Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) single-handedly raised the stakes of the 2024 elections on Tuesday, revealing he’d consider carving out rare exceptions to allow votes on protecting voting and abortion rights.
Schumer’s plan would move the Senate closer to getting rid of the filibuster, a longtime rule that requires 60 votes instead of a simple 50 vote majority to advance legislation.
I’m highly skeptical that anyone in the GOP would a) have trouble crafting a campaign message that trashes an ostensibly “clean” bill or b) lose any support over a vote either way. Anyone who cares about abortion or voting rights is already voting blue, and anyone who’s voting red at this point won’t care about this procedural tactic. We’ve been hammering Dems to get GOP votes “on the record” for decades, and it hasn’t really been the factor that moved the needle in any meaningful way.
Showing the Dems will actually do something would motivate the apathetic people. It isn’t about swaying existing voters, it is about increasing the number of people who vote by giving them something to vote for.
You literally just moved the goalposts. First it’s about putting the GOP on the record, and now it’s about motivating voters? Who exactly are you catering to with that tactic? And do you have proof it does either? I’ve never seen any.
It is about putting the GOP on the record to motivate the voters by taking some kind of action.
Try to keep up.
You…you think Democratic voters need Republicans to vote against abortion rights to justify going to the polls? What kind of half-baked logic is that?
Also I asked for evidence it works that way. Got any?
No, I think undecided or apathetic voters who are not currently engaged in voting will be motivated by the Dems actually doing something before the election and seeing the GOP obstruct it. More motivated than by Dems saying they will do something in the future, which they constantly fail to do.
Just fucking do something.
I speak from experience as an unaffiliated voter who votes against Republicans, but isn’t really voting for Dems because I think they will do anything. Just because it is the best chance to make the GOP lose.
So no then?
Didn’t know I needed a thesis to have an opinion.
Evidence should be easy to find if the effect is as obvious as you suggest, no?
edit: Look, as charming as this back-and-forth is, I’d like to present evidence to the contrary. This kind of gesture doesn’t register at all with voters, and makes zero difference in their motivation to vote, because Democrats tried to codify abortion rights into federal law in 1989, 1993, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 and folks like you are still clamoring for them to “just do something”. If they open the floor for another inevitably doomed bill and do more “something”, people will still bitch and moan that they’re not doing anything, just like they always have.