On Tuesday, Joe Biden took a swipe at two Democrat Senate members that the president said “vote more with” his “Republican friends.”
Biden, who has often spoken of “unity” and coming together, made his partisan political remarks during a commemoration of the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.
Biden calls out Sinema and Manchin for not always towing Democratic party line @mkraju reports pic.twitter.com/dRtqNXJNno
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) June 1, 2021
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Biden: GOP Efforts A ‘Truly Unprecedented Assault On Our Democracy’
Biden highlighted the “right to vote” in one part of his speech, and attacked GOP election integrity efforts as trying “to replace nonpartisan election administrators and to intimidate those charged with tallying and reporting the election results.”
Biden insisted that this was a “truly unprecedented assault on our democracy.”
After urging Congress to take action, Biden then brought up “all the folks on TV” who he keep asking questions about why he hasn’t gotten “this done.”
Biden seemed to be pointing at two Democrat senators with a reputation for bipartisanship, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Both Manchin and Sinema supporting keeping the filibuster.
Biden says he has “two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends,” he says, presumably referring to Manchin and Sinema (though they vote far more with Democrats)
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 1, 2021
Biden Takes Aim At Two Democrats
Biden said, “I hear all the folks on TV saying, ‘why doesn’t Biden get this done?”
“Well, because Biden only has the majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends,” Biden said.
He added, “But we’re not giving up.”
Manchin and Sinema have broken with most of their party on other issues, but also, specifically, efforts by Democrats to eliminate the filibuster rule.
In January, A Sinema spokesperson said she “is not open to changing her mind about eliminating the filibuster.”
For all the focus on Manchin being anti-nuke on filibuster, this is what a spokes for @kyrstensinema tells me + @mikedebonis:
"Kyrsten is against eliminating the filibuster, and she is not open to changing her mind about eliminating the filibuster.”https://t.co/0wZD3dibEO
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) January 25, 2021
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Manchin Defends The Filibuster
Manchin explained his support for keeping the filibuster in an April op-ed in the Washington Post.
“The filibuster is a critical tool to protecting [minority] input and our democratic form of government,” Manchin wrote.
Just last year, Democrats used the filibuster an historic number of times to block Republican efforts.
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