This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“Shame on her. She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy.” —West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin to CNN on Tuesday, responding to Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for paring back the legislative filibuster

During an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her support for eliminating the filibuster—the Senate maneuver that effectively makes 60 votes the threshold for passing legislation, rather than a simple majority—when it comes to abortion rights.

“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” she said in the interview, “and 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.”

This didn’t strike me at first as especially newsworthy. Embedded in her central policy pledge of restoring Roe protections is the understanding that she would support the filibuster carve-out necessary to achieve that. This is not a subject on which there are 10 Republicans willing to deal, and it’s not the type of law that can be passed through reconciliation. It also does not meet the key newsworthiness benchmark of being “new.” Harris said in September 2022........

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