Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) will not side with her party to vote to change filibuster rules to pass the Democrat’s sweeping voting rights legislation.
Sinema, along with fellow centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) stated they could not support a “short-sighted” rules change.
“There’s no need for me to restate my longstanding support for the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation. There’s no need for me to restate its role in protecting our country from wild reversals of federal policy,” Sinema said on Thursday. “This week’s harried discussions about Senate rules are but a poor substitute for what I believe could have and should have been a thoughtful public debate at any time over the past year.”
The voting rights legislation would have stopped laws Republican-led states are passing in light of what Trump calls the “rigged” 2020 election. The Democrats view the laws as making it difficult for some people to vote.
Fellow Democrats poured their frustration onto social media.
President Joe Biden had said earlier this week that he would do everything he could to convince Sinema and Manchin to change their minds.
“Like every other major civil rights bill that came along, if we missed the first time, we could come back and try it a second time. We missed this time. We missed this time,” Biden said. “I don’t know that we can get it done, but I know one thing: As long as I have a breath in me, as long as I am in the White House, as long as I’m engaged at all, I’m gonna be fighting to change the way these legislatures have moved.”
