Democrats can’t use reconciliation to pass their radical election bill, so they’d have to circumvent the filibuster in order to do so.
While Sinema supports the legislation, she won’t support passing by nixing the filibuster. It must pass by normal rules, meaning it will need bipartisan support to get through the Senate:
POLITICO – Kyrsten Sinema supports the elections reform bill that Democrats are considering a year-end push to pass. She doesn’t support a shortcut around the filibuster to get it done.
The Arizona moderate is making clear that she intends to keep protecting the Senate’s 60-vote requirement on most legislation and she isn’t ready to entertain changing rules to pass sweeping elections or voting legislation with a simple majority. Her Democratic colleagues have been discussing those revisions as they weigh dropping their focus on President Joe Biden’s $1.7 trillion climate and social spending bill and pivoting to voting rights, though it’s not clear that avenue will be any more successful.
In a statement to POLITICO, a spokesperson said that Sinema “continues to support the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, to protect the country from repeated radical reversals in federal policy which would cement uncertainty, deepen divisions, and further erode Americans’ confidence in our government.” Since joining the Senate in 2019, Sinema’s been a fierce defender of the filibuster and warned that reversing it could lead to terrible outcomes for Democrats down the line.
Sinema continues to support the Freedom to Vote Act, which was negotiated with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), as well as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, even as she raises questions about how to pass those bills in an evenly divided Senate. Democratic senators have mostly focused on lobbying Manchin to try and sway him to pass elections legislation with a simple majority, but Sinema isn’t there yet either.
Importantly, Democrats are no longer trying to scrap the filibuster altogether given Manchin’s and Sinema’s opposition to that step. Instead, they’re pivoting to an attempt to sway the duo to support a rules change that could enable legislation curbing gerrymandering and restoring the Voting Rights Act to evade the 60-vote requirement.
The leading options that Manchin and Sinema’s colleagues hope to sway them on are installing the talking filibuster, which would force the minority to hold the floor and continuously put up at least 41 votes to block legislation, or creating a filibuster exception specific to the issue of elections and voting.
Regardless, Democrats would need to use the so-called “nuclear option” to change the Senate’s rules on a simple majority vote, something Manchin and Sinema have typically opposed. After Wednesday afternoon’s meeting, Manchin said the issue is “a tough one … because what goes around comes around here. You’ve got to be very careful what you do.”
Democrats can’t pass Biden’s disastrous bill and now they are going to be stymied once again by the wonderful intransigent opposition on the part of Sinema and Manchin. I’m telling you if it weren’t for those two, Democrats would have destroyed the filibuster long ago and they’d passing every radical bill they can.
I know they are Democrats, but Sinema and Manchin are essentially American heroes for standing up to their party so staunchly and protecting the country for their radical, socialist agenda. And I pray that doesn’t change.