Kyrsten Sinema reiterates support for the filibuster...again

[Del Tachi]

1) The filibuster actively disincentivizes compromise and encourages partisanship-fueled, crippling dysfunction.[/url]

I don't understand the logic of this argument.  The filibuster actually ensures compromise by requiring an affirmative supermajority to advance legislation.  A majority party that could pass any bill with only 50 votes would never have any reason to compromise, and this is exactly what we see with reonciliation bills like TCJA and ARPA.      

2) Respecting minority rights doesn’t mean “the majority party should have zero ability to pass 90% of its agenda, regardless of how popular it is;” that’s called tyranny of the majority and is why the filibuster is something the founders expressly opposed.

Maybe this is a quaint answer, but there's at least some truth in the idea that if Democrats' agenda was *so popular then Republican senators, as well as Democratic holdouts like Manchin/Sinema, would be feeling more pressure from their constituents to get onboard.  They don't, so it must be that positive issue polling on discrete, amorphous issues like "voting rights" doesn't actually translate into a workable legislative majority (which should not be very surprising.)

[Del Tachi]

The problem with what Sinema is saying is that she's not technically wrong in the sense that yes, this is why things were put in place the way they are - but she's not addressing the fact that this isn't your normal everyday GOP.

Yes, was the 60 vote threshold MEANT for bipartisanship and for extremes not to take hold in either direction? Yes, she's right. It was. But it also wasn't meant for a competing party that was refusing to work in any good faith.

She needs to answer follow up questions. We get where you stand, but how do you expect to get things done with a party that is obstructing nearly every single agenda item and refuses to cooperate?She's living in this fantasy land where the GOP is willing to work with Democrats on the agenda, and that's not reality. So she is failing to come up with a solution to that issue. OK, you won't blow up the filibuster. But then what are you doing to get GOPers on board, and what is your backup plan to get stuff done if they won't??

This post does not engage with reality.

Right now, there is an almost $600B bipartisan infrastructure package to be released that will almost certainly be passed with more than 60 votes.  All of Biden's cabinet nominees (save one) were confirmed with supermajorities in the Senate, as have most of his judicial nominees.  This Senate has passed, with huge bipartisan majorities, new federal hate crime legislation, an extension of the PPP program, and the largest industrial technology bill in American history.  

If the GOP was truly only a party of obstruction, none of this would have come to pass.