Back in 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) eliminated the Senate filibuster on all executive nominees and on all judicial appointments below the Supreme Court.
As Professor Jacobson pointed out, the only reason he didn’t include SCOTUS was that there was no pressing reason to do so at the time. Had there been a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Reid would certainly have used what has come to be known as the “Reid Rule” to fill it under Obama’s watch.
Since then, Democrats again found themselves in the minority and expressed regret over Reid’s 2013 decision. There has also been much gnashing of teeth over the Republicans’ decision to extend the Reid Rule to the Supreme Court, though there’s not much they could really say about that since Reid is the one who set the whole train careening off the tracks. So they’ve watched in horror as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has filled hundreds of court vacancies over the past four years.
Democrat regret was fleeting it seems, as they are now plotting to eliminate the filibuster altogether in order to pass a “progressive” legislative slate of horror should they win both the White House and the Senate in November.
NBC News reports (archive link):
Democratic insiders are assembling a coalition behind the scenes to wage an all-out war on the Senate filibuster in bullish anticipation of sweeping the 2020 election and passing an ambitious progressive agenda.
Veteran party operatives, activist groups and supportive senators are coordinating message and strategy to dial up the pressure to quickly end the 60-vote threshold early next year, fearing that preservation of the rule will enable Republicans to kill Joe Biden’s legislative agenda in its cradle.
They’re consolidating that effort under a coalition called Fix Our Senate run by Eli Zupnick, a former communications director for No. 3 Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Members include liberal groups like Indivisible, Communications Workers of America, Working Families Party, Brady Campaign, Demand Justice, Data for Progress, Evergreen Action, Stand Up America and Common Cause.
The advisory board features a raft of well-connected Democratic veterans with access to senators, like former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid’s deputy chiefs of staff Bill Dauster and Adam Jentleson, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign manager Faiz Shakir, former Obama White House aide Dana Singiser and ex-CWA president and anti-filibuster crusader Larry Cohen.
And of course Reid is urging this action from somewhere in Nevada.
NBC News continues:
In an interview, Reid predicted that Democrats will sweep the presidency, Senate and House, and urged them to kick off the new era by scrapping the 60-vote rule.
“If President Biden wants to get things done, he can’t play around with the filibuster,” Reid told NBC News, arguing that Americans will no longer accept a supermajority Senate threshold for action. “So I think that should be the first item of business with a Senate majority which is Democratic — to get rid of the filibuster.”
Biden describes his “progressive agenda” as “a bold, transformative platform for our party and for our country.”
So what does this “progressive agenda” entail? Presumably, the Green New Deal—repackaged as Biden’s “Build Back Better,” blanket amnesty, socialized medicine, gun confiscation/enforced “buy backs,” crippling and job-destroying climate policies, and a host of other horrifying—and routinely rejected by the American people—items that will destroy our great country and every American’s liberty.
They know that they can’t get this “bold, transformative” platform passed without getting rid of the Senate filibuster, but they want to seal the deal this time and shore up the Senate in order to minimize the chance they’ll ever again lose the Senate majority.
Obama laid out that plan in his eulogy for Rep. John Lewis: urging a 2021 Democrat Senate to abolish the “Jim Crow relic” filibuster, he said that one of their priorities should be granting both Washington, DC and Puerto Rico statehood.
This, Democrats believe (quite rightly), will ensure that they gain four reliable Democrat Senate seats.
Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) warned last month that this was exactly what they intend to do.
Fox News reported at the time:
Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., said Tuesday that if Joe Biden wins the presidential race and Democrats retake control of both houses of Congress, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., would gain statehood.
McSally warned that if Democrats win full control of Washington, they will vote to give Puerto Rico and D.C. full voting rights on Capitol Hill via statehood, making it impossible for Republicans to ever regain control.
“They’re going to make D.C. and Puerto Rico a state and get four new Democrat Senators. We’d never get the Senate back again,” the Arizona Republican said.“They are going to ram through the most radical left agenda we’ve seen in history,” McSally told MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard.
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