Vice President Kamala Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio: “I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe.”
By doing so, Harris has made clear that the only way to preserve the filibuster is to make sure that if she is in the White House, there is a Republican Senate.
Since the Obama administration, there has been mounting pressure on Democrats to do away with the filibuster from progressives frustrated with the limits the current system places on their ability to enact sweeping changes when in power. (When Republicans are in power, Democrats tend to embrace the filibuster, as Harris herself did in a 2017 letter.) While the cause has gained more support among Democrats, President Biden has had reservations about doing away with it, and Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have been standing in the way. So it has endured.
But with Manchin and Sinema leaving the Senate, were Harris to be elected and push to eliminate the filibuster to codify late-stage abortion on demand nationally, it’s hard to see who among Democrats would be standing in the way.
It’s theoretically possible that were he elected, Donald Trump could push Republican senators to abandon the filibuster. But within the Republican caucus there is a sufficient number of conservatives who understand that over time, making it easier to get legislation through the Senate is more helpful for the left-wing agenda. There is clearly not the momentum to do away with the filibuster compared with on the Democratic side. Republicans already had a slim majority in the Senate with Trump as president and they did not choose to nuke it.
Were Harris to eliminate the filibuster for Roe it would also make it much easier for Democrats to pass a far-left-wing agenda on areas outside of abortion — tax hikes, socialized health insurance, gun bans, price controls, etc.
This announcement makes the “conservative case for Harris” argument even more difficult to swallow. That argument rests on the premise that Harris will preserve norms and that Republicans will be able to block the most radical parts of her agenda in the Senate. But this news obliterates both of these premises.
First, somebody who is running on nuking the filibuster should not be trusted as a guardian of norms. Second, if the filibuster is gone, Republicans would have little means by which to block the radical elements of her agenda.
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