Thread by @drvolts

I know I should probably be trying to decode the 12D chess or whatever, but I'm distracted by all the mistaken assumptions, bad history, poor reasoning, & preening vanity here. washingtonpost.com/opinions/joe-m…

I'm trying to resist yelling about this piece for all eternity, but the key question Manchin doesn't address is, why, if small/rural states are already over-represented in the Senate, we *also* need a 60-vote supermajority requirement.

Or why the public would trust a Senate that passes legislation less than one that can't.

Or why rural areas in California, which are cumulatively larger than the whole state of WV, deserve normal Senate representation while the rural people of WV deserve extra.

Or what the common interests of low-population states could possibly fucking consist in. What is it, specifically, that Delaware & Wyoming share that warrants their citizens extra Senate representation?

Or what exactly it means that Republicans "have a responsibility to stop saying no & participate in finding real compromise with Dems." Responsibility to whom? Their voters don't want them to. Their donors don't want them to. It doesn't serve their political interests. So...?

Or why we should take the sweet nothings Republicans whisper in Manchin's ear in the cloakroom more seriously than we take their clear pattern of public behavior.

Or why losing the entirety of the remaining Democratic agenda is a worthwhile price to pay for Senate comity & tradition that Republicans will promptly light on fire the next time they take over.

Read @AJentleson's book. The filibuster is literally an accident; no one ever *intended* it. It's a weird quirk in the rules that nobody even thought to exploit for decades. And the vast preponderance of uses have been to defend racism & segregation. wwnorton.com/books/97816314…

Public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans were on board with civil rights laws in the 1950s. There were numerous attempts to respond to public will by passing them -- blocked by the filibuster. By Manchin's logic, that's a good thing. Gotta protect rural states.

Final thing: here's a series I assembled in [squints] 2010 called "Rules of enragement: The filibuster and Senate reform." Had pieces from @tomudall, @mattyglesias, @KagroX, @MimiMarziani, & me. Our conclusion: the filibuster is bad. grist.org/series/2010-07…

Last night 👆 I ranted a bit about the filibuster, in case yer interested. (Spoiler: it's bad.)