By now, every news editor in America must know that it's Kyrsten Sinema, not Kirsten, or Kristen, or Kristine, or any even more distant variant. But could any of them explain her strategy? Joe Manchin I get, he represents West Virginia, where sticking it to his own party is popular, but Sinema is an Arizonan and the state Democratic party has just censured her for preferring the filibuster to voting rights. Her approval rating among Arizona Democrats is so dismal—below 10 percent—that there's been speculation she might jump parties. That also doesn't make much sense, however. Sinema is openly bisexual, supports abortion rights, is said to be the only nontheist in the Congress, and voted to convict Trump in both impeachment trials. She's in the Senate, so by definition she's ambitious, but political orphans rarely win a party nomination for high office.
Do we have to consider the possibility that her stance is explained by devotion to lofty principles of governance? The filibuster seems like an odd choice of hill to die on. I will write checks to "Sinema for Senate" because I, too, worship the filibuster! No one says that. In her public statements, Sinema has indicated that the traditions of the Senate require a bipartisan supermajority in order to move legislation forward. True, to a degree, but also laughable. A brief history of the current problem begins with the Supreme Court of the Republican party gutting the Voting Rights Act. This required only a simple majority of justices. Republican state legislatures then rushed into the breach and passed restrictive laws making it harder to vote. A simple majority always sufficed to pass the restrictive laws. Congressional Democrats, who are in the majority, want to reverse what the states have done, but now suddenly a supermajority is required. Revoke by simple majority, restore only by a supermajority. Sinema: "I'm cool with that."
Of course, the filibustering senators represent the same states that have adopted restrictive voting laws. Sinema will wait a long time for Republican senators to undo what other Republicans have done. It's obvious that the filibuster isn't an agent of bipartisan comity. It's an arrow in the quiver of partisan wranglers.
Republicans who for the moment approve of Sinema's view of the filibuster say that the Senate is working as the founders intended. When someone says that the founders intended X, X invariably aligns with their interests but hardly ever with the founders' intent. The Constitution sets out rare instances requiring a Senate supermajority—for example, approving treaties negotiated by the executive branch (Article 2, Section 2) and conviction in impeachment trials (Article 1, Section 3). It clearly assumes, then, that for the ordinary business of legislating a simple majority should suffice. It's true that senators represent entire states and have a term of six years. But the longer term and broader constituency is intended to make the Senate less susceptible to a day's strong wind, which should be distinguished from the effects of a paralytic stroke. Here is Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 22:
To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision) is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser number. . . . The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength, of its government is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must in some way or other go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority in order that something may be done must confirm to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.
It's as if Hamilton peered far into the future, glimpsed Mitch McConnell and Kyrsten Sinema, shivered, and picked up his pen.
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