My theory, which is mine, is that the Senators who are resistant to this kind of thing are people who are having trouble pulling themselves away from America's civic religion.
We joke about the fecklessness and the out-of-touchness of politicians... but if you don't come from a rich background, getting into politics is hard. It's backbreaking work, with little money and little reward, and if you win local or even state office, usually the reward is a lot of work and pressure without a ton of compensation. It's only after you scratch and claw your way up that you acquire real power and influence.
Joe Manchin comes from a big family in a small, poor town. Sinema lived in an abandoned gas station for three years as a kid.
What inspires a lot of these people to invest the back-breaking effort to get into politics (among other things) is a real, true belief in the American civic religion, in the narratives and myths and institutions that surround them. These are people who look down the Mall from the Capitol, past the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, and genuinely feel a thrill of patriotism every time.
They feel that doing radical surgery to the hallowed institutions they serve in is a kind of betrayal of two and a half centuries of tradition; that there must be some better, purer way forward, or even better yet backward, to the (highly idiosyncratic and unusual) postwar Age of Bipartisan Comity, when the filibuster was only brought out by clear villains who were righteously defeated because a supermajority of Congress said "no; this will not stand."
There's a sense that changing the rules because you can't win is cheating, or debases the institution. You see this in sports; how many people absolutely blow their tops anytime the NFL or MLB proposes a rule change? There are still people who feel the designated hitter rule "defiles" the sport!
I don't think this is a conscious belief on the part of any of these folks. I think they have a very, very clear awareness that things are fucked up and bullshit; but their own faith in American institutions and our civic culture is, paradoxically, preventing them from taking steps to SAVE that culture. They look at the burning church and think "how can I make the church go back to before it was burned, the way I remember it" rather than thinking "the church IS burning. It's gonna need new stained glass windows and a new roof and a better fire suppression system and modern HVAC."
Or at least, that's my pathetic attempt at armchair analyses. I hope I'm right because the other plausible options I can think of are worse.
Re: Biden thread
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Originally Posted by Hooahguy
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