Manchin's filibuster defense contradicts the Senate legacy he claims to protect [View all]

[Celerity]

The senator from West Virginia says he sees himself as a defender of the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd. If we review Byrd's legacy, however, it's clear Manchin is not doing that.

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Joe Manchin of West Virginia is the Democrats' pivotal 50th vote in the Senate — the key to passing bills with a simple majority. (With the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.) He is also pivotal for changing the filibuster rule. His vote is pursued as decisive for President Joe Biden's infrastructure proposals and for passing S. 1, the For the People Act, to protect the right to vote and repair the corrupting campaign finance system.

So his party is forced to take notice when Manchin declares, as he did in a Washington Post opinion piece last week, "There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster." Manchin also challenges the use of reconciliation as not good for the future of the country, and he seeks a bipartisan solution to the democracy reforms in S. 1.

Yet Manchin's positions here go against a legacy he has long insisted he is committed to protecting. When Manchin, then the governor of West Virginia, was first elected to the Senate in 2010, he took the seat of a historic figure, the late Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd, longest-serving senator in U.S. history, who was known for his mastery of the Senate and its rules. Manchin, in fact, has emphasized that he sees himself as "a person that's going to defend the legacy of Robert C. Byrd."

If we review Byrd's legacy, however, it is that clear Manchin is not doing that. Byrd did not believe he was weakening the filibuster rule when he engineered successful revisions to it. He did not believe the reconciliation process was bad for the country when he played a key role in creating it. He fought hard for his campaign finance reform bill — and never believed that Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his Republican colleagues were interested in reaching a bipartisan solution.

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