The Media’s All-In Campaign to Destroy the Filibuster

By David Harsanyi

Friday, March 26, 2021

 

As we speak, there is no bill on the congressional docket that would provide Democrats an excuse to blow up the filibuster — or, as the media might euphemistically refer to it, “reforming” or “overhauling” the filibuster.

 

One day, of course, there will be. Democrats, after all, used the filibuster hundreds of times in the past few years. But as far as we know, the party doesn’t have the votes for their election-integrity-killing bill. They don’t have the votes for a gun-restriction bill. Not any bill.

 

Yet, a casual follower of politics would surely be under the impression that there is a pressing battle unfolding because the media are incessantly covering the filibuster issue as a way to pressure holdout moderate Democrats to join the Left in the efforts to destroy the Senate.

 

Take Manu Raju at CNN, whose main job it seems is to badger Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema with hypothetical questions about stripping Senate guardrails to allow Democrats to jam through their agenda with a narrow majority. Would you blow them up for a gun bill? Would you blow them up for a voting bill? Would you like it in a house? Would you like it with a mouse? Would you? Could you? In a car?

 

If you’re skeptical that the press engages as partisan advocates, check out the memos of Adam Jentleson, once Harry Reid’s deputy chief of staff and now a leading advocate of destroying Senate norms. The memos offer talking points and frame the filibuster issue in progressive terms for activists. Most questions from the press use nearly verbatim the language that Jentleson lays out.

 

For example, a section titled “Frame the Question in Concrete Terms” instructs activists to avoid talking about norms but rather to pressure senators on the underlying bills.

 

Here is a suggested question:

 

Senator, if Republicans filibuster [HR1, or the FAMILY Act, or the Manchin-Toomey background checks bill], would you support efforts to reform or abolish the filibuster in order to pass it?

 

Well, this is exactly what Raju asked Manchin the other day. Now, either journalists are using Jentleson’s language, which would be unethical, or they are already predisposed to asking questions in the exact terms left-wing activists want them to — which is probably even worse.

 

In July 2020, before Democrats had even won their slim Senate majority, Raju was already haranguing Manchin and framing the filibuster — a “stall tactic” — in left-wing terms. To which Manchin emphatically responded, “That’s bullshit.” And then noted he had opposed a Democratic Party effort to kill the filibuster in 2013 and would do it again. Boy, that seems pretty clear to me.

 

Not to the New York Times, though, which asked Manchin in January of this year about the filibuster, to which he answered, “I can assure you I will not vote to end the filibuster, because that would break the Senate.”

 

On March 1, after months of being asked the same question in nearly every interview, Manchin lashed out at reporters: “Jesus Christ, what don’t you understand about ‘never’?” Apparently, that wasn’t clear enough, either.

 

A few days later, Chuck Todd asked him again. To which Manchin said: “I’m not going to change my mind on the filibuster.” And a few days after that, when he was asked by Politico: “I want to make it very clear to everybody: There’s no way that I would vote to prevent the minority from having input into the process in the Senate. That means protecting the filibuster. It must be a process to get to that 60-vote threshold.”

 

Yesterday, Raju tweeted: “Just asked Kyrsten Sinema – who refuses to answer questions – whether she’d be open at all to reducing the 60-vote threshold on the filibuster. ‘I love your enthusiasm,’ she said as the elevator doors closed.”

 

One hopes that Sinema is channeling Martha McSally, but the fact is the senator hasn’t refused to answer questions. Her office stated that she is “against eliminating the filibuster, and she is not open to changing her mind.” What Raju means is that Sinema refuses to answer the same question for the 90th time.

 

The media could be asking more-meaningful questions, instead of raw advocacy for the progressive wing. Why isn’t Raju demanding Brian Schatz, Tim Kaine, Ed Markey, Michael Bennet, Amy Klobuchar — or any of the numerous other Democrats who signed Susan Collins’s 2018 letter promising to preserve the 60-vote threshold for legislation — explain why they were fine using this supposedly racist relic of Jim Crow hundreds of times in the past few years? Why? Why? Why?

 

Why, senators, are you pretending that you are facing unprecedented gridlock only two weeks after passing one of the largest pieces of legislation in history? Why? Why? Why?

 

Hey, Senator Markey, you say that the “filibuster was created so that slave owners could hold power over our government.” Yet in 2018, you said it was a tool that “recognizes the rights of the minority and makes bipartisan legislation.” Why do you now want to eliminate the minority’s voice? Will you change your mind? Will you? Will you? Will you?

 

Why doesn’t Raju, or Todd, or any other high-profile political reporter badger Manchin or Sinema about turning on the Hyde amendment — which has suddenly been abandoned after 50 years? Senator Manchin, why, after decades, do you believe taxpayers should be forced to fund late-term abortions? Will you change your mind? Huh? Huh? Huh?

 

Why? Because the entire focus of political media coverage is dictated, framed, and articulated in whatever way Democrats deem important right now for partisan gain. At this point it is beyond bias. It’s corrupt.

 

Of the ten reporters that Joe Biden called on during his first press conference, three asked about the filibuster — though not a single one had any time for a question about COVID or other pressing issues. After four self-aggrandizing years of pretending to hold the powerful accountable, we are once again reminded that the political press largely exists to obsess over the Democrats’ agenda items.

 

In one interaction, PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche Alcindor, perhaps the most openly partisan “journalist” to ever appear at a presidential press conference, alleged that Republicans “are passing bill after bill trying to restrict voting rights. Chuck Schumer’s calling it an existential threat to democracy. Why not back a filibuster rule that at least gets around issues, including voting rights or immigration?”

 

Oh, is that what Chuck Schumer is calling it?

 

Alcindor doesn’t seem to possess a scintilla of journalistic curiosity or integrity. It’s shameful that the American people have to pay a cent of her salary. But at least she’s honest. The point of the incessant talk about the filibuster — or packing the courts or making D.C. a state or whatever the next leftist hobbyhorse might be — is to create pressure to push the agenda. Not every reporter is as ham-fisted an advocate for these leftist causes as Alcindor, but most are just as persistent. Ask and ask again. Kill the filibuster, they say, you may like it. Ram through bills and spending sprees. You may like it — you will see.