In mid-October, when it seemed likely that Democrats would win the White House and a Senate majority, retiring Senate minority leader Harry Reid said that Senate Democrats would scrap the 60-vote hurdle for Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court nominee, just as they had done in 2013 for lower-court and executive branch nominees.
If Republicans “mess with the Supreme Court, [the filibuster will] be changed just like that in my opinion,” Reid said, snapping his fingers, according to Talking Points Memo.
But now that Democrats are in the minority, with some hoping to filibuster President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Senate Democrats are selling a revisionist history. At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, the new Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer claimed that Senate Democrats never intended to do what Harry Reid said they would do:
Schumer went on to argue that the fact Democrats didn’t abolish the 60-vote hurdle for Supreme Court nominees in 2013 was proof that Democrats were committed to keeping it forever. But Reid’s October 2016 remarks clearly contradict Schumer’s claim. When Reid said that Democrats would abolish the filibuster for Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court nominee, no Senate Democrats spoke up to oppose the plan.
To say the very least, it strains credulity to believe that Senate Democrats would have allowed 41 Senate Republicans the power to indefinitely filibuster Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees.
