Everyone is being dishonest about the filibuster — including Kamala Harris

During her speech at the Democratic National Convention some weeks ago, Vice President Kamala Harris imparted some wisdom from her later mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris. “Never do anything half-assed,” she said, insisting: “That is a direct quote.”

But on Tuesday, she seemed to betray that virtue when she told Wisconsin Public Radio that she would support eliminating the filibuster to restore abortion rights enshrined in Roe v Wade. To be clear, that would mean getting rid of the filibuster only in the case of reproductive access — and not for other issues.

Nobody should be surprised by this. In 2022, after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson opinion leaked, Harris and Democrats supported doing the very same thing.

The attempt ultimately failed, thanks to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin — then a Democrat who has since become an independent — opposing the legislation. That meant Democrats, who only had 50 seats with Harris serving as a tie-breaker, couldn’t even get past the first hurdle in trying to make it a reality.

Unsurprisingly, Manchin went into a rage this week when Harris made her announcement.

“It's hard for me to endorse anybody that accepts you can get rid of the 60-vote threshold,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

It’s a change in tune for Manchin, who praised Harris recently in a conversation with me after the first debate between Harris and Trump. When Harris defended fracking at that time, Manchin told The Independent, “I was tickled to death,” because “now we have a policy that’s producing energy that we need and investing in energy we want.” It seemed likely at that juncture that he would endorse her.

Whatever Manchin thinks will be irrelevant next year, given he is retiring and he has always liked