Abolishing the filibuster won’t lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’. It’s quite the opposite

What defenders of the filibuster want is minority rule - and a government unable to deliver anything meaningful to its people

On Joe Manchin's US Senate website, you can click on Help from Joe". American democracy (not to speak of another Joe) desperately needed his help this week. What it got instead was notes cribbed from constitutional law 101, selective and self-serving worship of a distant deity known as the Founders", and sanctimonious invocations of bipartisanship.

The battle to secure free and fair conditions for voting through a simple Senate majority seems lost for the moment; and Republicans - who call for bipartisanship only when they happen to be in the minority - are gloating. But we should not move on so quickly. Otherwise, like dirt, the deeply misleading claims about the filibuster preventing a tyranny of the majority", advanced by Manchin and commentators thinking the point of politics is moderation for its own sake, might come to stick.