Left-wing professor knocks Joe Manchin over filibuster: He has 'to get off his symbolic crackpipe’

Left-wing professor Cornel West berated Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Thursday to change his stance on the Senate filibuster rule, continuing a weeks-long barrage against the moderate Democrat over his support for keeping it.

Appearing on CNN, West told liberal host Don Lemon that Manchin needed "to get off his symbolic crackpipe," that Democrats were going to have to do away with the filibuster in order to get anything accomplished and suggested that Democrats like Manchin didn't have a backbone for wanting to be bipartisan.

Manchin wrote in a June op-ed that he would "not to vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster," igniting a backlash from the left and continued hounding from the media, who called him "worse than a Republican," and a "democracy killer." 

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"I must say that he’s going to have to get off his symbolic crackpipe," West said after Lemon played a video clip of Manchin stressing bipartisanship to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. "You’re going have to do away with the filibuster in order to get any work done because you’ve got a right-wing party that’s authoritarian, with deep neo-fascist sensibilities, that has no commitment to democratic processes, no commitment to democratic values." 

"At the same time you’ve got Democrats who run around and talk about being bipartisan, but for the most part they lack a backbone. They don’t have enough fight, and then they’ve got conservative elements in their party who stand in the way," he added. "So we’re really at an impasse, my brother, a serious impasse … It’s very, very sad but we must keep fighting and we’ve got to continue telling the truth."

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Some have proposed lowering the filibuster threshold from 60 to 55, citing the previous adjustment in 1975 from 67 to 60.