Joe Manchin Has Found A Confusing Reason Not To Back Kamala Harris

Retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) declared on Tuesday he could not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president because she supported getting rid of the filibuster to pass legislation restoring abortion rights.

“Shame on her,” Manchin told CNN on Tuesday. “She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids.”

Harris and President Joe Biden have both publicly been in favor of carving out exceptions to the filibuster to restore abortion rights since at least June 2022, making Manchin’s outburst a little late. And former President Donald Trump — the only person besides Harris with a chance of winning the presidency — has also endorsed ending the filibuster.

But Manchin’s explanation for his anger at Harris’ stance runs counter to history.

The filibuster is a loophole in Senate rules that allows senators to speak for a long time on the Senate floor in order to delay or prevent passage of legislation. It’s a de facto 60-vote requirement for passing legislation, since that’s the threshold for ending debate. In short, it’s a workaround to keep the Senate from passing anything under a simple majority.

The case against the filibuster is well-known: It grants the minority party an effective veto over basically all but the most necessary or uncontroversial legislation, further distorting a representative body that’s already massively distorted by differences in population between the states, in which sparse states like Wyoming get equal say with Florida and New York. And it makes it difficult to pass even policies that are massively popular with the public through Congress’ upper chamber.