Sinema backs Senate gridlock by supporting filibuster use

The fight to end the filibuster ended before it started in the U.S. Senate, thanks in large part to Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. (And West Virginia’s Joe Manchin.)

For most of us, the closest thing to an understanding of the word “filibuster” is the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” in which a haggard Jimmy Stewart tries to stall passage of a corrupted piece of legislation by theatrically speaking for what the movie says is 24 hours until his voice goes out and he collapses, though in defense of all that is right and good.

Well, that ain’t the reality.

There is no filibuster in the Constitution.

The Senate gets to make its rules and, these days, a senator can filibuster a bill by simply by saying he or she intends to do so. It takes 60 votes to break it. In other words, minority rules. Back when the Constitution was being put together Alexander Hamilton warned against such a thing. He wrote in Federalist Paper 22, “What at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser.”

The current application has led, essentially, to Senate gridlock.

As a report in the Brennan Center for Justice concluded: “The procedural maneuver, long used by Senate minorities to block civil rights legislation, is now poised to stop democracy reforms supported by broad majorities. If the Senate is to be responsive to the popular will, the filibuster must go.”

Most Democrats in the Senate are in favor of abolishing the filibuster.

But not Sinema.

A spokesperson for Sinema told The Washington Post that Sinema is “against eliminating the filibuster, and she is not open to changing her mind about eliminating the filibuster.” That, along with a similar declaration by Manchin, killed any idea that it could happen.

Sinema is making her bones by reaching across the aisle. It’s an admirable way to operate in a legislative body that was designed (in theory) to encourage compromise.

But the fact is the numbers are skewing more and more toward minority rule.

For example, a Post article pointed out that the four most populous states (California, Texas, Florida and New York) have about one-third of the population of the country, with eight votes in the Senate, while the five least populated states (South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming) have about 1 percent of the population, with 10 votes in the Senate.

Add the filibuster to that and it gets more and more difficult to get anything done.

Unless, of course, that is your goal.