politics

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.)

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.

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)

If they have all of those things (again) and still don't give us Medicare for all (again) I'm fucking done.

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.

I'm once again going to steal these comments from one I had saved a month ago, penned by @[email protected] :

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.

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.

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".

Quick civics lesson, there are two houses and they only have a "majority" in one. They need both.

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.

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.