#nuke the filibuster

[beardedmrbean]

She's showing her stupidity again boss.

Submitted anonymously ________________________-

Getting real tired of people trying to turn our government into a game of Calvinball.

The roles will reverse at some point and you're going to be calling the people suggesting what you are now suggesting all kinds of nasty names, just like we saw people doing with the filibuster when the senate switched hands.

Tom Cotton Reads Schumer Speech Verbatim Against Nuking Filibuster.

All these things you're proposing will bite you square in the ass some day, Schumer wanted to kill the filibuster because his party was in charge, but it was a different story when they weren't as you can see here.

alex needs a lot more seasoning, probably won't do much good though she is a idiot after all

[antiquery]

writing this down for later so I don't forget but here is a good faith, fact-based criticism of Biden: not going all in on defending Roe when outrage was highest was a disastrous mistake and set the feminist movement back a literal generation. he should have abandoned IRA negotiations as soon as the draft decision leaked in May, given Sinema/Manchin absolutely anything they wanted that wasn't literally illegal, and done one of the following:

bet the house on nuking the filibuster and packing the court. even if he pulls it off it probably kills him dead in 2024 with significant downballot effects, but on the plus side the great GOP project of the last half century is no more

get some purple state Republicans on board and try for a 15 week national abortion ban: no more, but no less either. this has the benefit of containing the worst outrage to the subset of the Dem base who 1) don't really understand political realities and 2) actually care about sexism. hey, turns out there are some benefits to the modern left completely forgetting that women are also an oppressed class!

(note that I don't necessarily agree with this— I think prioritizing the IRA was probably the correct call given the urgency of climate/infrastructure/economic problems. but this is an argument you could make that isn't just "why doesn't Biden simply make good things happen with his magic president powers"

[qqueenofhades]

“The ACA was originally supposed to be FAR more expansive, and the Republicans spent MONTHS fighting it tooth and nail and forcing Obama to take out absolutely everything they could get away with.” Wait what??? The ACA originally had more?

Oh yeah. The Democrats originally thought about designing it around the single-payer model and including a public option, but realized pretty quickly that it wasn't going to get through Congress or be filibuster-proof (which, thanks to the Republicans, amounted to the same thing). You can read more about the originally proposed reforms and legislative history, but as noted, the question of whether ACA-obtained insurance could be allowed to pay for abortions was a central sticking point among conservative anti-choice Democrats like Ben Nelson and Bart Stupak. (This is, yet again, why a separate abortion bill wasn't going to pass.) Obama and Harry Reid ultimately had to take that out in order to satisfy those Democrats, since they never got a single Republican vote. Not one. For the whole thing. Ever. And yet the Republicans stalled, dragged their feet, pretended to negotiate just to waste time and force concessions, campaigned against ideas they themselves had supported, and literally the DAY after the ACA finally passed in March 2010, introduced legislation to repeal it. As they tried to do, oh, another sixty times.

Nancy Pelosi was pivotal in insisting that the Democrats didn't water the bill down more than that; the public option was nuked by Joe Lieberman (who was overall a weasel), and other provisions which survived in the final bill had been whittled down from their more expansive original scope. So yeah, it was originally intended to be a lot more than it ultimately ended up being, but even then, it was the most comprehensive healthcare reform since the 1965 enactment of Medicare and Medicaid, and is a FAR bigger accomplishment than the "Democrats don't do anything!!!" crowd will ever give them credit for.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

The Department of Education should have created the debt forgiveness application before Biden announced it, because all the delay has done is give Republicans time to fight it in court. Ted Cruz has already said that a bunch of states are going to sue and claim that this amount of debt forgiveness is an overreach of the HEROES Act of 2003 (which says the DOE can forgive debt for people affected by national emergencies), or even that the act itself was unconstitutional the whole time; a lower court will block Biden's debt plan, it'll get appealed all the way up to SCOTUS, and they'll decide 6-3 that it's illegal to forgive this much debt with HEROES, so Congress would need to pass a new law to make it legal. Democrats will never nuke the filibuster in the Senate to pass it 50-50 (and let's be honest, they don't even have 50 votes for this), and after the midterms it's almost certain that the Republicans will control one or both houses of Congress making the whole point moot anyway! Biden showed his hand too early and gave the opposition all the time and resources they needed to throw a wrench in the works. If the application had been made available on day one, they would already be processing refunds, and there would be nothing the Republicans could do to put the cat back in the bag; they can't unforgive debt.

I don't know if this was just poor timing or intentional malice on Biden's part. Maybe he thought nobody would object to it, or maybe he fully expected the forgiveness plan to be blocked all along and only announced it so he could pretend to care and drum up votes for the midterms. "Oh, next time for sure! If you vote blue in November, we'll definitely forgive the debt in 2023, yes sir! We just need a few more seats, even though the Senate landscape is unfavorable and the House is literally gerrymandered for the Republicans no matter what, if you click your heels and clap your hands and donate to enough candidates then maybe, just maybe, we can deliver on something we promised to do two years ago!"

Just kick the football, Charlie Brown! He's holding it right there!

[triviallytrue]

what if the democrats proposed a law codifying right to abortion only in specific citcumstances in which almost everyone supports the right to abortion? would that pass?

Hmm, so my understanding is that you need 60 votes to get through the Senate unless you're doing budget reconciliation shenanigans, and it just seems very hard to get 10 republicans to support any law on abortion. The way around this would probably be to pick up a few more senate seats, nuke the filibuster, and then pass with 50 votes.

[dhaaruni]

I mean in the general sense that “tear it all down” politbros are often even worse than Republicans - especially when they’re actually sincere. Republicans at least have infrastructure in mind to support their plans; self-styled anarchists don’t even have that.

I tend to agree because when people habitually follow the law, they can be held accountable by the law. Like, Mitch McConnell breaks norms, not laws! He didn't even remove the filibuster for judicial appointments, that was Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) for lower court appointees, McConnell just removed them for the Supreme Court. That's why McConnell for instance voted for Merrick Garland and isn't doing jack shit to prevent the DoJ from investigating Trump right now! He knows what's up!

Conversely though, this is what General Mark Milley said in that article about Trump and his generals:

“They shook the very Republic to the core,” Milley would eventually reflect. “Can you imagine what a group of people who are much more capable could have done?”

I personally think that all the leftists who want Trump but leftist are playing with fire though like last night was so funny literally because Trump didn't have access to nuclear weapons lol. That's something else that people on the right are trying to obfuscate: on January 6, it was NANCY PELOSI that called in the National Guard and was on the phone with the Virginia and Maryland governors, not Trump, not even Pence. And, after January 6 until Biden was inaugurated, even though they didn't do a formal 25th amendment, but Trump had all his power stripped away (aka no nukes), and it was basically a Milley-Pelosi-Pence trifecta. But, if Trump's lunatic base caught wind of that, there would be hell to pay.

Does that make sense?

[dgcatanisiri]

On the one hand, yes, we're just coming off a presidency where massive overreach was the name of the game, with his caucus in lockstep agreement that he could basically do whatever the hell he wanted and they'd retroactively approve it, so going nuts with executive orders is a bad precedent to go with. The president is supposed to be limited in the ability to just do whatever, and that is, ultimately a good thing.

On the other hand, we're in a crisis, and Biden and his caucus's only response is to tell the public "VOTE!" Yeah, we DID vote, and while we were doing that, the Republicans hobbled the mail service we were using to cast our ballots, gerrymandered the districts so that they could pack Democratic votes into a single area while spreading theirs out across several, and proceed to have laws that go into effect the moment their stolen Supreme Court strikes down what they oppose.

Give us more strategy than a stern finger wagging at the Republicans and putting the responsibility over to the voters - we DID our part in November, you're supposed to be using the two years between then and the next election actually DOING something.

Yeah, we have the razor thin majority in the Senate, but you know what would help there? Kicking Manchin and Sinema's asses for their failure to work in coordination with Senate Dems - at least if they were to switch sides, join the Republicans, and give McConnell the gavel, it makes it clear that the bad guy is Republican. Right now, the narrative is that the Democrats have a majority of both chambers.

Democrats, your problem is the narrative that you put out there for the people to see. The narrative right now is that the Democrats are doing nothing. Find a way to counter that. Throw bill after bill out there to be stymied by the Republicans in the Senate, you HAVE a clear message that the Republicans are stopping anything from happening, rather than just dragging your feet.

For that matter, nuke the damn filibuster, or at least neuter it - you HAVE to stand there and do it, rather than just make a notion of "I intend to filibuster" and that making you back down.

DO. SOMETHING. You can't keep throwing the onus of fixing things onto the backs of the people who are marching in the street, calling on you to do your jobs - THAT'S THE JOB YOU WERE ELECTED TO DO.

[abigailspinach]

AZ Senate

Santiago Mayer

Sinema and Manchin are both leaving at the end of the year, which means that if Dems can keep the Senate, they will have the votes to nuke the filibuster and pass the single most consequential legislative package since the New Deal. Abortion, guns, climate — all on the table.

[tiktotees]

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The problem once again is that Democrats are deploying traditional tools to fight a Republican Party which has abandoned all democratic norms and is merely just trying to consolidate power by any means necessary. Democrats are once again bringing a spoon to a knife fight. As Gandy puts it: “Democrats’ time would be better spent trying to either nuke or reform the Mom Jeans logo shirt Additionally,I will love this filibuster so that they can move forward with expanding the courts.” Democrats need to change the makeup of the Court by adding justices, they need to right the wrongs Mitch McConnell committed by stealing at least two of the nine seats on the Court. In short, Democrats need to act like Republicans. The American people need a Democratic party which will protect their rights with the same zeal that Republicans are focused on taking them away.

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[usadailyshirt]

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I don’t want to criticize Democrats for trying to pass this legislation. The situation is dire. As the Lyon County Athletics 2nd Region Back 2 Back Champions 2023 5th District Peat Champions shirt moreover I love this head of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson put it to me: “The right to make decisions about our bodies and our lives is hanging by a thread, and we need action from our leaders. The Women’s Health Protection Act would help protect abortion access and guard against bans and medically unnecessary restrictions imposed by state politicians in Texas and across the country” We elected these leaders to at least try to protect our rights and interests, after all. But ultimately the Supreme Court is the last word on everything—every piece of legislation. So even if they could get the House bill through the Senate, the Supreme Court could just overturn it, as Rewire news’ senior law editor Imani Gandy told me. “Democrats’ efforts to codify Roe, while commendable, are dead in the water with this Supreme Court. There’s not a chance in hell that the group of 6 Federalist Society-captured conservative justices on the Supreme Court won’t find some reason that any statute cementing abortion rights is unconstitutional.”

The problem once again is that Democrats are deploying traditional tools to fight a Republican Party which has abandoned all democratic norms and is merely just trying to consolidate power by any means necessary. Democrats are once again bringing a spoon to a knife fight. As Gandy puts it: “Democrats’ time would be better spent trying to either nuke or reform the Lyon County Athletics 2nd Region Back 2 Back Champions 2023 5th District Peat Champions shirt moreover I love this filibuster so that they can move forward with expanding the courts.” Democrats need to change the makeup of the Court by adding justices, they need to right the wrongs Mitch McConnell committed by stealing at least two of the nine seats on the Court. In short, Democrats need to act like Republicans. The American people need a Democratic party which will protect their rights with the same zeal that Republicans are focused on taking them away.

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[bisexualalienss]

All democrats need to do is nuke the filibuster and codify roe but they care more about a senate rule that was made to stop civil rights legislation from passing than bodily autonomy <3

[scentedluminarysoul]

This is nothing new!

Ted Cruz filibustered against Obamacare by reading Green Eggs and Ham! (Timestamp 11:18)

[resistbot]

[marisatomay]

i wasnt really alive during obama but is it just me or does biden feel more progressive...something i was not expecting

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

If the Democrats had one spine between them, this is what they should do

Nuke the filibuster, then immediately propose an amendment to bring it back for legislation and judicial appointments

For executive appointments, I don’t really care; the president can fire a secretary at any time for any reason, so it doesn’t matter how many senators voted to confirm them. We need a government, so it doesn’t make sense for congress to be able to block department heads when the president can just name acting secretaries until the actual secretaries get confirmed.

Next, push through legislation to expand the Supreme Court, but do not immediately fill the seats; let the Republicans know that if they don’t agree to play fair, then all bets are off. They want to keep the filibuster just as much as we do because everybody likes to threaten to get rid of it; if we actually get rid of it, then nobody gets to use the threat anymore, and we have carte blanche until it is restored through bipartisan amendment.

The SCOTUS seats become the next threat; either pass the amendment and send it to the states, or we start packing the court with all these wonderfully qualified, young, liberal PEOPLE OF COLOR. Republicans would never negotiate like this, they would just do it, just pull the trigger and get what they want. They’d get shit for it from the other side, but their constituents would love it and their approval ratings would skyrocket. Democrats need to be more diplomatic, and by showing restraint they can have plausible deniability (though the media would tear them a new asshole either way, so damned if you do, damned if you don’t). They’re not cheating, they actively want to limit their own power and restore bipartisan cooperation; that’s the biggest olive branch we could offer the Republicans, and if they don’t like it then they can go fuck themselves.

If Democrats got rid of the filibuster, there’s nothing the Republicans could legally do to stop them. Their best bet would be litigation with the 6-3 conservative SCOTUS, but then the Dems could just pack the court to get favorable rulings; does this sound familiar?

“I LEARNED IT BY WATCHING YOU!”

So, the Republicans can either pass the amendment and enshrine the filibuster into the constitution, OR they can let the Democrats run wild and hope for civil unrest and eventual war, because that’s the only thing that could conceivably stop a party with unlimited power.

Now, of course, this could immediately backfire on the Democrats. They could do it, and the Republicans could just pretend they don’t care and bide their time until the next election. They take back power and they’ll have the Democrats to thank for handing them a post-filibuster senate; the point of changing the rules is to stop the other side from gaining power ever again (2020 - 2022, Republicans are passing anti-voting laws because they hope that will make them win in 2024; Democrats need to balance this by doing the same thing in their own favor). But this back-and-forth is why the Supreme Court is so important. Liberal justices could regulate conservative laws, but once the Democrats show their hand and signal that they’re willing to change the rules, Republicans will use that to their advantage; we expand the Supreme Court now, they’ll expand the Supreme Court twofold (or perhaps something worse) the next chance they get. The idea is not to give them that next chance. It’s what they do to us, but our party is just too stupid or too unwilling to do it back to them.

Republicans change the rules to win, while Democrats never change the rules because they see the rules as sacred. Politics is a game; most people think it’s something intelligent like chess, when really it’s mindless like Mouse Trap. Sure, Mouse Trap has rules, you can sit down and play it as it was intended, but if the object of the game is to Trap a Mouse, then you’re more likely to do it by setting up the trap and playing with it by itself like a toy. Democrats play by the rules, rolling their dice and moving their mice, collecting cheese wedges, setting up the trap one piece at a time, whereas Republicans immediately set it up and let it go, winning on turn one. That’s against the rules, but there’s no higher authority holding them to the rules anyway! The Supreme Court used to be like parents, enforcing the rules and telling the siblings to play nice together, but now the parents have been replaced by the cheater’s best friends who let them get away with anything they want. It’s a total conflict of interest, but they don’t care because they get to win!

Nuke the filibuster, amend the constitution to bring it back, threaten to go full liberal if they don’t, then actually follow through on their threats when they don’t. That’s the only language they know, these are the only compromises they’ll listen to; force their hand, or they’ll shit all over you. They’re willing to change laws and steal elections to stay in power, then turn around and project their own crimes onto the other side, “we’re not cheating, YOU’RE cheating!” And this is all done while the filibuster is still in place; Democrats need to acknowledge that they can’t win by following the rules if the other party is cheating. The other party has said the rules don’t matter anymore, so it’s not cheating for the Democrats to stoop to their level, fair’s fair, it’s just business.

[kp777]

JUST IN: Joe Manchin Obliterates Democrats' Hopes Of Nuking Filibuster To Pass Voting Bills

Forbes Breaking News

Jan 19, 2022