Joe Manchin Won’t Endorse Kamala Harris After She Comes Out Against Filibuster: ‘Horrible Thing’ That Could ‘Destroy Our Country’

Senator Joe Manchin (I-WV) said he would not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday after Harris came out in favor of nuking the Senate filibuster to pass national legislation that would allow abortion through the point of viability.

The filibuster is a procedure that allows senators to block most legislation unless 60 of their colleagues vote in favor of cloture on the bill. On Tuesday, Harris, a former senator, said that she would be in favor of doing away with the filibuster to effectively restore Roe v. Wade legislatively.

“I’ve been very clear, I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, 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,” Harris said during an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio on Monday.

Manchin, who was a Democrat for most of his long political career, objected to Harris’s position in strenuous terms on Tuesday.

“Shame on her,” said Manchin. “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 continued, referring to an endorsement of Harris before suggesting that getting rid of the filibuster could “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,” he added.

Manchin left the Democratic Party and registered as an independent earlier this year, vowing “to fight for America’s sensible majority.” Last last year, he announced he would not run for re-election.

Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), another independent initially elected as a Democrat, also expressed her frustration with Harris’s position, writing on X that “eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v Wade also enables a future Congress to ban all abortion nationwide.”

“What an absolutely terrible, shortsighted idea,” she added.

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