In a most hyperbolic and Chicken Little fashion, both Joy Reid from MSNBC and Senator Chuck Schumer clucked on about “threats” to our democracy as we’re approaching the anniversary of “The Insurrection”. Of course, the insurrection that’s being referenced includes that actual “mostly peaceful” protest last year in DC, which was marred by the sophomoric and illegal actions of “the few”. My left of center contacts, still, to this day, clutch at their pearls when the topic comes up, as if the entirety of the country was not burning on fire during the “mostly peaceful” protests of 2020. Meanwhile, no one has stopped to even relieve themselves over Portland to date to extinguish the flames, a city in constant turmoil. Schumer and Reid talked about the filibuster, our “democracy”, and trying to change the rules on Reid’s MSNBC show “The Reidout”. From Reid’s opening remarks:
“In advance of this week's anniversary of the assault on our democracy Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised that Senate Democrats will do what it takes to protect and strengthen American democracy. In a letter he vowed to hold a vote on rules changes to the Senate filibuster to move forward on blocked voting rights legislation.”
We can already see the merging of two different things to suit the progressive agenda. The Democrat’s inability to get hardly any of their measures passed in congress has nothing to do with a so-called “assault on democracy”. As a matter of fact, the filibuster serves to thwart both the tyranny of the majority and tyranny of the minority, with critics stating the latter exists. Reid read some of Schumer’s remarks prior to starting the interview:
Schumer wrote “Let me be clear, January 6 was a symptom of a broader illness, an effort to delegitimize our election process.” Warning that “without Senate action, the events of January 6 could become the ‘new norm.’”
Both Reid and Schumer were rather melodramatic throughout the interview. Democrats are facing increasing pressure as they’re not getting the full party-line support they expect from every Senator, with Manchin and Sinema in their crosshairs. The radical policies of the progressive agenda’s just too much for our legislators with consciences. It’s all starting to unravel, and it has to do with the mid-terms. They intend to ram these so-called voting rights bills down the throats of the American people. Even if they don’t hold constitutional muster in the long run, damage will be done if they’re passed, with Biden, Aka "The Big Guy", given the greenlight to sign them.
After watching the interview in its entirety, there are a few elements that really stood out that are worth noting.
1. Schumer brings up an interesting figure when discussing the matter of rule changes. From the interview:
“We will accept and we're having constant discussions and we've said to them, you both Joe Manchin and Kirsten cinema say they believe in voting rights, but that's great, and they are sponsors of the Freedom To Vote Act and the John Lewis act, but just to believe in it, and not change the rules, and we're making it clear to them joy, that even a paragon who believed in the Senate rules, Robert C. Byrd changed the rules nine times. And he said, and I think I have his quote accurately here. When circumstances change, the rules have to change. Well, let me tell you, some circumstances have changed dramatically with Donald Trump, The Big Lie, the violence of January 6.”
Looking into who Byrd was, we’ll turn to incredibly biased Wikipedia, and even with their slant on the man, they can’t completely conceal the person that Schumer is turning to as a “good” example. These are laurels to file in his curriculum veritas:
“In the early 1940s, Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to create a new chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Sophia, West Virginia.
As a young boy, Byrd had witnessed his adoptive father walk in a Klan parade in Matoaka, West Virginia. While growing up, Byrd had heard that "the Klan defended the American way of life against racemixers and communists". He then wrote to Joel L. Baskin, Grand Dragon of the Realm of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, who responded that he would come and organize a chapter when Byrd had recruited 150 people.
…
In 1946, Byrd wrote a letter to Samuel Green, the Ku Klux Klan's Grand Wizard, stating, "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation."
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Byrd was a member of the wing of the Democratic Party that opposed federally mandated desegregation and civil rights. However, despite his early career in the KKK, Byrd was linked to such senators as John C. Stennis, J. William Fulbright and George Smathers, who based their segregationist positions on their view of states' rights in contrast to senators like James Eastland, who held a reputation as a committed racist.
Byrd joined with Democratic senators to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1964, personally filibustering the bill for 14 hours, a move he later said he regretted. Despite an 83-day filibuster in the Senate, both parties in Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Act (Democrats 47–16, Republicans 30–2), and President Johnson signed the bill into law. Byrd cast no vote on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and voted against the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
So, we’re all clear, that’s the guy that Schumer’s using as an example. The quote about circumstances changing, so must the rules, should chill every American to the core.
2. Both Schumer and Reid bring up the need to save democracy or how these “things” are threats to democracy almost as much as an Operation Mockingbird cut-up video does. We can see the handlers have not changed much over the years. Schumer had this to say in the interview:
“But the new Republican Party under the leadership of Donald Trump is viciously against voting rights and trying to take those away and and join this not only our elections, but our whole democracy. So, if we can't get Republicans…if we can't get Republicans to join us, we are exploring a variety of different rules changes. And we will we are working and trying to get all 50 Democrats, including senators Manchin and Sinema to go along with those rule changes. Because if we don't change the rules, the Republicans will block this, and our democracy could be at risk and even wither in very real in real ways.”
Reid feeds into the frenzy a bit by quoting Harry Reid:
”Very quickly, one last person and this was somebody who you know, well, a friend of yours of the great Harry Reid, who I know will lie in state very soon in the Capitol, my name my nonrelated. namesake. He said on this show the following he said the country is better off having a real democracy, not a fake democracy. 60% is not a democracy.”
What of this “democracy” that’s in peril? Our Constitutional Republic “democracy” that’s being threatened? Schumer lets the cat out of the bag in our final observation.
3. In what can only be seen as a complete faux pas, Schumer may have exposed exactly what he’s worried about when he talks about all this destruction of the democracy. This is what Schumer had to say about Manchin and Sinema, and perhaps his biggest fears:
“Well, we got to keep pressing them and pressing them and pressing them until they do there is too much at risk here. If obviously, they were saying yes to us, we wouldn't have to worry about this. But we do have to worry. And we must keep pushing. But when senators go to them and say ‘I will lose my election, unless we do something about voting rights’, when senators come to them and say, ‘We will not have a democracy anymore, not just for two years, but for 10 years’…”
There you have it. It’s not democracy that Schumer is worried about being destroyed. In reality, it’s democracy that Schumer is terrified of. That of the progressive left of center senators losing their marginal foothold in the Senate.
The interview is worth a watch. Even a casual viewer can see that Schumer is nervous about this, as he should be. Reid, from MSNBC, not a large friend of the right of center thinker or populist movement, was not gentle on Schumer either. The big takeaway here is that the progressives are panicked more now than ever. With the mid-terms rapidly approaching they’re trying everything they can, as well as playing the blame game on whose “fault” all of their failures to get their progressive agendas brought to reality. Their branding is stunningly unoriginal, as our democratic process seems like it’s working, they just don’t like it. Scene in, “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy…”
Schumer Scrambles to Scramble Filibuster