More or less, at least stuff that Mitch didn’t really care about. Bills to keep the constituents happy, even though Mitch didn’t really care about them.
As soon as the Dems started blocking trumps SCOTUS nominees, Mitch calmly and easily carved out a exception. He will do it again, if need be.
The rules have been changed many times before, they are not writ in stone. Mitch changed the rules when it suited him.
Exactly.
He did that because the Dems had already set the precedence (for this round of changes at least) for it in 2013. That’s the thing about unintended consequences. Nothing to say he wouldn’t have anyway, as they can always change stuff, but it was harder to do it the first time after 40 years of status quo than to do it a second time…or a 3rd time if and when they want to change that again.
He did it because he wanted to. Everything else is just words.
He ignored the rules when it suited him. The last time the Senate rules on cloture were revised was 1979.
~Max
That’s what McConnell said, but why would you trust his words? He’s a practiced and experienced liar. The Democrats had no choice but to change it in 2013 (the alternative was, effectively, no more judges). McConnell got the fake justification he was looking for.
Democrats shouldn’t be treating McConnell and the Republicans as if they’re fair and good-faith legislators who just have different views about policy. They should be treating them as liars, charlatans, spineless, bigots, and fascists, who will never negotiate or act in good faith, because that’s what they are (“they” being Republicans in office with very few exceptions).
I’m baffled by the Democrat’s desire to nuke the filibuster to pass ‘voting rights’ legislation on a party line basis. Do you think passing this will guarantee Democratic victories in the next election?
It seems to me that all you will be doing is further angering an electorate and undermining faith in elections by passing changes on a purely partisan basis, while also torpedoing the main tool the minority has in stopping legislative excesses from small majorities just as they are about to become the minority.
The other issue is that you have been burning through time and political capital chasing windmills. Manchin and Sinema are on record saying they will not support changes to the filibuster, and at least Manchin has said he’s not a fan of the voting rights bill either.
This is shaping up to be Build Back Better Part 2, where Democrats yell at each other in public over something the public is at best indifferent about while their popularity slips further and Republicans get increasingly excited about the midterms.
If Biden had spent his first year looking for compromise legislation that could have peeled off a dozen Republicans (like the infrastructure bill), he could have a record of accomplishment that could help Democrats hold power next year. Instead, Democrats have tried to use a razor-thin majority to pass sweeping progressive legislation that doesn’t even have 100% support from their own caucus, while ignoring serious issues like border enforcement.
The result has been declining support for Democrats, an increase in Republican support, and a cratering in Democratic support by Hispanics, from whom Biden has a 28% approval rating, and Democrats as a whole now share a whopping 31% approval rating with Republicans. It seems to me that what you have accomplished is the destruction of one of your main future voting groups. Demography no longer appears to be destiny.
That is not the purpose of this legislation. Where do you get the bizarre idea that that is what this is about?
That’s absurd. The nuclear option is merely the exercise of Senate rules to make alterations to the rules. Are you arguing that there’s something illegitimate about rules that govern rule changes, or the exercise thereof?
So if we can’t pass a measure that requires 2/3rds of Congressional delegates, we’ll try a move that requires 3/4th approval by the same states that sent those delegates? Why do you think this would have a better chance of success?
Cite that an alteration to the rules is made when the nuclear procedure is invoked?
~Max
I didn’t. My point was that if you don’t win majorities again, the Republicans will just undo what you did, especially since you will have nuked the filibuster to do it. So as a party the Democrats are flinging themselves at the wall for no purpose. And that’s even if the bill passed, which I don’t think it will.
Let’s throw in another unintended consequence.
Had Reid not removed the filibuster for federal judges, would the Republicans had gutted the entire Federal Judiciary, or would they have eventually caved to allowing some nominations through?
Had Reid not removed the filibuster for federal judges, would McConnell have actually filled some of the federal slots during Obama’s final year instead of hoping that a Republican would win and give him a whole bunch of Federalists to install?
Had Reid not removed the filibuster for federal judges, would Trump have nominated ONLY Federalist-list judges, or would he have thrown at least a few bones to the Dems in left-leaning areas?
(I’ll throw one more in here) Had Reid not removed the filibuster for federal judges, would McConnell have?
Simple. Senate rules are constituted in 2 parts, via its parliamentary rules, and via precedents. The nuclear option works by following parliamentary rules to create a new precedent, which becomes binding. cite:
If it were really truly and against the rules when Harry Reid did it in 2013, 2 things would have happened:
Here’s what actually happened:
The nuclear option does not constitute a failure to follow rules. It changes them under the Senate’s provisos for doing so.
Well in that case, you have a silly point.
It’s a lot easier politically for Republican politicians to prevent the voting right legislation from passing by sitting around and doing nothing than it will be for them to actively strip rights from people by repealing this legislation down the line.
The thing is, only progressives seem to see ‘rights’ being violated. What a lot of other people see is a watering-down of election integrity to make it easier for people friendly to Democrats to vote. Mail-in voting, for example, is crazy. Taking dead peoole off the electoral roles is not ‘voter suppression’ to most people.
I know you’ll disagree, but you are in a minority on this. Democrats are in essense trying to lock-in temporary Covid election rules and make them permanent - rules that made the last election the least-trusted in history, but which worked out pretty well for Democrats.
So fine, whether Republicans or Democrats win, let’s have the government do what the voters sent them to do. Let Republicans ram through their hare-brained ideas on a 50+1 vote and see how voters reward them in the next election.
I’m willing to bet that when we start putting legislators on the hot seat, when Republicans will have to actually take action and face the voters to account for that action, we’ll either get better elected Republicans or fewer of them. Either one is fine with me. Likewise with Democrats.
It would be painful in the short term, but it would be much better than politicians running on fake rhetoric about what they’d really like to do, only for the filibuster to prevent them from having to take action that might blow up in their faces next election.
Wanna bet?
According to the Pew Research Center, 65 percent of adults said that any voter should be able to vote early or absentee without an excuse.
Except that’s not what the laws they’re passing are doing. “You have to have a photo ID to vote” sounds reasonable to the 95% of voters who have a drivers license or state ID; it’s that 5% who don’t / can’t drive and let theirs lapse or are urban and don’t need or can’t afford an ID (yes, many (not all) states require a fee for a state ID). Very similar to the “All doctors at a clinic need to have admitting rights to a near-by hospital” sounds reasonable, until you find out that “clinic” means abortion clinic, and “near-by hospital” can include areas where the only hospital is Catholic.
“Taking dead people off the electoral roles” actually is another one in that vein, although not normally done as a law but by local election officials. The concept sounds good, but the execution is often local elections officials do that by removing anyone who hasn’t voted in 3 years (sounds like a long time, but that’s less than a Presidential election cycle) without notification or exemption. People show up at the polling place and find out they can’t vote.
Hey, I’ve got one that sounds great - let’s put together a national Voter database. One person - one vote. Except the biggest violators of that appears to be snowbirds who vote locally in Florida but have absentee ballots (i.e. mail-in ballots) in their home state. And I believe those people tend to vote Republican… How come the party that is obsessed with voter fraud hasn’t thrown that one out there yet…
It’s even stronger than that–the nuclear option is the exercise of the Senate’s Constitutional power to determine its rules. Senate rules cannot limit the Senate’s power to set its rules.
LOL. This is nonsense.
35 states (from the deepest red to the brightest blue) have no excuse absentee voting or all mail elections.
The reddest red state, Wyoming, has had no excuse absentee voting since 1991.