Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris’s vow to create a carve-out for the filibuster to pass abortion legislation has cost her Independent Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia’s support.
Manchin, a centrist senator who has fought to maintain the filibuster and indicated he supported Harris’s bid for the presidency after he departed the Democratic Party earlier in the year, said Tuesday that removing the filibuster would be a mistake.
“I have been consistent on the importance of protecting the 60-vote threshold, which we call the filibuster since I arrived at the United States Senate. This threshold stabilizes our democracy, promotes bipartisan cooperation, and protects our nation from partisan whiplash and dysfunction,” said Manchin.
“I have always said: ‘If you can’t change your mind, you can’t change anything,’ and I am hopeful that the Vice President remains open to doing just that,” added Manchin.
On CNN earlier Tuesday, the independent senator expressed his displeasure with the vice president’s stance, calling the filibuster in the Senate “the Holy Grail of democracy.”
“Shame on her,” said Manchin to the outlet. “She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids.”
When asked if he would support Harris for president after hinting he would once she replaced President Joe Biden in July atop the Democratic ticket, he said he wouldn’t because of her vow on the filibuster.
“That ain’t going to happen,” said Manchin. “I think that basically can destroy our country, and my country is more important to me than any one person or any one person’s ideology. … I think it’s the most horrible thing.”
VP Harris said she would favor removing the filibuster to enact federal right to abortion
In an interview that aired Tuesday on Wisconsin Public Radio Tuesday, VP Harris stated she would favor removing the filibuster to enact a federal right to an abortion based on the precedent set in the Roe vs. Wade now-overruled decision.
“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe and get us to the point where … 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back into law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” said Harris.
Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another vocal supporter of the protection of the filibuster, posted Tuesday on X that Harris’s proposal is “an absolutely terrible, shortsighted idea” and argued it “enables a future Congress to ban all abortion nationwide.”
Both Manchin and Sinema declined to run for reelection to their respective Senate seats after they both departed the Democratic Party to become independent during their most recent terms.
Senator Manchin floated a run as an independent for Senator and later for a run for the Democratic nomination after Joe Biden dropped out, but ultimately, he declined to do so.
