“I guess this is just another lost cause, Mr. Paine. All you people don’t know about lost causes. Mr. Paine does. He said once they were the only causes worth fighting for. And he fought for them once, for the only reason any man ever fights for them. Because of just one, plain, simple rule: ‘Love thy neighbor.’”
Those are the famous last words of filmdom’s most famous senator, delivered during a filibuster by the title character (played by Jimmy Stewart) in Frank Capra’s movie classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Ah yes, the filibuster! The last-ditch effort of an outnumbered person or party to prevent a malicious majority from perpetrating some outrage.
It’s one of the older and more precious tools in our democratic toolbox. Its form has shifted slightly over the years, but its utility has never changed: to cool our hottest, most partisan instincts and force a larger consensus.
How many lament how far our country has fallen over the last several decades? Yet, if not for the filibuster, we’d have fallen farther.
Like Jimmy Stewart’s iconic character, we see the filibuster as a moral tool for protecting the public and the consensus of the governed from the more narrow goals of politicians making hyper-partisan moves.
Today, the filibuster has been turned on its head by those who would rather not go to the trouble of convincing a majority of the nation’s elected representatives of the benefit of their ideas. Today, those who hate the filibuster see it as an evil, standing in the way of their view of progress.
Sen. Joe Manchin could be the man who saves the filibuster, but will he? We sure hope so. We want our senior senator to fight for what his constituents believe in and support, just like Senator Smith did. After all, Smith was doing his constituents' bidding, not that of his party.
A statewide poll shows more than 60 percent of West Virginia voters support Manchin's public opposition to changes to the filibuster rule.
But even if Senator Manchin is inclined to the wishes of his political party more than West Virginia voters, he still has a practical reason to support maintaining the filibuster as it stands.
Recent polls across the country show Democrats currently are losing ground to Republicans. President Biden's own poll numbers are under water. If the mid-term election were held today, it is possible that the Senate would flip to Republican control. Biden’s party holds the slimmest majority in Washington perhaps in history. So the irony is that the very tool the Democrats all seem to hate right now will be swiftly used against them, just as their loosening of the filibuster rules for nominating federal judges was used by Mitch McConnell to fill the bench with conservative judges.
Democrats want to eliminate the filibuster so that they can do whatever they please. And when they are no longer in the majority, it’ll be the Republicans’ turn.
Manchin’s fellow Democratic Senator, Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, said, "if we eliminate the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, we will lose much more than we gain."
Does Manchin want his legacy to be that he helped conservatives pass their wish list with a simple majority? Or does he want to be the hero of consensus, which is the essence of the filibuster.
The fact is, Manchin’s current stand on the filibuster is the right one and will save his party from future calamity. Senators Manchin and Sinema seem to be the only ones in their caucus thinking more long term. The real question is: Can Mr. Manchin see his stance through to the end?
We hope so, and we believe that West Virginia’s real senator will take strength from Hollywood’s fictional Jefferson Smith: "Great principles don't get lost once they come to light. They're right here. You just have to see them again!"