*IF* Republican take control of the Senate, I predict that

[no_hypocrisy]

they will vote to eliminate the filibuster three minutes before they vote for a national abortion ban.

[Celerity]

1. No I think the Rethugs won't do away with filibuster if they regain the Senate, as it almost always only fucks us, not

them. They love the filibuster.

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

My own add - Sinema wanted a 60 vote threshold on most all Senate actions. Not joking. She also wanted to repeal the 2 mini-nuke exceptions on the books now, and also do away with reconciliation.

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

[no_hypocrisy]

2. You could be correct.

But the Republicans are acting like they all have rabies.

I can see my scenario play out (nuking the filibuster) and after the abortion ban, returning it.

[Celerity]

5. How many weeks would the ban be in your scenario? If they go the foetal personhood route, then we have a countdown

(IF SCOTUS upholds it), towards a potential splitting up of the Union of the States.

If the RW SCOTUS grants foetal personhood (and they can do so without Congress btw), thus outlawing ALL abortions (other than some very very narrow exceptions, and even those may not exist) nationwide, many Blue States will not comply, and thus we reach a massive tipping point.

A Rethug POTUS may well send in federal troops to force the Blue States to comply, kicking off, more than likely, kinetic violence and instant, massive Blue State secessionist movements.

If either a Dem (likely) or a Rethug (unlikely) POTUS refuses to enforce the ruling, the Red States will likely then point to that and say 'fuck you, we are no longer going to comply with rulings WE do not agree with'. Chaos and violence ensues again.

This has, for years, been the path (and there are many subjects that a renegade RW SCOTUS could rule on that could kick it all off) that I most dread in terms of the Union of the States breaking up.

There is no ultimate blocking force for much of the madness IF the SCOTUS puts its stamp of approval on even the most blatantly unconstitutional RW insanity and tyranny, and a Rethug POTUS that agrees with them is in office, especially if they have a Rethug Congress (and even a filibuster-blocked Dem controlled US Senate may not be able to help) backing them.

An extreme scenario to illustrate the ultimate fragility and dependence on good faith that undergirds our US Constitutional form of governance:

Mississippi passes a law making chattel slavery of blacks legal again.

The SCOTUS, despite that being a pure violation of the 13th Amendment (and other parts of the Constitution) says all good, the law is valid. They likely would not, but IF they did, then there is no good solution.

If neither the POTUS nor the Congress does anything to stop Mississippi, then potential (partial or total, depending on the law passed in MS) reenslavement starts. Chaos and violence ensues.

Even if we had a Dem POTUS, they would have to go against the SCOTUS ruling to send in federal troops to stop it, thus shattering the system of checks and balances, destroying the division of power, and thus likely kicking off a massive wave of Red States ignoring previous rulings that they disagree with, and also a possible rise of secessionist movements, along with systemic kinetic violence.

[unblock]

3. If either party win the trifecta, the filibuster is dead

The era of senatorial congeniality and congressional bipartisanship is over.

Of course, if Donnie worms his way back into the Oval Office without winning the trifecta, then he'll basically bypass congress by presidential edict. The illusion of distributed governance is a nice-to-have for a dictator, so he'll keep it if congress is entirely on his side. If it isn't, he'll dissolve it or reduce it to irrelevance.

[Hotler]

4. A dictator doesn't need a senate, just an armed goon squad. nt