Allowing reforms to be instituted without a national consensus isn’t only potentially authoritarian — as it is in the case of the Democrats’ anti-filibuster battering ram, “For the People Act,”– but it also generates instability. Each time a new party takes power, they will either reverse course or pass their own set of comprehensive reform bills that half the country doesn’t want. The legislative filibuster is doing exactly what it should be — preserving a semblance of federalist governance. Now, I don’t know if Manchin is taking a principled stand or a politically expedient one, and it doesn’t really matter. Without question, he’s taken the consistent position. A recent Morning Consult poll found that, overall, voters supported the filibuster by a 21-percentage-point margin “when it was framed as an existing mechanism.” But when given a choice of supporting a simple 51-vote majority or a 60-vote threshold, they favored the former by seven points. So, it’s clear that many voters have no clue why the filibuster exists or even what it does. Which is why Democrats have been able to effectively demagogue the issue. As with nearly all objects of left-wing animosity, the filibuster, a counter-majoritarian mechanism used in various ways in almost every liberal nation, has been transformed into a tool of “white supremacy.” This accusation is meant to chill debate and to slander, by implication, anyone who supports it.