Waters’ silly slam on Manchin, Sinema

It is a sad state of affairs when making perfectly rational and consistent arguments get people smeared and attacked.

Such is the case with the Democratic Party’s breathless attacks on Sens. Joe Manchin. D-West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona, for defending the U.S. Senate’s 60-vote threshold for legislation to be passed.

Manchin and Sinema have rightly noted that eliminating the standard sets a terrible precedent that will certainly be used by Republicans when they eventually take back control of the Senate.

It will also undercut the very purpose of the Senate, which is to be a deliberative body that mediates the extremes in pursuit of middle ground.

It’s a position taken, once upon a time, by Sens. Barack Obama, Joseph Biden and current Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Bottom line is very simple: The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called ‘the cooling saucer of democracy’ into the rubber stamp of dictatorship. We will not let them,” said Schumer in 2005.

How times change.

Suddenly, this position has become grounds for endless smearing of Manchin and Synema, even to the point of absurdity.

“We have two Democrats, Manchin and Sinema, and they are holding up the Democratic agenda,” said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Inglewood. “They have decided that they are going to stick with support of the filibuster, and they don’t care whether or not they undermine the rights of minorities and Blacks in this country.”

This is Twitter-level argumentation.

Manchin and Sinema are standing up for an institution that many of their longtime Democratic colleagues have defended when Republicans were in the majority and trying to do the very thing that Democrats are now trying to do.

Manchin and Sinema are taking the long view of where things could go if they move to support the end of the filibuster. It’s not complicated.

Just because Democrats want to ram through legislation that doesn’t have broad public support doesn’t mean Manchin and Sinema must sacrifice a standard that encourages compromise