Progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced Wednesday that there are currently enough votes in the Senate to suspend the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade and abortion rights if Democrats win control of the House and keep the Senate and White House.
“We will suspend the filibuster. We have the votes for that on Roe v. Wade,” Warren said on ABC’s “The View.”
She said if Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress in 2025, “the first vote Democrats will take in the Senate, the first substantive vote, will be to make Roe v. Wade law of the land again in America.”
“if Democrats win control of the House and keep the Senate and White House.”
You should have done that years ago when you had the opportunity and everyone was telling you, begging you, to do it.
Now it’s too late.
It’s not too late but they’re not getting credit until they actually fucking do it and they deserve credit for just saying they want to do it without doing it.
(Edit: And to be clear the credit they’re going to get would be credit for doing the bare minimum, long after they promised to do it, long after they had multiple opportunities to do it.)
Even if they agree to get rid of the filibuster on this one issue, it won’t do any good with the House under Republican control.
With the receeding of GOP support on this issue alone, there is no fucking way way they are keeping the Senate or House. Every dipshit political analyst out there who has not been paying attention for the last 1.5 years needs a swift kick in the head over their awful projection maps (looking at you, Nate). They’ve consistently been wrong, and calling all these flips in support “SURPRISES!”.
It’s not surprising that women and reasonable people are making this their single issue to vote on, and against normal party lines. It will carry to November, and until this bullshit is ended. Watch.
I want to believe! ;)
Whether this winds up being true or not, you’ve made my day just a bit better with your optimism. Thanks my dude.
Was 538 wrong or do people just not understand statistics?
538 is wrong most of the time. Nate Silver has gone back to claiming none of his work is designed to predict outcomes, he’s “just running stats” now 🙄
Whatever you think of him, know his models didn’t get a thing right with regard to elections after the Roe v Wade issue came back to light. The cycle goes like this: his data is wrong, he tells everyone it’s correct, then he writes some bullshit explaining how everyone else is stupid for reading his own published data wrong, but it was actually right in the end.
Just take everything with a handful of salt unless there’s an obvious change affecting the numbers.
I’m not sure that’s correct. 538 was always a polling aggregator, but people treated it like 60% chance means “for sure.” I think what we’re now seeing is we don’t actually have much good polling data due to extremism, and therefore sites like 538 aren’t as valuable.
I distinctly remember Silver refused to make a prediction on who would win in 2016 because he insisted that Trump’s 33% odds according to 538 meant there was a very real chance of a Trump victory. But everyone came out an blamed Silver for calling it wrong.
I don’t actually like the guy, I think his analysis and political savvy is pretty weak and he comes off as incredibly arrogant. But he literally just runs a weighted data aggregator. So if the data is bad, his results will be bad too.
His models use aggregated data to create what he has shifted from calling “predictions”, to now being called “data” (as in, “the data says…”), or more recently just flat out calling them “odds”. Keep in mind he does not open source his analytics at all.
So taking that into mind, he’s just rebranding subtly, sure. His company got bought by Disney, and I’m sure they put the hammer down on the language because they are now an easy target to get sued. Fair enough. My issue is that prior to all of this, he was plainly making predictions, and used those words to say as much. He even talked at length about it, and why he started changing his own words to describe his work.
So he called them predictions the few times his data aligned with real-world outcomes, but on the downslope of his popularity in doing so, is backing away from that attitude.
Lay people will still read exactly what he’s doing as making predictions.
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They’ve only had a filibuster-proof majority once since 1980. They used it to pass the ACA (which should have included codifying Roe v Wade, among other things). It’s not too late if we can elect enough willing Congress members.
This is a story about suspending the filibuster. Which they should have done in Obama’s term instead of letting Lieberman dictate terms for the insurance industry.
I’m aware of that. They need 51 votes to do it. They talked about suspending the filibuster in 2020 but Manchin and Sinema shut that down.
You don’t need a filibuster proof majority to suspend the filibuster, so there’s no relevance to how rarely they’ve had that.
Talking about the Democratic party’s history with the filibuster isn’t related to a current Democratic Senator’s comments on the filibuster?
No? Why would it be. You don’t need a filibuster proof margin to eliminate the filibuster. If your point had been “a filibuster proof majority is so incredibly rare it makes governing essentially impossible” that would be relevant, but just pointing out we only had one once so that’s why Roe wasn’t codified is not.
Senator Warren’s comments, and this post about them, aren’t just about the filibuster. It’s also about codifying Roe v Wade. And I was replying to someone who said they should have done something about when they could have. The only times they could have are when they either suspended the filibuster or when they had a filibuster-proof majority. And my reply related to the last time the Democratic party could have reasonably done anything about Roe v Wade, which just so happens to have been the last time the only time they had a filibuster-proof majority.
I don’t know why you’re gatekeeping so hard here. The votes on my comments indicate everyone else thinks I’m making positive contributions to the discussion. So maybe just relax a little and let people converse on the topic.
We didn’t have the votes to get it done in 2020 as the person you responded to pointed out. No, we didn’t need a filibuster proof majority, but we needed a voting majority to suspend the filibuster, which we didn’t have with Sinema and Manchin. Outside of Obama and the ACA, there hasn’t been an opportunity to get anything through both chambers that didn’t have Republican support.
So it is a valid excuse for why it’s not been codified without a filibuster proof majority.
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Roe v Wade looked secure in 2008. It’s only in hindsight that we can say “coulda woulda shoulda”.
For sure hindsight is 20/20. I wonder if we should retire that phrase.
If it looked secure back then, why was there talk of codifying it back then?
There wasn’t?
All it takes is 51 votes to eliminate the filibuster.
Just for fun, I looked at the last 50 years to see WHEN they could have codified Roe. There were only 4 periods with dem trifectas:
-1977-81 senate majority 6
-1993-95 senate majorty 4
-2009-11 senate majority 9 (10 for a month)
-2021-23 senate majority 1
The senate majority is the number of senators you could loose who didn’t want to get rid of the filibuster on this topic OR who were pro life (like Harry Reid, the senate majority leader from 2005 to 2017, though in the senate from 1987-2017)
The problem is the Dems have TWO conservative senators who refused to codify Roe. Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema both refused to suspend the filibuster.
So we did NOT have a filibuster-proof majority 2021-2023.
There were only 4 periods with dem trifectas
So ONLY 4 times when there was absolutely nothing standing in their way except themselves?
That they don’t do what they promised on the rare occasions where they DO get the magic majorities they ask to get first isn’t exactly a good argument in their favor…
We got the ACA in the last one, and in the most recent one two Democrat senators defected to oppose it so it couldn’t go forward.
We got the ACA in the last one
Which they negotiated into a giant giveaway to insurance companies with no price controls or other ways to limit profiteering. WITHOUT any Republicans forcing them to or even voting for the bill.
two Democrat senators defected to oppose it so it couldn’t go forward.
Yeah, there’s always a rotating villain or two who acts as a roadblock and scapegoat. So very convenient for a party that votes for legislation that their rich owner donors want much more often than legislation that the people at large want.
Especially since the rotating villains are always heavily promoted by party leadership and paid more party funds for their campaigns than most other candidates.
The ACA, while not perfect, literally saved my life. It prohibits lifetime maximums and eliminated the idea of pre-existing conditions.
Without that, I’d be dead.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
This place is full of people who want to turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. They’ll never be happy with anything and it explains why their big ideas will never happen.
They turn everyone off and discourage everyone because nothing is ever good enough. It would be one thing to be happy but not satisfied but even that isn’t enough.
I know.
They have unrealistic expectations about how the world works and feel like anger, even if justified, should be enough.
I’m glad it saved your life and I am aware that it was an improvement over the former status quo.
That being said, though, it’s inadequacies HAVE lead to the deaths of many, perhaps thousands or even hundreds of thousands, from not being able to afford treatment before it’s too late.
Dems had a unique opportunity to save as many lives as possible, and they negotiated themselves down to a tiny step in the right direction and then pretended that it’s the best anyone could possibly do.
It’s been over a decade and a half since they took that tiny step and they’re still resting on their laurels and vehemently opposing anyone who suggests that improvements are needed or even possible.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
I’m so fucking tired of that lame argument for complacency.
Incrementalism isn’t good. Taking a tiny step in the right direction and then declaring victory as the other party predictably makes it worse than it originally was as both parties gradually turn further and further right isn’t good.
It’s throwing rare scraps to the starving masses from the banquets they throw for their owner donors, including the health insurance industry leeches that the ACA massively enriches.
Politics is about incremental progress, which is not sexy enough for you guys. If you want the revolution, go start it. Shit or get off the can. All this moral grandstanding is vacuous and meaningless
That being said, though, it’s inadequacies HAVE lead to the deaths of many, perhaps thousands or even hundreds of thousands, from not being able to afford treatment before it’s too late.
Yeah, but less people died than they would have if there was no ACA.
Its terrible that people die in the country every day from healthcare issues that are taken care of by every other first world country on the planet.
but god damn, sitting here saying shit like you are screams of nothing but impotent anti-ACA troll flailing.
the ACA needs to have its holes patched, yes, but don’t sit here and pretend its not saving a fuckton of lives.
the flaws in the ACA only exist cause follow up bills to patch the holes that came up after rollout couldnt be passed due to, you guessed it, republicans.
cause republicans are against anything and everything that benefits the 99.9%
Indeed. Everyone tries to blame Democrats for, when they have the slimmest of majorities, for not doing everything, when there are literally 49 Republican senators out there who are the ones who are truly blocking progress.
Having a pro-lifer as the majority leader is a big stumbling block. Don’t know much about the first two post-roe trifectas, but I do know there was a particular democratic house member that voted to amend the constitution to overturn Roe
Having a pro-lifer as the majority leader is a big stumbling block
Which they put there themselves. Like with most of the barriers they blame their feckless inaction on.
Don’t know much about the first two post-roe trifectas, but I do know there was a particular democratic house member that voted to amend the constitution to overturn Roe
And they awarded him by making him a senator, then VP and then president.
If they have all of those things (again) and still don’t give us Medicare for all (again) I’m fucking done.
You’re not allowed to be done, that makes you a Russian bot who wants fascism!
When elected into a supermajority with a clear mandate: “well, sorry sweetie, we just have other priorities.”
When facing a landslide defeat this election season: “trust us voters, we will do the right thing this time and totally not let you down!”
When they’re in power: Reach across the aisle! Government is about compromise!
When they’re at risk of losing power: Vote for us because we’re not as bad as the Other Guys!
One thing I know for sure about “bipartisan compromise” - whenever it happens, it means the American people are getting absolutely screwed.
I think Machinema opposed it then. Though if she says she’s got 50 now, it requires at least one of them. They should have done this all in Obama’s first term though.
You mean in the couple months that the democrats controlled all three branches of government in the past 20 years? During that time we got the ACA. Vote blue across the board in November to have a chance at getting all three branches blue again to actually accomplish something.
How about 2021 to 2022 when we had the majority in the House, a majority in the Senate, and the White House.
Previously, Manchin and Sinema opposed ending the filibuster. Manchin opposed codifying Roe v Wade.
Yes, Just enough DEMOCRATS. Like fucking always.
That doesn’t count because it makes centrists look bad.
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Damn, I thought they’d actually grown a pair for once.
The USSC would just say that it’s unconstitutional at this point, even if they codify it into law.
Hell, they’d probably declare it unconstitutional even if it was a literal constitutional amendment, simply because it wasn’t one of the original amendments laid out in the bill of rights, thus also laying out the legal precedent for challenging literally any of the constitutional amendments that weren’t in the bill of rights.
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Why didn’t anyone think to do this 16 years ago? Back when we were all getting health care?
I’m once again going to steal these comments from one I had saved a month ago, penned by @MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world :
Since 1981 Democrats have had control of the Presidency and Congress a whopping 4 years. One 2 year period under Clinton and one under Obama. That’s without factoring in the ability to fillibuster in the Senate. In over 40 years they’ve only had control 10% of the time.
and
That period of filibuster-proof control during Obama’s term is why we have the ACA. It was ~70 days and they passed the largest healthcare overhaul in generations.
Sounds like they were a little busy with the ACA.
Sounds like they were a little busy with the ACA.
Ive said this fairly recently, it’s disgusting that our only major “achievement” in the last 40 years is a fucking REPUBLICAN markets based “solution.”
“We” didn’t even get to have what we wanted, we just have a watered down Romneycare program… Even when Republicans aren’t in control they’re in control…
And the Republicans still tried to kill it.
A really good point. People upset that democrats don’t do anything when we have power, it’s because republicans are bad faith actors hell bent on fighting any and all progress, but especially when that progress could be attributed to democrats. Their contribution to governance can be surmised as cutting off their own nose to spite their face.
Republicans had full control and failed to kill the ACA, so that’s extra salt for that wound 😆
For a couple reasons. Some cynically wanted to continue to use abortion as a political football. Codifying Roe in any meaningful way in their minds would have meant they had to find a new wedge issue to drive turnout and donations. We saw this on the other side when SCOTUS actually overturned it and the right didn’t know what to do with themselves for a while.
Then maybe in part because of the former, there were a bunch of people that naively didn’t believe they’d actually entirely destroy Roe. They genuinely thought the worst that could possibly happen was some minor restrictions at the margins. So those people were not motivated enough to actually do something about it.
Then maybe in part because of the former, there were a bunch of people that naively didn’t believe they’d actually entirely destroy Roe.
As someone in their fifties, I’ve thought the matter was settled and the bleating of random protesters was just the status quo of abortion in the US for decades, FWIW.
And lets not forget this aspect of the conservative scotus.
Yep. Now I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t think they’d actually fully overturn Roe in the Dobbs decision either. I figured upholding the 15 week or whatever ban with maybe some meaningless language about exceptions beyond that time was the most likely outcome from Dobbs. But I wasn’t at all surprised when it happened. I knew as soon as they had a good excuse to do it they’d overturn Roe.
How many times has Lucy promised to not pull back the football at the last moment?
They can’t be trusted to follow through
Democrats are always dangling a carrot 🥕 which is always just out of reach. I’ve been listening to Chuck Schumer say “soon” on marijuana legalization for 4 years.
This guy has the correct take on our “2 pArtY sYsTeM” https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/r8tI3VM0oU
Democrats are always dangling a carrot 🥕 which is always just out of reach. I’ve been listening to Chuck Schumer say “soon” on marijuana legalization for 4 years.
This guy has the correct take on our “2 pArtY sYsTeM” in my opinion
How do you propose house and senate democrats should have legalized marijuana over the past 4 years? Fucking magic?
I’m saying Mr. Schumer has lied and said “soon” over two dozen times in the last 4 years. Ask Chuck, why don’t you?
If anyone else heard him parrot that repeatedly as you claim, maybe it would be worth an ask.
This article isn’t about legalizing marijuana, but rather allowing federal banking for weed sales amongst other things. The bill in question doesn’t address marijuana legalization. The only other article you linked was from over 3 years ago. So you posted two articles, about how Schumer keeps saying ‘soon’ like it’s something that happens frequently, and one isn’t even about legalization at all.
More importantly than that though, is Schumer is the senate majority leader, which means even if he puts that up for a vote, and even if there was enough support, it means fuck all because the house hasn’t and won’t pass it.
He’s been saying “soon” since 2021 at least. The article from 2021 supports this precisely, using his own words, which is exactly why I linked it.
I follow a marijuana subreddit where his nickname is Chuck ‘Sooner’ because of his empty promises since 2020.
I understand your larger logic points about passing legislation. My point, however, is using the word “soon” to string along a faction of voters, dangling the carrot.
I don’t believe any support I offer will matter to one who argues disingenuously, however.
If you can do it for RvW (which they absolutely should) then go ahead and fix the other stuff that supposedly requires a law like how to exclude fascist candidates from being elected president and legalizing weed and single payer health care and prohibiting book bans (1st amendment) and reproductive rights and everything else that has had the excuse of not being able to overcome a filibuster.
Actually do stuff!
To be fair, that was exactly Warren’s strategy when she was running. She’s been anti-filibuster and do-stuff for a long time. Warren at least wouldn’t be like “well, we solved the Roe thing, but that was a special case, now let’s just stop doing good things”.
Warren would have been fucking awesome. I’m so disappointed it didn’t work out, but I’m also not surprised. She is the real deal. We can’t actually get a president who is truly committed to bank reform and breaking up monopolies.
That said, a lot of the reason we’ve gotten as much progress out of the Biden administration as we have is because Warren’s influence helped land a lot of her allies into key decision making positions throughout the administration. The heavy pushes on things like student debt relief or actual antitrust enforcement are coming from parts of government where she helped put the people making those decisions in place.
Like, I still would have preferred a President Warren, but in a lot of ways we ended up getting a Warren-Lite administration anyway. It’s just gone largely unnoticed because she’s very good at wielding soft power behind the scenes on the boring, wonky policy making stuff that doesn’t get as much attention but has real impact on what government actually does.
there are currently enough votes in the Senate
do it now then
Can we just get rid of the fucking Lazy Filibuster, already? After all we know these geriatrics don’t have the capacity to stand for hours and hours on the floor. To merely threaten cloture to filibuster is just dumb.
We almost did, but then Sinema blew it.
TBH I feel like there needs to be a general look at ways to prevent ‘spamming’ for want of a better word in government. Like the filibuster, and also that thing where after Obamacare was passed and the Republicans tried to repeal it over 70 times in the first few years. I get that situations change and you might need to change a law, but at a certain point you’re just being belligerent and wasting everyone’s time IMO.
Also it should be illegal to tack on irrelevant laws to popular bills to try and get them passed, but that’s a whole other thing.
What does “suspend the filibuster” mean? Like people won’t be able to filibuster anymore?
edit: I know what the filibuster is … I’m curious about the suspension piece.
It’s probably specific wording used to mollify Democrats who aren’t comfortable just getting rid of it for good. They’ll do all the stuff to get rid of it, but make the new rule “for this vote only”. Hopefully by the time that happens they’ll have come to their senses and just get rid of it.
The filibuster, if you’re not familiar with it, isn’t a law. It’s a rule in the Senate’s procedures. Whoever has a majority could just change the rule, as was done for non-Supreme judges by Democrats and then done for Supreme Court judges by Republicans.
Congress and Senate are an organization with rules in order to have proceedings.
Rules are things we humans make up and agree on. This means that they will use the rules to change the rules temporarily.
Why are you linking Roberts Rules of Order 😂
I too trust that this Supreme Court will not strike down this new codified Roe instantly on some pretext. The Supreme Court is entirely above board and not political in any way.
so do it
FUUUCKIN DO IT
I would bet money no matter what the election result is there will be enough dems who detract from the party to stop this. Same as it ever was.
I wouldn’t bet against it.
Granted, if the Senate passed a law codifying Roe, it would die in the House.
However, why not show us that you have the votes and it can be done. Give us some action on the issue before the election.
I simply don’t believe it coming from her.
if Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress in 2025
They aren’t about to win a fucking trifecta. It will be a miracle if they keep the senate tied, let alone win the white house and take back the house.
Of course it is easy to say now all this shit if THAT is the condition for actually doing it: total control of government.
(And then SCOTUS can still throw it out as unconstitutional because that was the entire point of overturning roe v wade: it made the decision constitutional case law, which overrides legislated statutes.)
With Biden no, but both the House and Senate are in play, and if you win one you probably win the others because the same sentiment that brought out votes to claim the Senate boosted House races and vice versa. Trifectas in a new administration are common. Reagan, Clinton, Obama, Trump, and Biden all had trifectas. The only ones who didn’t start with them were the Bushes.
