Nate Silver confirms that Harry Reid has been an embarrassingly ineffectual majority leader, allowing more cloture votes and, consequently, successful Republican filibuster threats (“procedural filibusters”) than many of the previous congresses.
Recap… Cloture votes have been Harry Reid’s MO for acquiescing to the Republican filibuster threats. In other words, the Republicans threaten to filibuster and Reid calls for cloture — a vote to end or put a strict time limit on debating a bill — knowing that he doesn’t really have the 60 votes required for the cloture to succeed, thus allowing the filibuster to effectively block important legislation. Republicans win. Flawless victory.
This will naturally continue to happen until the Democrats have a 60 seat majority. After all, the Republicans know it works, so why should they stop? No-one’s making them strap on the diapers and talk, talk, talk.
Can we seriously find a way to replace this guy?
