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The acting Capitol Police chief expresses remorse for the Capitol riot, but Senate Republicans are not eager to question Trump’s role in it. It’s Wednesday, and here is your political advice sheet. register here to get On Politics delivered to your inbox every day of the week.
Biden gave a speech on the pandemic yesterday in front of an Abraham Lincoln painting.
How will the tragedy of systematic obstruction unfold?
The big question now hanging over Washington is whether Senate Democrats will allow filibuster or abolish the maneuver and allow themselves to pass bills with a majority of 51 votes. The answer will determine how government operates over the next two years.
Just days after the new Democratic majority in the Senate, there has already been big news on this front. I connected with Carl Hulse, our main correspondent in Washington, to get caught up.
Mitch McConnell has spent much of the past week pushing Democrats to pledge to leave the filibuster: for a time he went so far as to prevent the Senate from starting the basic work of appointing officials. committees and proposing laws. But on Monday, he gave up. Would you say this is another example of McConnell’s willingness to use a level of obstructionism that would have been considered extreme in another era?
I think Democrats were caught off guard by McConnell’s drive to make filibuster first order of the day. They were celebrating their electoral victories and their return to power, and wham, their nemesis stood in their way again. It was the classic McConnell, using maximum leverage to try to squeeze something out of the Democrats.
But Chuck Schumer, the new majority leader, knew he couldn’t give in to McConnell at first. Once McConnell saw that Democrats weren’t going to budge, he started looking for a way out and seized on pledges from two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, not to support any effort to get rid of the filibuster. They had been saying this for months, but it got Republicans out and out of the deadlock.
Definitely a loss for McConnell. Ending filibuster remains a possible weapon for Democrats.
How are Democrats responding? Is there a degree to which McConnell’s decision could backfire on you, making even moderate Democrats fear that he’ll end things if they keep the filibuster in place?
Democrats are definitely happy to be able to move on. Many have been waiting for years to chair committees, so it is very important to them.
But this fight is far from over. Democratic strategists believe McConnell overstepped the line and was content to focus more on filibustering and the likelihood of Republicans trying to block many of the new administration’s initiatives. Progressive groups who want to get rid of the filibuster so Democrats can do things like expand the Supreme Court and make the District of Columbia a state say they will keep the momentum going.
The Democratic votes are not here at the moment to reverse the filibuster. But a concerted Republicans campaign to block Biden’s big moves on the pandemic, immigration and climate change could change some minds. It will probably take months, if not longer, to play.
In the opinion of the officials you speak to, from a political point of view, to what extent does it depend on the Democrats’ final decision to get rid of the filibuster, which allows them to pass law with a simple majority of 51 votes?
That remains to be seen. I think there is still hope among some Democrats and more centrist Republicans that they can come together, get the Senate back on track, and produce legislation without filibustering. This is certainly the hope of Biden, who has banked his presidency on his ability to get the Senate to do what it wants.
And there is a very complicated Senate budget process called reconciliation that allows certain laws to move forward without being obstructed. But you can’t do a lot of things this way. It looks to me like the pressure is going to kick in at some point and there will be a filibuster showdown if the Democrats are completely blocked.
If the filibuster is so crippling, how do you explain the two Democratic senators – Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – who said they would not abolish it?
Even though it has often been used to block progressive legislation like civil rights bills, there is an aura around filibuster that sees it as the key to forcing a bipartisan compromise. Manchin and Sinema definitely think this way. They are also more moderate Democrats who do not want the progressive side of the party to be fully empowered, able to push forward an agenda that might not be welcomed in a state like West Virginia.
Other Democrats fear – and rightly so – that if Democrats abandon the filibuster, conservative Republicans would have a free hand in the next scrutiny of Congress and the White House.
But Democrats won’t sit idly by for four years while Senate Republicans hold them and Biden back. If he reached this point, the Democratic resistance fighters would be under enormous pressure to join their colleagues. Minds have changed in the past.
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