A few hours ago, President Obama appeared on The Daily Show and endorsed filibuster reform:
Here’s one quote:
"There are a couple of things that have changed in our politics that are gonna have to be fixed. One is the way the filibuster operates. As I said, that's just not in the Constitution."
Also, in the White House blogger meeting that Barb attended yesterday, President Obama also endorsed filibuster reform:
"I will say that the damage that the filibuster I think has done to the workings of our democracy are at this point pretty profound. The rate at which it’s used just to delay and obstruct is unprecedented...
I will say that as just an observer of our political process that if we do not fix how the filibuster is used in the Senate, then it is going to be very difficult for us over the long term to compete in a very fast moving global environment."
This is a big step forward for the campaign to reform the filibuster. Sign up to receive email alerts on the campaign here.
The campaign to reform the filibuster was started 18 months ago by our own David Waldman. With the support of your contributions, David helped put together a coalition of labor, legal, civil rights, environmental, and online organizations in support of reform. The coalition is making an impact, as President Obama’s full remarks in the link to Barb’s transcript above read like one of the group’s memos.
We took your petition on reforming the filibuster to Capitol Hill, and assisted our friends at the Communication Workers in talks at Senate offices. We found virtually all Democratic Senators in support of reform. No returning Democratic Senators are opposed outright.
We were told filibuster reform was impossible, but we kept fighting. Now, our work has pushed filibuster reform into the mainstream, and all the way to the top. After we keep the Senate on Tuesday, we will make filibuster reform a reality.
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