Posted on 10/28/2024 12:19:41 PM PDT by Red Badger
Democratic heavyweights Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and Chuck Schumer are all indicating that they will try to weaken or kill the Senate filibuster if their party wins big on Election Day.
Harris and Walz, who are at the top of the Democratic ticket for the 2024 election cycle, have each indicated they believe the filibuster needs to go, while Schumer suggested in August that he would move to eliminate it if Democrats can secure a Senate majority. The filibuster is a key Senate rule that requires 60 votes to pass most major legislation rather than a simple majority of 51, frustrating slim majorities looking to pass transformative laws by narrow margins.
Most recently, Walz suggested that he and Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are on the same page when it comes to getting rid of the filibuster while the pair played video games on a Sunday livestream.
“I don’t know where you stand, but I’m going to guess you and I are probably the same on the filibuster,” Walz said during the stream.
“Oh yeah, we have got to get rid of that thing,” Ocasio-Cortez said in response.
Walz also endorsed abolishing the Electoral College during an October fundraiser with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, though the Harris campaign subsequently attempted to clean up his comments by saying they are not representative of the campaign’s positions.
In September, Harris said she supports eliminating the filibuster in order to codify Roe v. Wade’s protections for abortion access.
“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” Harris said. “And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”
Schumer, who helms the Democratic caucus in the Senate, has also suggested that he would take aim at the filibuster if his party is able to land a majority on Election Day. Senate Democrats tried to kill the filibuster in the first half of President Joe Biden’s term in office to pass the massive “Build Back Better” plan, but then-Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia held out against that effort despite immense pressure from activists.
Eventually, Democrats managed to pass the Inflation Reduction Act—Biden’s signature climate bill and a pared-down version of the Build Back Better plan—without a single GOP vote by using the budget reconciliation process.
“We got it up to 48, but, of course, Sinema and Manchin voted no; that’s why we couldn’t change the rules. Well, they’re both gone,” Schumer told reporters during the Democratic National Convention in August, NBC News reported. “Ruben Gallego is for it, and we have 51. So even losing Manchin, we still have 50.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned that eliminating the filibuster would allow Democrats to add two new states to the country that would reliably elect Democratic senators who would then enable the party to pursue major agenda items that are currently out of reach.
If Democrats can sufficiently weaken or eliminate the filibuster, “they’ll admit the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as two new states—that’s four Democratic senators in perpetuity—and then they’ll go after the Supreme Court,” McConnell told The Owensboro Times in August.
Notably, the late former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ended the filibuster for judicial nominations in 2013 to help get former President Barack Obama’s blocked nominees though the Senate, but that decision also helped pave the way for former President Donald Trump to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court during his term in office, according to CNN.
The Harris-Walz campaign and Schumer’s office did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
We need to hoist them on their own petard. MAGA ought to throw it back at them. We win, we drop the filbuster and pack the court.
I’m not in favor of either, but let’s at least make them think we would.
Harry Reid was being so clever when he changed the Senate Rules for his team, forgetting that those same rule changes would also work for Republicans............
They always want to do that when they have the majority.
And as soon as they are the minority, they want the filibuster back.
My personal belief is that they should go back to a REAL filibuster, like in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, not the namby-pamby pseudo filibuster rules they have used for the last 30+ years.
Believe me, at this point in time, IF they ever get the chance by controlling everything, the left will stack the court, enshrine the murder of the innocent unborn in Federal law, and grant citizenship to every illegal here forever...they will do whatever they think it takes to ENSHURE that a republican never has power again.
So, IF the right takes control this time, THEY HAD BETTER DO WHATEVER THEY CAN to make sure that the left is unable to in the future...
Yep. He won’t even wait until January.
Reid should have used "The Clapper" instead of the "Snapper". He was a real "whack job". Whack!
They don’t have the votes to do it now unless they turn Sinema before January.
If Trump wins, the filibuster should be nuked with respect to administrative office confirmations, which were slow-walked for all of Trump’s term, leaving him with hostile Dem holdovers.
Kamala is going to be a housewife (dodging Doug’s wild swings) without a prayer of even getting an MSNBC gig by the time Trump is inaugurated.
The filibuster was not on trump judges. In fact, trump had a historic number of judges then any other first term president in history. Biden happened to get as many put on the bench. Easy to when only 51 votes are needed.
Do they want a Penochete. Because ylthat’s how you get a Penochete.
It’s a double edged sword. I wonder what makes them think they’re going to win big….
I’d be happy getting rid of AOC.
They tried to nuke the Filibuster already. Two of their own Senators rejected the plan. Their Virus Coup was bad enough . If they had succeeded America would be well on its way to dictatorship by now
I pray it doesn’t. Nothing has been done about election integrity and Trump and Junkie Jezebel are running neck and neck. All I know if she does “win” and they pull this one party tyranny sh*t, I am not sitting back to watch it happen, we owe it to our kids and all those before us who fought for our freedom. F these bastards to hell, I’m going to sit back and watch Junkie Jezebel, AOC, Tliab, Omar, 4 dweebs with the combined IQ of a cucumber turn it into a one party tyranny and destroy this country and my freedom? That’s just aint gonna happen.
I’ll humbly suggest that they’re not running neck & neck.
I’ll also suggest the Senate is a done deal because of the numbers. West Virginia will change and so will Montana and/or Ohio at a minimum.
They will.
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