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DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Kevin Tanenbaum/Public Domain
On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris said she wanted to get rid of the 60-vote Senate filibuster in order to push through the codification of Roe v. Wade as federal law.
This would depart from well over a century of Senate procedure. An unprecedented and radical move - all in order to have less restrictions on killing the unborn.
But an unprecedented radical running for president is precisely what Harris is.
She told Wisconsin Public Radio, “I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom."
Democrats love to say that Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy, to America's cherished democratic standards and norms.
But Kamala Harris and her party not only want to get rid of the First and Second Amendments, Democrats want to pack the Supreme Court, something even the late left-leaning Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg thought was a terrible idea.
And now Harris wants to ditch the filibuster?
Please, tell us again, ANY Democrat, how Trump poses the greatest threat to American democracy?
One former Democrat turned Independent, Senator Joe Manchin, was not having it at all.
“Shame on her,” Manchin told CNN, responding to Harris’ interview remarks. “She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together."
He added, angrily, "If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids... I think that basically can destroy our country and my country is more important to me than any one person or any one person’s ideology.”
Manchin was also asked if he might endorse Harris for president.
"That ain’t gonna happen," he insisted.
Another former Democrat senator who left that party to become an Independent, Krysten Sinema, is also opposing Harris' idea, opposing any changing of the chamber rules.
She was quick to point out that getting rid of the filibuster could also allow Republicans to outright ban abortion nationally with a simple majority.
Currently and traditionally, 60 votes are needed in the Senate to end debate on legislation. This is to prevent a bare majority - 51 votes - from making any major, radical changes.
Like imposing unfettered, legal abortion on the entire country, as Roe v. Wade did for a half century.
This is not new. President Joe Biden has said he supports ending the filibuster specifically to reinstate Roe.
This is the first time Harris has said she holds the same position since becoming the democratic presidential nominee.
The Constitution and the protections it affords - including the important roadblock role of the Senate - was designed to protect the lives and rights of citizens.
Harris said Tuesday that abolishing the filibuster would restore “the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”
Tell that to girls nine months and younger, whose right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would be taken away forever.
And with no say whatsoever.
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