She once wanted to preserve it to check Republican power. Now that she might become president, she wants to toss it to gain more for herself.
She once wanted to preserve it to check Republican power. Now that she might become president, she wants to toss it to gain more for herself.
S ometimes, one is obliged to read between the lines. Literally construed, yesterday’s news alerts relayed some variation of “Kamala Harris supports ending the filibuster.” Properly fathomed, however, they conveyed something else: that Harris believes in nothing except her own power and hopes that the public is too nescient to comprehend the ruse.
If there is a better example of Harris’s fundamental ghastliness than her evolving approach to the filibuster, I have yet to see it. Harris is dishonest, she is hypocritical, she is weak, and she is self-serving, and one can perceive all of these unlovely characteristics by tracking her attitude toward the Senate’s rules since she entered the body in 2017.
In New York magazine today, Ed Kilgore expresses surprise at the “odd backlash” to Harris’s “support for filibuster reform.” “Asked on Wisconsin Public Radio whether she still favored a filibuster carve-out to restore Roe’s protections,” Kilgore notes, Harris “predictably she said she did.” The word “predictably” is in there because, as Kilgore correctly records, Harris has taken this position before — in 2022. But one ought not to confuse “predictable” with “principled.” It was, indeed, “predictable” that Kamala Harris would favor a “carve-out” to the filibuster now that she’s running for president, given that, if she wins, a “carved-out” or abolished filibuster will help her achieve her goals. But this tells us nothing more than that Harris — “predictably” — remains the same vacuous opportunist she’s always been.
Back in 2017, when Donald Trump was president and the Republicans ran both the Senate and the House, Harris signed a bipartisan letter that expressed her “determination to preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor.” “We are mindful,” the signatories of that letter confirmed, “of the unique role the Senate plays in the legislative process.” The letter went on to declare:
We are steadfastly committed to ensuring that this great American institution continues to serve as the world’s greatest deliberative body. Therefore, we are asking you to join us in opposing any effort to curtail the existing rights and prerogatives of Senators to engage in full, robust, and extended debate as we consider legislation before this body in the future.
When she joined this push, Harris’s party was in control of neither the executive nor legislative branch, and, as a result, its aim was to prevent the incumbent party — at that time, the Republicans — from easily altering federal law. The 29 Republicans who signed the letter were engaged in an act of Burkean self-abnegation — especially given that the party’s leader, then-president Trump, was pressuring them to take the opposite course. The 31 Democrats, by contrast, were acting in their immediate self-interest. When, four years later, the Democrats won their own trifecta, two of those Democrats — Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — continued in their support for the filibuster and proved that they, too, had acted on principle. But Kamala Harris? Kamala Harris did not. Having ascended to the vice presidency, Harris reversed her previous stance and, in 2022, backed a limited “exception” to the filibuster, to be applied only to “voting rights” or “abortion rights” — which, if you can believe it, just so happened to be the two things that the Biden-Harris administration cared most about at the time.
Try as I might, I find it hard to overstate how extraordinarily cynical this shift in approach was. Leave aside for a moment that Harris was calling for a change in the rules based on nothing more honorable than that her party had temporarily won power — and that, in the process, she had moved from one branch of the government to another — and consider instead what her call for a “carve-out” implied. As a practical matter, to demand a “carve-out” for the 60-vote threshold is to request that the rules be suspended when you are inconvenienced by them but imposed when you seek their protection. That, to put it mildly, is not a position that can be made consistent with the rule of law.
Nor is it a position consistent with basic honesty. Realistically, there is no such thing as a “carve-out,” for, once such a convention has been established, it will soon be applied by both sides. I disagree profoundly with those who, without reference to the current makeup of the government or the transient policies at hand, believe that the Senate ought to function more like the House, but, providing that they are earnest in their agnosticism, I respect them nevertheless. Kamala Harris does not belong to this group.
On the contrary: At every point in the proceedings, she has taken the precise position that is likely to get her exactly what she wants right now, and, in every case, she has done so by obfuscating and misrepresenting what she hopes to achieve. In 2017, when Harris wanted to block the Republican agenda, she pretended that she was concerned about the Senate as an institution. In 2022, when Harris wanted to advance the White House’s priorities, she insisted that the topics at hand were of sufficient importance to warrant a deviation. Now, believing that she will become president, she seems ready to blow the whole thing up in the hope that it will give her four unmolested years. She is a hack, a chancer, a vandal, and when given the opportunity to reveal her nature, she has done so with aplomb.