Senate norm to try and save their majorities with an action to allow abortion that's likely to be more radical than most Americans can stomach.
So while it looks like Manchin and Sinema's opposition to removing the 60-vote legislative filibuster in order to pass radical abortion legislation has halted that effort for now, Democrats are still rushing to come up with something — anything — to tout as proof they deserve Americans' votes in the midterms. But in the House, just 23 scheduled voting days are left before November's general elections while the Senate has fewer than 50 scheduled days in-session remaining.
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