Time to Deploy the Nuclear Option

There's one easy, 20-minute way to enable Congress to pass liberal legislation, fix the economy and win November for Democrats: Cut the Senate's Gordian Knot.

John Walker at FireDogLake:

Democrats have failed to govern, despite occupying large majorities in Congress and the Presidency. Their failure is not just in situations where external factors limit their control, such as the economy and foreign affairs. They are failures by their own standards. They have repeatedly failed to fulfill promises when they are capable of delivering. For example, Democrats ran on a pledge to pass a drug re-importation bill, but they haven’t. Democrats have not advanced any immigration-reform legislation.

Democrats now place the blame for their failure on Republican Senate obstructionism. No doubt, Senate Republicans have done everything they can to make life difficult for Democrats. They have used the filibuster as much as possible to stop Democrats from fulfilling their promises. As the opposition party, the GOP really has no reason to help Democrats achieve success.

Inside the Washington bubble, Democrats are throwing their hands up, saying, “What can we do, there are 41 Republican Senators and they have the filibuster.” Somehow, that’s considered a perfectly acceptable excuse. Allowing this bizarre use of an arcane rule about the amount of debate needed to shut down the federal government is weirdly accepted as a fact of life in Washington. It is so completely accepted that most of the media report it as hard fact without ever mentioning that it’s pure nonsense.

Nothing is stopping 51 Senate Democrats from taking to the floor and in 20 minutes using Senate procedure to eliminate the filibuster. Republicans even threatened to do just that back in 2005. This excuse of the filibuster and Republican obstructionism is merely a self-constructed fantasy that the Senate has impressively convinced the rest of Washington to believe. A political tooth fairy, if you will. But this means Democrats are 100 percent to blame for not passing the laws they promised to and for failing to govern. They actually are fully capable of passing any law if they really want to.

Read the whole thing.

Then Call or email all your elected officials - especially if you don't have Democratic Senators - and tell them to put pressure on Harry Reid to make the first item on tomorrow's agenda killing the filibuster.