Filibuster

[angrychair]

Let me go on the record here that if Republicans win control of the Senate in November that they will nuke the filibuster without a moment's hesitation and use the Dems support of doing so as their way to justify it.

(Also for the record I do support an exception for the voting rights legislation)

[Azathoth]

1. They might, but at least it will be unambiguously iniated by them

Whereas nuking the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees was seen as a natural extension of Dems nuking it for other federal judicial appointments. The idea we can temporarily eliminate the filibuster just for nominees or bills we want to pass, while maintaining it for stuff the GOP cares about, is comical.

The filibuster is the *only* reason the ACA still exists, it's the only reason a lot of Democratic-authored legislation still exists. Can you imagine what the first two years of Trump would have been like without the filibuster?

If we nuke the filibuster, pass voting rights legislation, then lose both houses and the White House in 2024, the bill we passed will be gone within 24 hours of the GOP president being sworn in, guaranteed. Then the next 3.99 years will be unimaginable.

If we don't nuke the filibuster, and we lose both houses and the White House in 2024, the GOP may still nuke the filibuster, but that's not guaranteed, and if they don't, the next 3.99 will be merely a depressing nightmare.

[unblock]

4. If fascists win the trifecta our democracy is toast.

There is *no way* the current group of Republican fascists will *ever* give up power once they get it.

They've already proven they're more than happy to cheat and lie and rewrite the rules and if that doesn't work well they'll just go in and kill people to try to keep power.


There is no appeasing these people.
You cannot appease fascist.
They take it as weakness and grab more.

[Azathoth]

5. They're going to win the trifecta sooner or later. That's how a two-party system works

It doesn't matter how awful or authoritarian they are. Eventually, people will get tired of Dem leadership and will vote for "the other guy." And that's all it takes.

The only thing that might semi-reliably prevent that in the near-to-mid future would be making DC and PR states.

[unblock]

6. Back and forth, sure; trifecta, no, that's not inevitable

A party can go a generation or more without winning the trifecta even as it occasionally wins the presidency and maybe one house of congress.

By all rights, the Republican Party in its current form should be a consistent loser until they reform themselves and appeal to an actual majority. At that point, they might act reasonably even if we disagree with many of their policies.

But if they win before reforming, they will change things so they never lose power. Why would they?

[Azathoth]

7. "A party can go a generation or more"

Not anymore, at least not reliably. The structural advantages that the old-school post-WWII Democratic Party had in Congress disappeared forever along with the Solid South.

Since Bill's first term in 1992, the country has had six separate trifectas, four of which were GOP. That averages out to one every five years or so for the past 30 years.

On edit: I meant to say seven trifectas including the current Congress, four of which were GOP.

[unblock]

8. This is why we need to have voting reform

Republicans are only a viable party now because they cheat.

[unblock]

2. You severely underestimate fascists

If they get sufficient power, they will make it so that they are in full control for decades regardless of the will of the people or the votes of senators.

Arguments over the filibuster will seem quaint when massive numbers of minorities and people who live in democratic areas are effectively denied the vote due to arcane Jim-crow-esque procedures they set up.

These people don't play nice ever, and they will change the rules to suit them no matter what we do. Just look at mcturtle's flip on approving Supreme Court nominees in the last year of a presidency. No when it suits him, yes when it suits him.

They will nuke the filibuster the minute it suits them no matter what we do.

[RustyWheels]

3. I'm not so sure...

If they win control of the Senate in November, Biden will still be President and will be able to veto anything that he doesn't like.

However, I agree that as soon as the GQP has control of all three branches, they will CERTAINLY nuke it.

Killing the filibuster only benefits them if/when the get all three branches... Until then, it helps them, as so you see with Manchin and other "centrist" dems to block liberal/progressive legislation.

[Celerity]

9. No, the Rethugs will not 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 wants a 60 vote threshold on most all of any Senate action. Not joking. She also wants 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

[madville]

10. Not likely because of Romney, Murkowski and Collins

Those three won’t let the rest eliminate the filibuster, as long as their majority is 52 or less. Murkowski may not be around after 2022 though so it may be more like 51 or less.

It wouldn’t do them much good from 2023-2024 anyway, Biden could veto any legislation and there would be no chance of it getting overridden.

[PoliticAverse]

11. Why didn't they nuke it for legislation when Trump was President then? n/t

[FBaggins]

12. No... they won't

Why on earth would they kill the filibuster just to pass something that can be blocked by the president?

They won't consider killing the filibuster unless/until they control not just the Senate... but also the White House and the House or Representatives.

Even then - I doubt that it will happen.