Of course, the way Sinema and Manchin are portrayed by the press bears little resemblance to the coverage of, say, Susan Collins.
President Joe Biden dinged both Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin during a speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma, yesterday, calling them “two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.” Some coverage alleged that Biden had merely insinuated that the duo voted against more than with him, but it’s a lie that would have generated cheeky chyron corrections on CNN and instantaneous across-the-board fact-checking — five Pinocchios and all the rest — had it been Donald Trump.
It’s not to say that Sinema and Manchin have signed on to all of Biden’s multitrillion-dollar agenda items — often larded with proposals that Biden himself opposed only a couple of years ago, such as ending the Hyde amendment and allowing unlimited taxpayer funding of abortions. But, to this point, Sinema and Manchin have voted with the president 100 percent of the time. If Republicans are looking to them to be saviors, they will likely be disappointed.
Biden’s quip was meant to pressure both to help pass H.R. 1, and to give Democrats an excuse to blow up the Senate filibuster. The president, after all, framed their obstinance as a roadblock to protecting the “sacred right” of voting, again claiming that state laws that codify traditional integrity measures, rather than allowing the chaotic COVID–style free-for-all voting to become the norm, were on par with Jim Crow. H.R. 1 is an attack on free expression, an unconstitutional federal takeover of elections. Its scope is unprecedented. Yet, since the press has adopted the Democrats’ framing of the legislation — a “voting rights” bill meant to stop “Republican-led voting restrictions across the country” — many voters are probably confused by any reluctancy to support it.
Of course, the way Sinema and Manchin are portrayed by the press bears little resemblance to the coverage of, say, Susan Collins, who often held up Republican-agenda items. She was a plucky maverick ready to stand up for her beliefs. And Mitch McConnell was not, as far as I recall, asked daily whether he was willing to destroy the republican norms of the Senate to ram through his legislative agenda with a razor-thin majority. And even if he had been, reporters wouldn’t be referring to it as “filibuster reform.” Yet, the filibuster is the obsession of political media. Sinema and Manchin are the obsession of the political media. All of it geared to help one party realize its goals.