5341

Read the Wikipedia article for the full context.

Key quote:

Abolition for nominations: 2005-2013[edit]

See also: Nuclear option

In 2005, a group of Republican senators led by Majority Leader Bill Frist proposed having the presiding officer, Vice President Dick Cheney, rule that a filibuster on judicial nominees was unconstitutional, as it was inconsistent with the President’s power to name judges with the advice and consent of a simple majority of senators.[40][41] Senator Trent Lott, the junior senator from Mississippi, used the word “nuclear” to describe the plan, and so it became known as the “nuclear option,” and the term thereafter came to refer to the general process of changing cloture requirements via the establishment of a new Senate precedent (by simple majority vote, as opposed to formally amending the Senate rule by two-thirds vote).[42] However, a group of 14 senators—seven Democrats and seven Republicans, collectively dubbed the “Gang of 14”—reached an agreement to temporarily defuse the conflict.[43][44][45]

From April to June 2010, under Democratic control, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration held a series of monthly public hearings on the history and use of the filibuster in the Senate.[46] During the 113th Congress, two packages of amendments were adopted on January 25, 2013, one temporary for that Congress and one permanent.[47][48] Changes to the permanent Senate rules (Senate Resolution 16) allowed, among other things, elimination of post-cloture debate on a motion to proceed to a bill once cloture has been invoked on the motion, provided that certain thresholds of bipartisan support are met. Despite these modest changes, 60 votes were still required to overcome a filibuster, and the “silent filibuster”—in which a senator can delay a bill even if they leave the floor—remained in place.[49]

On November 21, 2013, Senate Democrats used the “nuclear option,” voting 52–48 — with all Republicans and three Democrats opposed — to eliminate the use of the filibuster on executive branch nominees and judicial nominees, except to the Supreme Court until 2017.[50] The Democrats’ stated motivation was what they saw as an expansion of filibustering by Republicans during the Obama administration, especially with respect to nominations for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit[51][52] and out of frustration with filibusters of executive branch nominees for agencies such as the Federal Housing Finance Agency.[51]

In 2015, Republicans took control of the Senate and kept the 2013 rules in place.[53]

Abolition for all nominations: 2017-present[edit]

On April 6, 2017, Senate Republicans eliminated the sole remaining exception to the 2013 change by invoking the “nuclear option” for Supreme Court nominees. This was done in order to allow a simple majority to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The vote to change the rules was 52 to 48 along party lines.[54][55]

Also, there’s context in the 200+ year history of changes to the filibuster rule, the changes in the pattern and practice of when and how often the filibuster was used, etc.

5342

It was also caused by the Republicans breaking custom and rejecting all judicial appointments.

As for Manchin and the other radical centrists, they don’t want the filibuster broken because they don’t want to vote no to popular things, they’d rather just not vote at all.

5343

Follow up: I’m not sure why I bother anymore. The questions I addressed today in this thread have well known publicly available answers. As always the meaning is bound up in context but that never matters to the “always blame the Dems” posters.

I’m not sure there’s much worthwhile discussion to be had in P&R these days…

5344

Fake news. Makes no mention of the “Biden rule”.

(Since due to supply chain issues the supply of humor in P&R lately has been relatively low I want be clear that this is indeed a joke.)

5345

Well, for what it’s worth, I appreciate it.

5346

Haha! You responded to antlers!

but im with scott, thanks for trying.

the idea that the dems started it and the gop was just blindly retaliating does in fact ignore that the gop was blocking all of obamas judicial appointments.

when one party is trying to work within the system and the other party does nothing but obstruct, there are two choices, do nothing or change the system. to their credit, they changed the system. the gop have shown that they will happily use, abuse, or ignore tge system, rules, traditins, and laws in any way they need to in order to get their way, democracy be damned. so, really, just fuck them and their supporters. including any who post here.

5347

Democrat message of the month

5348

Now they just need to keep on it instead of forgetting about it in a month.

5349

You are getting angry at people for saying something that’s true. From your own quoted wiki article:

Yes, there’s context, yes the Democrats had reasons, but losing your shit because people are making a true statement about what Democrats did is frankly bizarre. Context doesn’t somehow turn true into false.

It’s perfectly possible to understand the reasons and context and decide that either in principle, or just as a matter of tactics, that the Democrats made a bad decision and enabled (in the sense of providing political cover for) the Republicans to do the same. The idea that now seems to be in your head is that people could only possibly reach this conclusion because they don’t know as much context as you.

I’ve always thought you were one of the best posters here because you’re willing to spend words on both facts and argument. But I think you need to recalibrate if you’ve reached the point that the only reason you’ll allow for someone to disagree with you is because they’re being willfully ignorant.

5350

I mean there’s always “actually ignorant” as an alternative

5351

The fact that Democrats changed the rule for regular judicial nominees to overcome unprecedented obstruction is not the point of contention.

The idea that this somehow excuses or justifies the fact that the GOP changed the rule for supreme court justices is.

5352

This is completely unfair and it’s this type of misrepresentation/exaggeration of emotion that escalates conflict needlessly. It might also be projection.

5353

Hmm, I wonder if the media will actually echo that message?

Meanwhile at CNN.

5354

He was accused of mangling the truth and acting in bad faith. I don’t think it’s an unreasonable reaction.

5355

Oh, please. At best, he lost patience. (And then patiently explained that he was losing his patience.) If that qualifies as losing one’s shit, we should all be so lucky.

5356

Mangling distinctions.

5357

I’m really confused why it’s ok for him to say MArk is posting in bad faith but not for Mark to say he “lost his shit”.

5358

How does it not justify it?

It was incredibly dumb to think that somehow you could negate the filibuster for just the stuff YOU wanted to do, and think that the other side wouldn’t do the same for stuff THEY wanted to do later.

Frankly, this is why the Dems are dumb if they don’t just scrap it.

The GOP will scrap it as soon as they have 50 solid votes to do something. The only reason they didn’t scrap it prior to losing power, is that they didn’t really have 50 votes to do anything anyway.

Although, for that same reason… scrapping the filibuster is kind of moot now anyway, as I don’t know they could pass anything even if they only needed 50 votes.

5359

He said, “I don’t see how it can be in good faith.” Pretty clear use of I language vs. you language.

I’m starting to think we need mandatory training on this kind of skill and a government issued license before one can post online or via social media.

I’m losing patience… next up, MY SHIT!

5360

For my money once the idea was out there nothing would stop the GOP shoving the filibuster to one side once it was inconvienient enough. I don’t think the democrats actions actually made much difference, other than routing around some of the GOP obstructionism. Maybe they made the GOP slightly more willing to act on the filibuster, but with the breakdown of any kind of real cross-floor negotiation outside of extreme edge cases it’s always been pretty inevitable IMO.