Washington, D.C. – Abolishing the filibuster – so Democrats can ram through a radical, partisan agenda – is quickly becoming a litmus test for all Senate Democratic hopefuls in 2022, and it is hard to find a Democratic candidate who has not quickly embraced this race to the Left. Proving just how far Left today’s Democrats are, the once radical position of abolishing the legislative filibuster is now the mainstream.
Doing so was once viewed as an outlier position among Democrats. Now candidates in states that will determine who wins the majority next year say they back at least reforming the rule, which requires most legislation to get 60 votes to clear the Senate. […]
In Florida, Rep. Val Demings (D) talked up the need to reform the filibuster when she launched her bid to unseat Sen. Marco Rubio (R) last month. She doubled down this week, running ads on Facebook urging support for ending the filibuster and writing in a USA Today op-ed over the weekend that it “threatens the freedoms of every American.”
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who had opposed filibuster reform during his unsuccessful 2020 presidential bid, told MSNBC in a recent interview that the Senate is “broken.”
“I’m sorry it has come to this point, but we don’t have an honest broker on the other side and America can’t wait any longer,” said Ryan, who is running to fill the seat being left vacant by the retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).
Democratic hopefuls in both Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin have also embraced reforming or ending the filibuster.
As recently as 2017, dozens of Democratic senators, including now-Vice President Harris, signed a letter urging Senate leaders to protect the legislative filibuster after Republicans nixed the 60-vote hurdle for Supreme Court nominees. Democrats had previously eliminated the use of the filibuster on executive nominations and lower-court judicial picks.
Ending the filibuster was a point of contention during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, with now-President Biden facing off with more progressive rivals.
But since then, a growing number of Democratic senators have suggested they are open to either reforming the filibuster — by requiring that opponents speak on the floor, lowering the vote requirement or making exemptions for specific issues — or nixing it altogether. […]
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) accused Ryan of “caving to the radical Left” after his MSNBC interview and Demings of “getting in line with AOC and the Squad to support eliminating the filibuster.”
They’ve also homed in on Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who are each up for reelection. Republicans have focused in particular on Kelly, who hasn’t publicly come down one way or the other on a rules change but told reporters that he’ll look at it as it’s proposed.
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