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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDems must abolish the filibuster now, or risk losing the country to permanent GOP domination
As reported by Ronald Brownstein, writing for The Atlantic:In its latest tally, the Brennan Center counts 253 separate voter-suppression proposals pending in 43 states. Thats significantly more than the number of bills it tracked after the 2010 election180 bills, in 41 stateswhen significant GOP gains in the states triggered a similar wave of laws.
But there is a fundamental difference between now and 2010: The Supreme Court, now governed by a rabid 6-3 conservative majority (including, yes, John Roberts, the lead author of the 2013 decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act) is not merely likelybut certainto uphold nearly any state-imposed restrictions that make their way to that august body. So all these new restrictions will not simply fade away in states like Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and Arizona; most will become the governing law in those states, and many more.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/3/4/2019159/-Democrats-must-abolish-the-filibuster-now-or-risk-losing-the-country-to-permanent-GOP-domination
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)Cicada
(4,533 posts)Repubs are doomed but we can speed it up.
thx64536
(47 posts)Until the filibuster is removed elections mean nothing.
TwilightZone
(25,471 posts)Yesterday's vote proved that elections matter.
Stallion
(6,474 posts)it does no good to beat your head against the wall when it is politically impossible right now
We didn't get it done in November with a collapse in about 3 key Senate races
JohnSJ
(92,187 posts)votes simply are not there
The two alternatives we have now is trying to change the filibuster rules, and 2022
TwilightZone
(25,471 posts)Demographically, their time is coming to an end. It's likely to take longer than many assume, perhaps another 20 years, but unless the GOP radically changes, they're inevitably facing minority status to an extent that will make it exceedingly difficult to win elections on a national level, even via the Electoral College.
They know this better than anyone. That's why they're desperately trying to hold on to power by any means for as long as possible.
dalton99a
(81,475 posts)Hugh_Lebowski
(33,643 posts)And I'm not sure how getting rid of it is going to stop this problem with the States plus Supreme Court deficit.
No matter what law Congress passes, if the State's have the Supremes on their side, then they'll get their voter law cases taken there, and there's still a good chance they'll win. Hell, the Supremes could just throw out the rules they don't like our new voter rights bill even if we passed it, declare them unconstitutional. THe PuQ's in the State legislatures will sue over every one of them they don't like, you know this.
Not having the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees is why we got stuck with Gorsuch, Boofin Brett, and the Handmaid.
I think it's short-sighted to eliminate it, personally.
Celerity
(43,339 posts)https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/filibuster-hurts-only-senate-democrats-mitch-mcconnell-knows-n1255787
snip
Cutting off debate in the Senate so legislation can be voted on is done through a procedure called "cloture," which requires three-fifths of the Senate or 60 votes to pass. I went through the Senate's cloture votes for the last dozen years from the 109th Congress until now, tracking how many of them failed because they didn't hit 60 votes. It's not a perfect method of tracking filibusters, but it's as close as we can get. It's clear that Republicans have been much more willing and able to tangle up the Senate's proceedings than Democrats. More important, the filibuster was almost no impediment to Republican goals in the Senate during the Trump administration. Until 2007, the number of cloture votes taken every year was relatively low, as the Senate's use of unanimous consent agreements skipped the need to round up supporters. While a lot of the cloture motions did fail, it was still rare to jump that hurdle at all and even then, a lot of the motions were still agreed to through unanimous consent. That changed when Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 and McConnell first became minority leader. The number of cloture motions filed doubled compared to the previous year, from 68 to 139.
Things only got more dire as the Obama administration kicked off in 2009, with Democrats in control of the House, the Senate and the White House. Of the 91 cloture votes taken during the first two years of President Barack Obama's first term, 28 or 30 percent failed. All but three failed despite having majority support. The next Congress was much worse after the GOP took control of the House: McConnell's minority blocked 43 percent of all cloture votes taken from passing. Things were looking to be on the same course at the start of Obama's second term. By November 2013, 27 percent of cloture votes had failed even though they had majority support. After months of simmering outrage over blocked nominees grew, Senate Democrats triggered the so-called nuclear option, dropping the number of votes needed for cloture to a majority for most presidential nominees, including Cabinet positions and judgeships. The next year, Republicans took over the Senate with Obama still in office. By pure numbers, the use of the filibuster rules skyrocketed under the Democratic minority: 63 of 123 cloture votes failed, or 51 percent. But there's a catch: Nothing that was being voted on was covered by the new filibuster rules. McConnell had almost entirely stopped bringing Obama's judicial nominees to the floor, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
McConnell defended the filibuster on the Senate floor last week, reminding his counterparts of their dependence on it during President Donald Trump's term. "Democrats used it constantly, as they had every right to," he said. "They were happy to insist on a 60-vote threshold for practically every measure or bill I took up." Except, if anything, use of the filibuster plummeted those four years. There are two main reasons: First, and foremost, the amount of in-party squabbling during the Trump years prevented any sort of coordinated legislative push from materializing. Second, there wasn't actually all that much the Republicans wanted that needed to get past the filibuster in its reduced state after the 2013 rule change. McConnell's strategy of withholding federal judgeships from Obama nominees paid off in spades, letting him spend four years stuffing the courts with conservatives. And when Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was filibustered, McConnell didn't hesitate to change the rules again. Trump's more controversial nominees also sailed to confirmation without any Democratic votes. Legislatively, there were only two things Republicans really wanted: tax cuts and repeal of Obamacare. The Trump tax cuts they managed through budget reconciliation, a process that allows budget bills to pass through the Senate with just a majority vote.
Republicans tried to do the same for health care in 2017 to avoid the filibuster, failing only during the final vote, when Sen. John McCain's "no" vote denied them a majority. The repeal wouldn't have gone through even if the filibuster had already been in the grave. As a result, the number of successful filibusters plummeted: Over the last four years, an average of 7 percent of all cloture motions failed. In the last Congress, 298 cloture votes were taken, a record. Only 26 failed. Almost all of the votes that passed were on nominees to the federal bench or the executive branch. In fact, if you stripped out the nominations considered in the first two years of Trump's term, the rate of failure would be closer to 15 percent but on only 70 total votes. There just wasn't all that much for Democrats to get in the way of with the filibuster, which is why we didn't hear much complaining from Republicans. Today's Democrats aren't in the same boat. Almost all of the big-ticket items President Joe Biden wants to move forward require both houses of Congress to agree. And given McConnell's previous success in smothering Obama's agenda for political gain, his warnings about the lack of "concern and comity" that Democrats are trying to usher in ring hollow. In actuality, his warnings of "wait until you're in the minority again" shouldn't inspire concern from Democrats. So long as it applies only to legislation, the filibuster is a Republicans-only weapon. There's nothing left, it seems, for the GOP to fear from it aside from its eventual demise.
snip
Hugh_Lebowski
(33,643 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Thank you for that. Well done.
andym
(5,443 posts)just like exceptions now exist for the budget, federal judges and SC judges, an exception can be made for "liberty" bills-- those that expand liberty by for example expanding voting rights.
Hugh_Lebowski
(33,643 posts)Tax Cuts 'liberate' people from high taxes, etc ...
andym
(5,443 posts)and amendments that relate to expanding those rights, including the 13,14,15,19,24, and 26th amendments.
Hugh_Lebowski
(33,643 posts)I do wonder who the arbiter would be of deciding whether (whatever) definition applies though.
Johnny2X2X
(19,060 posts)They can change the rules without eliminating altogether. Theres a middle ground.