Samuel Case, FISM News
Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is breaking ranks with her fellow Democrats in defending the filibuster; calling it “a tool that protects the democracy of our nation.”
A reporter speaking with Sinema described the filibuster as “a relic of the Jim Crow era,” and asked “if you don’t support things from the Jim Crow era, why would you support the filibuster?
The replied as follows:
[The filibuster is] a tool that protects the democracy of our nation rather than allowing our country to ricochet wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies. The idea of the filibuster was created … to create comity and to encourage senators to find bipartisanship and work together . . . when you have a system that’s not working effectively — and I would think that most would agree that the Senate’s not a particularly well-oiled machine, right? The way to fix that is to change your behavior, not to eliminate the rules or change the rules, but to change your behavior.
Watch:
Standing next to Republican Sen. John Cornyn, Democratic @SenatorSinema says the filibuster "protects the democracy of our nation."
Cornyn voted to filibuster creating an independent commission to examine the 1/6 attack on our democracy. Sinema didn't vote. pic.twitter.com/zUTE9utzqp
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) June 2, 2021
Senate Democrats including Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey both of Massachusetts claim that the filibuster is a holdover from the days of slavery in the United States and should be done away with. However, even the left-leaning Washington Post says Ed Markey’s claim that “the filibuster was created so that slave owners could hold power over our government” is historically inaccurate. Ironically, Elizabeth Warren has also been known to make use of filibuster when Republicans have control.
In addition to Sinema, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has also spoken out against ending the 60-vote threshold. Machin told Fox News, “the Senate, this so unique body in the world, it was made to work together in a bipartisan way. And once you start breaking down those barriers, then you lose every reason that we are the institution that we are, the most deliberative body.”