President Biden slams Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema

When the Republican Senate was able to shoot down a bipartisan 1/6 commission last week, largely due to the refusal of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to exempt the vote from the filibuster, Palmer Report predicted that it would be the tipping point for major change.

Sure enough, President Biden forced the issue today when he pointed out that he “only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.”

This was a clear reference to Manchin and Sinema. While they haven’t been literally voting with the Republicans, they’ve effectively been voting with the Republicans by allowing current filibuster rules to remain in place, which has given the Republicans a ten vote advantage.

A few things are notable here. First, the Democrats are probably better off with the bipartisan 1/6 commission vote having failed, because now they get to appoint a 1/6 select committee which will give them more power. Second, the failed vote appeared to give Manchin the cover he felt he needed to finally begin publicly attacking Republican Senators for their obstructionism, which felt a lot like he was finally laying the groundwork to make exemptions to the filibuster. Third, just after the 1/6 vote failed, Chuck Schumer scheduled the HR1 voting rights legislation vote for later this month, suggesting that there has indeed been major movement behind the scenes on filibuster reform.

Now we have President Biden directly calling out and criticizing Manchin and Sinema today, in a way that’s going to massively ramp up the pressure on the two of them to allow filibuster exemptions on important legislation. Manchin and Sinema won’t be able to withstand the pressure that’s about to hit them, particularly if we all pile on. We can get them to cave on this, and get HR1 passed. Biden just supercharged the process.