President Barack Obama is met by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., upon arrival aboard Marine One at the Prospect Park landing zone in New York, N.Y., Oct. 25, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Back in August, former President Barack Obama gave Americans a preview of what will happen if they elect Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. If the Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, making Chuck Schumer the Senate Majority Leader, the filibuster will be killed, in favor of unchecked Democratic Party power. Obama laid out how the Democrats will use the charge of racism to justify doing away with the filibuster at Congressman John Lewis’s funeral. Grace Seger of CBS reported then (abridged):
President Obama surprised Washington when he called on the Senate to get rid of the filibuster in his eulogy for Congressman John Lewis, calling it a “Jim Crow relic” that has long impeded the advancement of civil rights.
Other prominent Democrats in the Senate, including some former presidential candidates, have also called for eliminating the filibuster as they sought to pass voting rights legislation or a bill to establish Washington, D.C., as a state.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and former Delaware Senator Joe Biden recently suggested he was open to ending the filibuster, “depending on how obstreperous” Republicans are, “you’re just going to have to take a look at it,” he said in July.
His new running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, has also expressed a willingness to get rid of it, in order to pass the Green New Deal, she said last year during a CNN town hall on climate change.
If Democrats retake the Senate with a slim majority in November, eliminating it would make it easier for them to pass their legislative priorities with a simple majority.
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