TPM reports that "Harry Reid ... insists that he will weaken the minority party’s power to obstruct legislative business with Republican support or without it." Says the Senate majority leader:
We’re going to change the rules. We cannot continue in this way. So I hope we can get something Republicans will work with us on. But it won’t be a handshake. We tried that last time; it didn’t work.
Reid's arithmetic possibilities remain unknown, yet, ominously, "for the first time on Tuesday [Mitch McConnell] sounded a note of confidence, and expressed optimism that Reid will lack the votes."
Reid's seemingly optimistic cheerfulness, however, suggests two things: Either he knows his new filibuster rules will go nowhere, and he's merely putting a political happy face on the doomed effort; or Reid expects a long-enduring, if not permanent, Democratic Senate majority. For it's difficult to imagine any majority leader proposing rules that could soon boomerang.
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