Left-wing activist David Hogg is lamenting that Democrats are being stymied in the Senate, but he may need a refresher on Senate math.
“I can’t believe we waited all this time to have a decade of work that could help millions of people be stopped by two senators,” Hogg tweeted, presumably referring to Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
I can’t believe we waited all this time to have a decade of work that could help millions of people be stopped by two senators.
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) September 20, 2021
But that is not accurate. The Democratic agenda in the Senate is not being stopped by two senators. Most of it is being stopped by 52 senators.
There are 50 Republican senators who generally oppose the Democratic agenda (they are Republicans, after all). Manchin and Sinema get all the publicity because they are Democrats who don’t always toe the party line, but when they oppose a Democratic policy, or when they oppose abusing Senate norms and processes in order to ram through a Democratic bill, they are typically the 51st and 52nd votes against it.
This isn’t even a debate about the merits of the filibuster-imposed 60-vote threshold. When Democrats are unable to win over Manchin and Sinema, they have a 48-vote minority. That includes the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, which both senators, along with their 50 Republican colleagues, oppose.
Manchin and Sinema oppose changing or eliminating the filibuster, which both parties have respected for ages. That applies whether Democrats want to pass a power grab disguised as a voting rights bill, new gun control laws, or anything else. That’s a 52-48 majority against the left-wing agenda. Manchin and Sinema also opposed overruling the Senate parliamentarian to pass a $15 federal minimum wage as part of a spending bill. But then, so did six other Democratic senators. That’s a 58-42 majority against the left wing.
And none of these numbers include the senators who use Manchin’s opposition as a cover so that they can vote yes — so that they don’t have to cross the activist base.
Manchin and Sinema are not stopping anything by themselves. Hogg can complain all he wants, but until Senate Democrats either win their colleagues over or win more elections, the most left-wing pillars of their agenda will be opposed by a majority of the Senate — not by the one or two members activists claim are standing in the way.
