Dem Rep. Jones Rips Manchin’s ‘Intellectually Un-Serious’ Filibuster Defense — ‘Would Rather Preserve Jim Crow’

Sunday, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) scolded Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) for his opposition to eliminating the filibuster in the Senate.

Manchin asserted in a recent op-ed that the filibuster has been “critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past,” which Jones described as “intellectually un-serious.” The freshman Democratic lawmaker from New York declared that Manchin “would rather preserve Jim Crow on some outdated theory of bipartisanship” that no longer exists.

“I read that op-ed this morning by Senator Manchin. And I just — I don’t know where to begin,” Jones told Ali Velshi, host of MSNBC’s “Velshi.” “It is in the first case intellectually un-serious. I mean, this is someone who talks about how we need to pivot to what he describes as bipartisan, which means he only has one Republican in the Senate who will join him, John Lewis Voting Rights Act. But Marc Elias just presented it to Senate Democrats a week or so ago in which he describes how even the bill, which has not yet been introduced, will not have retroactive effect, so it would not undo the voter suppression in Georgia and in Florida, and that soon will probably be enacted in Texas and elsewhere in the country.”

“It is also the case that this idea of bipartisanship is not something that should have inherent value when the other side is actively working to dismantle our democracy,” he continued. “We have a majority, and we must act now to protect our democracy which is slipping away. We’re going into a redistricting year, and there is going to be partisan gerrymandering, unlike anything we have ever seen by the Republican Party. More Marjorie Taylor Greenes, more Louie Gohmerts, more Jim Jordans, and now we have the opportunity to actually do something about it, and Senator Manchin would rather preserve Jim Crow on some outdated theory of bipartisanship that frankly does not exist in the same way today as it did a generation ago before the advent of Fox News and other right-wing propaganda machines on television.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent