In the latest blow to the Biden agenda that continues a long series of recent losses, Democrats’ election overhaul legislation was defeated in the Senate last night. Hours later, Democrats’ push to abolish the filibuster was defeated as Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema voted with Republicans.
According to the New York Post:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tried for the “nuclear option” to change the longstanding rule after the GOP used the filibuster to block sweeping voting-rights legislation pushed by the Democrats but the measure failed 52-48.
Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema voted with Republicans against the “talking filibuster” change, which would have effectively let Democrats wait out the GOP filibuster and pass the voting legislation with a simple majority.
The current rules require 60 votes to end a filibuster, a figure that was out of reach for Democrats in the evenly-split Senate amid staunch Republican opposition to the voting legislation.
Despite Manchin and Sinema reiterating their opposition to changing the filibuster rule, Schumer (D-NY) insisted on getting every senator on the record regarding his doomed effort.
Some deliberately deceptive pundits have phrased the defeat as being at the hands of “two senators,” apparently pretending to be unaware of the other fifty Senators who voted the same way.
The majority of Democrats railing against the filibuster today as a “racist relic” supported it just years ago. During the 2019-2020 Congressional term, Democrats used the filibuster a record 328 times as the minority. Since 2009, Democrats have used the filibuster 657 times while in the minority, while Republicans have used it 609 times.
In defense of the filibuster, Tom Cotton read a speech directly quoting Schumer’s past defense of the filibuster last week.
“The nuclear option is being pushed largely by the radioactive rhetoric of a small band of radicals. who hold in their hands the political fortunes of the president.” Cotton said, quoting past remarks from Schumer. “Constitutional scholars will tell us that the reason we have these rules in the Senate — unlimited debate, two-thirds to change the rules, the idea that 60 have to close off debate — is debate in the spirit and role of the Constitution,” Cotton continued quoting. “That is what the Constitution is all about. We all know it.”
Indeed!
Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros
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