So, based on Jeremy Peters’ reporting in the New York Times, it looks like the Senate Democrats have coalesced around a strategy that will kill the filibuster for presidential appointees, but not for judicial nominations. If that’s the best they can do, it’s better than nothing, but it’s stupid.
If the Senate “breaks the rules to change the rules,” as Mitch McConnell is so fond of saying, they will create a nasty precedent that the Republicans will be only too eager to use in the future. It is, after all, the changing of the rules in mid-session that is more important than the substance of the rules change. Once it is done once, it is easier to do in the future. So, if the Dems are holding off on getting rid of the filibuster for judicial nominees because they want to reserve the right to filibuster Republican judicial appointments in the future, that’s a pipe dream. They should just bite the bullet and do away with the filibuster for all nominations, regardless of whether they are for the executive or judicial branches.
Whenever the Republicans have the chance to confirm a Republican president’s nominations, they are going to do away with the filibuster anyway, so the Dems should not pretend otherwise. The country has become too polarized to function with a 60-vote requirement for nominations. The sooner the Dems accept that, the better.
Hell, the nuclear option was a Republican idea in the first place. The only reason we still have the filibuster is that the Democrats didn’t push the issue last time they were in the minority.
The filibuster might be an honored tradition, but it’s dead. The Republicans killed it.
Harry Reid = Charlie Brown. I don’t care if some pants-wetting clowns won’t back up Reid from going all in re: filibuster reform. Reid needs to print this post out and distribute to every Senate Democrat. And if they don’t back him they can’t expect to help from the DSCC.
Well, well, Charlie Brown. That didn’t take long. I predict that even that doesn’t happen.
It doesn’t happen because Charlie Brown doesn’t have the votes to pass any kind of reform.
You think Harry Reid = Charlie Brown?
harry reid is Lucy.
If we accept the premise of the filibuster (I don’t) then presidential nominees should never be subject to it as it is. The president won, they should get the nominees they want; pending the Senate having a majority that is.
If democrats ever filibustered republicans on the judiciary, I’d be sympathetic to keeping it for that area. But they don’t. They fold. Every time.
Siggggghhhh………..
Harry Reid…..Proving once again that he is nothing more than the chief eunuch of the Senate.
Agreed. But Harry doesn’t want to make waves, just a ripple or two.
Yeah, this is moronic. They need to do something about the judicial nominations. If they won’t change the filibuster, then they need to place limits on holds a nominee can get. Amy Klobuchar had a proposal to resolve this issue.
They had also talked about limiting the # of appointments that need Senate approval. There are a lot of sub-cabinet appointments that really shouldn’t need Senate approval.
Those are lifetime judicial positions you are so blithely dismissing.
You are wrong to do so.
I thought you might be talking to me, but then I realized that you are ignoring the fact that this decision passes up the opportunity to put three new judges on the DC Circuit.
I’m not ignoring anything. Packing the court seems likes a fun thing to do…up until someone does it back to you. The court system was never meant to be an arms race, no matter what the Federalist Society has pulled off so far.
And those “permanent majorities” have this nasty habit of not holding up.
No one has introduced the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 on behalf of Barack Obama. He is not packing any courts. He has only been able to appoint one judge to the DC Circuit in 4 and a half years (and that one was recently), so there are now three vacancies.
Right, and in the old days Obama would get another of his preferred candidates confirmed and then there’d be a third candidate who would be some weird compromise guy who went to school with one of the senators on the judiciary committee or whatever and that’d be that. And then the last vacancy would get stalled out for the next president to deal with.
That doesn’t mean the old system was better, but relative detente used to be observed. If you change it so that 50 votes is all it ever takes to be a federal judge, there’s no going back. Home state recommendations might start going unobserved, everything becomes a partisan litmus test, etc.
It would be the most fundamental restructuring of the judiciary in our lifetimes. It’s very different from agency heads and labor boards.
Packing the court seems likes a fun thing to do … up until someone does it back to you.
What GOPer judges have been blocked from the bench? Bork? Anyone else? Harriet Miers wasn’t, if you remember. The RWNJ deemed her not zealous enough. So C- Augustus appointed Roberts instead to placate the RWNJ hordes and the Democrats rolled over.
The judges are the important thing, but it’s wrong to try to fill the vacancies on the most important circuit appeals court in the country.
Waitress, the food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.
And the judges are the biggest issue. The presidential appointments are important, but the judiciary is dangerously skewed to the right in this country already, and many of those appointments last a very long time.
This is worse than nothing. This is going to really piss of the Repukeliscum. The effect will be to filibuster all judges.
It used to be that judges were strongly influenced by the senators of the state in which the court was houses. Why did that system fall apart?
OK, great. But what’s the Reid/Schumer/Durbin/Dem plan for gettin’ our two-term Dem prez’s judges confirmed?
No plan? tsk-tsking and regrets and expressions of disappointment? More letters to Mitchipoo? That can’t miss!
What a party….cue Repub laughter, exit stage right…
You write about this as if a cohesive Democratic Senate Caucus has agreed that this is the policy they want.
More likely, 45 +/- Democrats want real filibuster reform but are willing to take what they can get passed, and a handful that don’t really have a problem with the filibuster and just want as modest a solution to the current crisis as possible.