Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat-turned-independent in West Virginia, declared that he would not be endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
The announcement follows Harris stating that she supports abolishing the Senate filibuster rule in order to codify abortion rights.
“Shame on her,” Manchin told reporters, according to CNN. “She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids.”
“That ain’t going to happen,” he asserted. “I think that basically can destroy our country, and my country is more important to me than any one person or any one person’s ideology. … I think it’s the most horrible thing.”
Manchin said maintaining the filibuster is “essential.”
“I’ve been very, very, very clear on how strongly I believe that when you go down that slippery path, you don’t just do it for one issue,” he said, adding, “So once you start down that in policy and on policies, you have everything under the sun thrown out and it’ll just dissipate.”
When asked specifically if he would endorse Harris, Manchin said, “I’m not endorsing her.”
Manchin said in a statement released on Tuesday: “I have been consistent on the importance of protecting the 60-vote threshold, which we call the filibuster, since I arrived at the United States Senate. This threshold stabilizes our democracy, promotes bipartisan cooperation and protects our nation from partisan whiplash and dysfunction. I have always said: ‘if you can’t change your mind, you can’t change anything’ and I am hopeful that the Vice President remains open to doing just that.”
Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema, another Democrat-turned-independent, similarly said that abolishing the filibuster is a “terrible, shortsighted idea.”
Manchin’s and Sinema’s statements come as Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio, “I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe.”
Harris said the move would “get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”
