Reprinted from hartmannreport.com
Are Manchin and Sinema white supremacists? Or doing the work of white supremacists who finance them? Or just cynically using white supremacy to advance their political goals?
I guess the real question is, "Why?"
Are she and Senator Joe Manchin white supremacists? Or in league with them/working for them? Or two steps removed, working for people willing to cynically exploit white supremacy for their own continued wealth and power?
Is it possible that Amy Siskind is right and Sinema is just so delusional that she plans to use this as the basis of a run for president? Does she really think destroying voting rights will establish her as the new John McCain-style "lovable rogue" candidate?
It's definitely not about the "sanctity" or "tradition" of the filibuster. Both Sinema and Manchin have voted multiple times to blow that up or get around it when it was convenient for things they cared about, as has pretty much every Republican member of the Senate.
America has, since our founding, always had a strong white supremacist political faction. Usually it's concentrated in a single political party, but there are often a few white supremacist members who've embedded themselves in parties that more generally have embraced pluralism and democracy.
Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin are those outliers doing the work of white supremacists or using the political strategy of promoting white supremacy in today's Democratic Party.
And, like the white supremacists of my youth in the 1950s and 60s, they hide their dirty work with high-sounding phrases like "bipartisanship" and "states' rights." Like those white supremacist senators of earlier times - the Strom Thurmonds of the Senate - the weapon they rely on is the filibuster.
But today's political battle is not about the filibuster; it's about voting rights. And we have the receipts.
Just one month ago this week, both Sinema and Manchin voted to set aside the filibuster temporarily to raise the debt ceiling so the defense contractors who suck up about half of our annual Pentagon budget could get paid.
Going around the filibuster to help morbidly rich CEOs and wealthy shareholders of companies that make bombs and airplanes is good, they're telling us; going around the filibuster to help college students and minorities vote, however, is a bridge too far.
As Representative Pramilla Jayapal said yesterday about this voting rights legislation, "Our democracy doesn't survive without this."
This stain on our nation, this disgrace of white supremacy and Black voter suppression - and the failure to win the battle to overcome both - have gone on altogether too long. There has literally not been a year, since 1789, without them.
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