R&I – FS
Speaking at the funeral of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) in May, 2020, former President Barack Obama called for the elimination of the Senate filibuster, which he maligned as “another Jim Crow relic.” During his four years in the Senate, Obama himself used that Jim Crow relic on two dozen occasions to block the Republican majority from bringing various bills to a floor vote.
…That the filibuster is an inherently racist tool, a relic of Jim Crow, is an odd position for Democrats to take given that just yesterday, they used the filibuster to block legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Indeed, Sen. Cruz’s bill not only attracted the votes of forty-nine out of fifty Republican Senators (the only exception was Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)), but also six Democratic Senators who face close races in 2022 and/or are from purple states: Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NV), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA). That meant that Cruz had 55 votes for his bill — a clear majority. So why did it not pass? Because Senate Democrats invoked the racist Jim Crow relic in order to refuse to allow a vote on that bill unless it first attained 60 votes to close the debate. In other words, Democrats — on Thursday— used the filibuster to block Cruz’s bill despite its having the support of the majority of the Senate.
What makes the Democrats’ conduct here even more notable is the substance of Cruz’s bill that they blocked with the filibuster. Cruz sought to impose sanctions on the Russian pipeline company Nord Stream 2, which is constructing the pipeline that will allow Moscow to sell large amounts of cheap natural gas to Germany and to Europe more broadly. There are few more pressing priorities for the Kremlin, if there are any, than construction of this pipeline. So by blocking Cruz’s bill, Democrats not only used a racist filibuster, but they did so in order to protect Vladimir Putin and a vital Russian company from sanctions.
…Shortly after Biden was inaugurated, he announced that those sanctions would be lifted and the U.S. would cease its efforts to impede completion of Nord Stream 2. In other words, it was Trump — depicted for years by an unhinged U.S. media and their Democratic allies as an obedient blackmail victim of Russia — who did everything possible to prevent this pipeline from being built (while simultaneously arming the Ukrainians against Moscow). It was Biden who lifted those sanctions and acknowledged that the U.S. would no longer take steps to block it — a huge gift to Putin, even if his motive, as he claimed, was to avoid conflict with the Germans.
John Smithe
Article URL : https://greenwald.substack.com/p/senate-democrats-use-the-jim-crow