New Footage Shows NC Dem Senate Candidate Lauding Filibuster

[brooklynite]

Daily Beast

As their legislative wish list languishes in a deadlocked Senate, many Democrats are more anxious than ever to jettison the filibuster—and they’re hoping the 2022 midterm elections will bring to the Senate more supporters of changing that long-standing rule.

But a Democratic front-runner in one of the most competitive states on the 2022 map, Cheri Beasley of North Carolina, is not only uncommitted about ending the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for passing bills, she has declared on the campaign trail that the filibuster has been a good thing in the past.

During a video call with supporters in August, Beasley was asked about her position on the filibuster, according to a recording of the event obtained by The Daily Beast. She said she had “thought deeply about it” but did not offer a position one way or the other.

But Beasley did offer an unusual argument to see from a Democratic candidate about the filibuster in 2021. “The reality is,” she said, “it has in many ways benefited Democrats and people across North Carolina.”

Cheri Beasley (D) - Ex-State Supreme Court Chief Justice & Ex-Appeals Court Judge
Keith Davenport (D) - Ex-Brooksville (OK) Mayor, '14 US Rep Candidate & '20 Pres Candidate
Ava Edwards (D) - Pharmacist & Research Scientist
Jenna Hamrick (D) - Veterinary Assistant & Ex-Restaurant Manager
Jeff Jackson (D) - State Sen., Attorney, National Guard Officer & Afghan War Veteran
Constance Lov Johnson (D) - Pastor, Educator, '14 St Sen Candidate & '20 SPI Candidate
Tobias LaGrone (D) - Pastor & Clinical Pastoral Psychotherapist
Rett Newton (D) - Beaufort Mayor, Scientist & Retired USAF Colonel
Erica Smith (D) - Ex-State Sen., Ex-School Board Member, Pastor & '20 Candidate
Richard Watkins (D) - Microbiologist & '18 US Rep Candidate

[FBaggins]

1. That's going to be the case for many NC candidates

Or at the very least they will try to avoid the question entirely (as the GA candidates did in January).

The only senate races where supporting ending the filibuster is likely to help... are races that we don't need the help.

[onecaliberal]

2. This is why nothing matters.

The pukes will steal everything the next election. Because they WILL DITCH THE FILIBUSTER. It will suddenly become the opposite of every bad thing they’ve said about it. The Dems that support the filibuster are paid to do so period!

[Celerity]

3. No, they will keep it as it almost always blocks Dems and has little impact on Rethugs

My own add - Sinema wants a 60 vote threshold on EVERY legislative action!. Not joking.

The filibuster hurts only Senate Democrats -- and Mitch McConnell knows that. The numbers don't lie.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/filibuster-hurts-only-senate-democrats-mitch-mcconnell-knows-n1255787

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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.

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