Passing a sweeping election reform bill required two things from Democratic Senate leadership, says former Obama administration staffer Dan Pfeiffer: compromising with centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) on some of the details and then convincing Manchin and a few other Democrats, like Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), to agree to nuke the filibuster since there was no other way around Republican opposition. "It's now abundantly clear there was never a plan to do either," Pfeiffer wrote in The Message Box on Wednesday, a day after the GOP blocked a debate on the issue.
Pfeiffer tempered his criticism by noting that Manchin "was incredibly vague about the reasons for his opposition to the bill for a very long time," but "in the end, he suggested a reasonable, if unsatisfying, compromise that received the support of Stacey Abrams and [former President] Barack Obama." But, he continued, Democrats couldn't "coalesce around it and offer a united front." Instead, they spent the night before Tuesday's vote "debating strategy and discussing breaking the bill into pieces ... It is truly impossible to imagine why these problems were not anticipated and addressed long before the vote was scheduled." Read more at The Message Box.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
September 14 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include RFK Jr on the hook, the destruction of discourse, and more
-
Air strikes in the Caribbean: Trump’s murky narco-warTalking Point Drug cartels ‘don’t follow Marquess of Queensberry Rules’, but US military air strikes on speedboats rely on strained interpretation of ‘invasion’
-
Crossword: September 14, 2025The Week's daily crossword puzzle
-
House posts lewd Epstein note attributed to TrumpSpeed Read The estate of Jeffrey Epstein turned over the infamous 2003 birthday note from President Donald Trump
-
Supreme Court allows 'roving' race-tied ICE raidsSpeed Read The court paused a federal judge's order barring agents from detaining suspected undocumented immigrants in LA based on race
-
South Korea to fetch workers detained in Georgia raidSpeed Read More than 300 South Korean workers detained in an immigration raid at a Hyundai plant will be released
-
DC sues Trump to end Guard 'occupation'Speed Read D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb argues that the unsolicited military presence violates the law
-
RFK Jr. faces bipartisan heat in Senate hearingSpeed Read The health secretary defended his leadership amid CDC turmoil and deflected questions about the restricted availability of vaccines
-
White House defends boat strike as legal doubts mountSpeed Read Experts say there was no legal justification for killing 11 alleged drug-traffickers
-
Epstein accusers urge full file release, hint at own listspeed read A rally was organized by Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, who are hoping to force a vote on their Epstein Files Transparency Act
-
Court hands Harvard a win in Trump funding battleSpeed Read The Trump administration was ordered to restore Harvard's $2 billion in research grants
