Democrats are going to try — and fail — to erode the filibuster for voting rights legislation Wednesday. But there are also signs that the party is coalescing around having a litmus test of filibuster changes, at least on legislation specific to election reform.
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) has, at times, been open to this change, known as the “talking filibuster,” which forces senators to talk to block legislation and restricts how many times they can give speeches.
Powerful Democratic interest groups on the other side of the spectrum — abortion rights groups NARAL and Emily’s List — put the pressure on senators who don’t support changing the filibuster.
Emily’s List, which backs female candidates in support of abortion rights, said it will no longer support Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) for her role in opposing any filibuster changes. “[W]e believe she undermines the foundations of our democracy, her own path to victory and also the mission of EMILY’s List, and we will be unable to endorse her moving forward,” Emily’s List President Laphonza Butler said in a statement Tuesday.
NARAL also explicitly linked Democrats’ election-reform bills to the party’s core issue of supporting abortion rights.
The freedom to vote is a fundamental freedom—inextricably linked to reproductive freedom. NARAL’s commitment to voting rights is unwavering. We won’t endorse any senators who don’t support changing the Senate rules to pass the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.
— NARAL (@NARAL) January 18, 2022
Because the Senate filibuster is all that stands in the way of passing two election-reform bills, eroding it is quickly becoming synonymous with support for other Democratic priorities. A you’re-with-us-or-against-us mentality is coalescing.
Even as Democrats face a pretty big failure Wednesday on this front when at least two of their senators vote with Republicans not to change the filibuster to pass voting rights, there’s evidence that the battle has transformed the party so much that it could become a litmus test.
There could be an expectation for future Democratic Senate candidates that they should support changing the filibuster for voting rights — or perhaps another issue — if Senate Democrats hold on to the majority.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has openly talked about supporting primary challengers to the two Senate Democrats increasingly on an island on this issue: Sinema and Manchin.
A year or so ago, it was not a given that the Democratic Party would be this forceful on changes to the filibuster. President Biden wasn’t on board for much of his campaign; he opposed getting rid of the filibuster during the presidential primary when other candidates embraced it, only to open the door a crack after he won the primary: “It’s going to depend on how obstreperous they become. But I think you’re going to just have to take a look at it.”
Five current U.S. senators who ran for president alongside him were also hesitant to eliminate the filibuster. (Although, at the time, there wasn’t as nuanced a discussion between eliminating the filibuster entirely and carving out an exception for voting rights legislation. Though some Senate legislative experts argue that’s a distinction without a difference; they say the filibuster is probably doomed eventually, and it’s just a matter of which party takes the first whack at it. There’s no longer a filibuster for presidential nominees, including Supreme Court picks, thanks to actions taken by both parties but precipitated by Democrats.)
As Democrats took the majority in Washington last year and the conversation around the filibuster centered on voting rights, a Washington Post tracker noted how several Senate Democrats, like Kelly, were conspicuously quiet about where they stood on this issue. They were happy to let Manchin and Sinema take the heat on this.
But now that they’re forced to vote, it looks possible that every Democratic senator but Manchin and Sinema will side with the Democratic base on this.
“Protecting the vote-by-mail system used by a majority of Arizonans and getting dark money out of our elections is too important to let fall victim to Washington dysfunction,” Kelly said in a statement.
A group of former Democratic senators from red states — led by Doug Jones of Alabama — also just said they support Democratic leaders’ proposed changes to the filibuster: “[I]n today’s Senate, certain Senate rules, including the filibuster, have clearly become weaponized legislative tools for obstruction rather than progress,” they wrote.
It remains to be seen how this shift against the filibuster will immediately manifest in the Democratic Party.
This November, they are trying to keep their tenuous hold on the Senate majority. And they’ll be defending it in races in purple states — Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and New Hampshire — where, with the exception of Georgia, it’s not clear how much this debate resonates with voters. (Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) has become one of the Senate’s leading voices for changes to the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.) It’s at least possible that, after Wednesday, this fades as an issue of importance in the Democratic Party.
But there are plenty of signs that the opposite will happen, that supporting changes to the filibuster (on voting rights or perhaps other issues) could soon become a red line in the Democratic Party.
