Yup, this is the risk. It's already happening. And that's why I've become so pessimistic about a Republican speaking out with a bold principled stance achieves. If the entirely predictable outcome is that they'll soon be replaced by a hardcore Trumpist...
NEW: I profiled Joe Manchin. I cover his 4-decade career, and his improbable rise to become Democrats’ key 50th senator.
I interviewed him about the filibuster, HR1, the minimum wage, whether he’d ever switch parties, and more. Some highlights: vox.com/22339531/manch…
On Manchin's op-ed saying there's no circumstance under which he'll eliminate the filibuster:
“The op-ed was as clear as it could be... If you want to argue about it for two years, then you’re going to waste a lot of your energy and your time.”
Manchin on HR1/S1: “How in the world could you, with the tension we have right now, allow a voting bill to restructure the voting of America on a partisan line?”
He insists it will just feed more distrust in the system and "anarchy" like Jan 6 — "I'm not going to be part of it"
Separately, @mattyglesias has written a critique of the bill today.
When I asked about redistricting I was told that the politics of it are extremely fraught among House Ds and considering their small majority, a broader overhaul is just too difficult
I promise you, if the Senate can line up 71 votes, they can overcome today's filibusters! This was not a feature somehow unique to the "talking" system.
The supermajority threshold to advance legislation is what matters. Not the spectacle.
What "talking filibuster" proponents are really hoping for is that, by making the filibuster more "painful" to use, they will turn back the clock to when it was much more rarely used.
I think this is a total misunderstanding of current partisan dynamics.
Dunno exactly how it would be structured but Manchin doesn't seem to be inclined toward the "Trojan horse to let Dems slip stuff through with a majority" version of the talking filibuster.
He seems to be saying "make 'em talk but Ds still need 60."
The GA election call most people think of is the Raffensperger call which broke (with accurate audio) 1/3. Capitol-storming was 1/6. The incorrectly-quoted (deservingly corrected) story was on 1/9 about a separate GA call. Didn't really shape narrative
The report on the Trump/Raffensperger call, with audio, was a bombshell and shaped the narrative. It was totally accurate.
The (now-corrected) 1/9 report on Trump's call with another GA official was more of a follow-up. Oh, he did a similar thing in this other call too.
Trump was indeed doing a similar thing in this separate call, but the exact quotes the Post's source (a state official) attributed to Trump were wrong.
Substantively, "find the fraud" vs. find "dishonesty" in Fulton seems immaterial. "National hero" seems more off.
1) Dem opposition to reform may be broader than Manchin and Sinema. But many you'd expect to be skeptics are on board or open. And if you win over Manchin and Sinema, you've probably won over everybody else