I’m not surprised that Daily Kos is running a petition to convince the Senate Democrats to kill the filibuster for judicial nominations. A lot of outside groups are convinced that Harry Reid doesn’t have the votes to “go nuclear” on judicial nominees because too many Democrats are concerned about giving away their ability to obstruct lifetime nominations when they inevitably return to the minority some day. However, people close to Reid aren’t saying that he doesn’t have the votes.
A senior Democratic aide said Reid has not conducted a recent whip count and questioned how outside groups or rank-and-file Democratic senators would know the vote count if the leader attempted a rule change immediately.
“Any declarative statements at this point are extremely premature,” said the senior aide.
At this point, after filibustering two nominees to the DC Circuit of Appeals, and on the cusp of filibustering a third, the Republicans are taunting the Democrats:
“Many of those on the other side who are clamoring for rules change and almost falling over themselves to do it have never served a single day in the minority,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said Tuesday in a floor speech. “All I can say is this – be careful what you wish for.”
“So if the Democrats are bent on changing the rules, then I say go ahead,” he said. “There are a lot more Scalias and [Clarence] Thomases that we’d love to put on the bench. The nominees we’d nominate and put on the bench with 51 votes would interpret the constitution as it was written.”
It’s a funny thing, because no one filibustered Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas (who was confirmed with 52 votes), and Samuel Alito overcame John Kerry’s filibuster with 72 votes before being confirmed with a mere fifty-eight. In other words, Sen. Grassley is threatening to do something that has been the historical norm, which is allow judges to get an up-or-down vote rather than having to receive 60 votes to be confirmed.
The Democrats have no choice but to stand up to this bullying. If they won’t, we will need to know which senators are standing in the way and focus our attention on them.
Don’t worry, they’ll kill the filibuster for judicial nominations. They’ll just wait until 25 minutes before they lose the majority to do it.
The only way to explain this unprecedented provocation is that Repubs want the Dems to be the one to cross the nuclear Rubicon, they are intentionally smearing shit in the Dems faces at this point. They would never dream of standing for this unbelievable minority obstruction with a Repub prez and Repub majority.
As for the increasingly appalling Grassley, his taunts are baseless since Dems haven’t successfully filibustered a supreme court nominee in recent history, and allowed votes on game changing Repubs like Alito. This battle is all about the appeals courts.
Also, too, Grassley is here openly admitting that future Repub prezes intend to nominate more Scalias and Thomases, i.e. rightwing extremists responsible for the most unpopular decisions of the past decade. As I recall, open support for nominating more Scalia-type justices is declining in popularity with the Great American Boob. So save Grassley’s promises and threats for the next prez election.
There is nothing that is ever going to happen legislatively in this “Congress” and future ones, so this battle on judicial nominees is the whole ball game for the rest of Obama’s presidency. Failure to confront the Repubs here will spell the end of the Dems.
Well, if you “interpret the Constitution as it was written,” you’ll see that it requires simple majorities for all votes in the Senate. And the Federalist Papers as they were written point out the dangers of requiring supermajorities in more than one place.
Not that it wouldn’t be a breach of precedent to change the Senate rules in midterm, but as BooMan pointed out the other day, this business of routinely filibustering everything is a breach of precedent as well. And as Hamilton noted in Federalist #22, it does rather serve to “substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.”
It’ll be a miracle if the Democrats do away with the filibuster. The Dem senators, representatives and governors are too busy running away from Obamacare to do anything but cover their assses. Governor Dayton says people should be able to keep their health insurance. He said it defies common sense that people should have to pay for coverage they don’t need(i.e.an older male having maternity coverage). He said the numbers of people affected in Minnesota is staggering.
If things don’t turn around dramatically, the Dems could see a bloodbath in 2014 worse than 2010. A senator in a Democratic state like California is even panicing. Must be hearing from a lot of Democrats and independents that are angry.
I do wonder if defensive Dems will begin to get the point of some of these people who are pointing out the kludge built into public/private solutions can end up making them worse than either alone. But it’s no going back now. Own it.
Seems like it would just be better to do Medicare for all.
Medicare beginning at 55 was part of the ACA deal almost to the end and then Joe Lieberman threatened to filibuster it and it was dropped.
Should be medicare beginning at age 0, but I digress.
And yes I remember, stonewalled by Lieberman, Obama’s senator mentor.
I think the repubs are taunting the dems so the dems will kill the filibuster which the repubs will then use the next time they are in control without being blamed for killing it.
The Democrats never used the filibuster effectively in the post-Civil Rights movement era anyway. Are they harking back to the effectiveness of the filibuster when Strom Thurmond was a Democrat?
And even then .. southern Dems killed Civil Rights legislation in committee .. they didn’t even need the filibuster for that
The repubs will kill the filibuster within weeks if they ever retake the Senate. Given that, we are better off beating them to the punch right now.
Allowing the obstruction and the taunting to remain unanswered and looking like the feckless Democrats of the past 7 years is dimming Democratic chances in 2014 after they raised their prospects with unity around the opposition to the shutdown extortion.
Stories about Democrats not really wanting to support the policies they claim to support are reappearing.
As for Grassley, he like John McCain is past his sell-by date. Just ignore the rantings of both of them.
Contra to some of the comments above, I don’t think that the Republicans are doing this to goad the Democrats into eliminating the filibuster. I think it’s much more straightforward. Control of the DC circuit is important for a whole host of regulatory reasons, and the Republicans are willing to fight to keep it. They wouldn’t fight if they thought they were going to definitely lose, but they figure that there is a very good chance the Dems won’t be able to get their act together to overturn the filibuster. Given the disarray and disillusionment around the Obamacare rollout, it may well turn out that they are right.
Good God, people need to get a grip about this rollout. However catastrophic it’s been it still has a long way to go before it’s worse than the absolute nightmare of a health care “system” that the free market gave us. We need to fix the problems, not run away from the whole thing.
Until someone can show me someone being “hurt” who is not upper middle class and healthy, I’ll agree with you…
Any hold out dems need to understand the GOP will do this anyway the second a minority democratic caucus filibusters a teacup. So there is no reason to wait to do it now.
Second, we must put in as many dem judges as possible. That is Obama’s #1 job, after fixing the damned web site.
Third, I do not believe the GOP can sustain a majority in the senate for more than a brief period of time at this point. Immigration reform is dead, demographics are against them. As long as obamacare is fully rolled out in the next few months it’s game over.
That would require a Republican president to make such a nomination – I think we’re good between here and 2020, and maybe past that if the GOP stays the course as is their wont.
Cool! I like the way you think.