My wife and I attended a Blumenthal fundraiser today. Before we went I told her I wanted to ask Blumenthal about the filibuster and the other arcane Senate rules that allow the minority party (when that party is the Republican party) to control the chamber. In the event, someone beat me to it. Blumenthal said he is in favor of changing the rules, though he wasn’t specific about what he would like to see happen. That’s not a knock on him, by the way, he wasn’t asked for specifics and it wasn’t the sort of setting where you could expect him to go into specifics.
He says he will propose rule changes, and he says he has spoken about the issue to others, from which I inferred he meant the newer Democratic senators and present candidates.
The vote on rules is the first vote taken in a new session, and changes can be made by a bare majority of Senators. No filibustering allowed. We will know whether the Democrats, assuming they retain the majority, are serious about governing when we hear the results of that vote. Or, more precisely, if we don’t hear the results of that vote, because if we hear nothing it means we will have business as usual, and that the Democrats in the Senate care more about their little club than they do about the future of the country and, for that matter, the planet.
It’s good to hear that Blumenthal recognizes the problem. We can only hope that he and those of like mind can prevail upon Reid to put an end to the dodge that “it takes 60 vote to pass anything in the Senate”.
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