Filibuster Hypocrisy: Media, Dems Had Different Take in 2013

The Senate voted Friday to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, finally filling a vacancy that was more than a year old.

The final vote of 54-45, with only three Democrats voting “aye,” was just a formality. The real vote took place Thursday, when Republicans decided to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in what has been dubbed the “nuclear option.”

“I don’t want to see Donald Trump stuff his nominee through the hoop,” he said. “Why? Because it’s not his turn.”

Considering that former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid exercised a similar move on nominations for all other federal offices only three and a half years ago, the hypocrisy was breathtaking — not only among politicians, which could be expected, but also in the media.

On the “Tom Joyner Morning Show” in February, MSNBC host Al Sharpton urged Democrats to do whatever was necessary to block Gorsuch.

“It is time for the Democrats now to say, ‘Since you changed the rules, you’re going to have to live by the rules that you applied to President Obama’s nominee, and we are not going to allow you to change it, and we will use those rules to block this nominee, Judge Gorsuch,'” Sharpton said.

Sharpton was referring to the decision by Senate Republicans to deny a vote to Obama nominee Judge Merrick Garland, which technically involved no rule change. Sharpton was much more open to a change in 2013.

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“This afternoon, Democrats took the bold step of changing Senate rules scaling back the filibuster that Republicans have unfairly used to block the president’s nominees,” he said on MSNBC at the time, adding that it was a “huge moment for the president and his agenda.”

Fellow MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews also cited Garland in urging Democrats last month to filibuster Gorsuch.

“I don’t want to see Donald Trump stuff his nominee through the hoop,” he said. “Why? Because it’s not his turn.”

But Matthews cheered Reid in 2013: “Due to the action of the Senate Democrats today, there will be no more 60-vote requirements to get the president’s appointments confirmed, no more dallying around and delay tactics, no more Mickey Mouse. And with any luck, there will be action.”

Mainstream News Organizations Also Shift
Even some mainstream news organizations seem to be shifting principles on the filibuster depending on the president who is doing the nominating. The New York Times editorial board called Reid’s 2013 action “a return to the democratic process of giving nominees an up-or-down vote, allowing them to be either confirmed or rejected by a simple majority.” The paper noted that Supreme Court nominations were exempt but added, “the precedent set on Thursday will increase the pressure to end those filibusters, too. This vote was long overdue.”

By 2017, however, the Times editorial board worried that the court was “devolving into a nakedly partisan tool.”

It is not arcane voting procedure that matters, the Times wrote.

“What matters is that Americans believe they are governed by law, not by whatever political party manages to stack the Supreme Court,” the Times wrote. “That is what [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell has driven the Senate to put at risk — a very great risk indeed — and it may, in the end, fall to the court itself to find a way to rise above the steadily encroaching tide of factionalism.”

In November 2013, The Los Angeles Times published an editorial labeled, “Democrats bust the filibuster, and good for them.”

Jon Healey, a member of the editorial board, wrote this year that, “Congress didn’t just nuke the filibuster, it permanently politicized the Supreme Court.” He did point out that he has long dissented from the paper’s official position against judicial filibusters.

The Political Offenders
And that is to say nothing of hypocrisy in the political world. One of the worst offenders is Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), one of the backbenchers who pushed Reid to go nuclear in 2013.

“This is a great day for the U.S. Senate,” he told the liberal news site Talking Points Memo in 2013. “It’s a great day for the American people. It is a big deal. The Senate’s been deeply broken.”

But Merkley enthusiastically participated in the Gorsuch filibuster, talking for 15½ hours on the Senate floor.

“So for Senate Democrats to say we’re going to allow there to be a 5-4 court of conservatives who do not believe in the ‘We-the-People’ vision of the Constitution is to set up a stage in which decision after decision … is on the wrong end of the spectrum,” he told MSNBC host Chris Hayes this year.

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Merkley’s co-conspirator in the 2013 nuclear move, told a press gaggle then that the Senate would “be able to — without filibusters — put people on the courts in an orderly way.”

This year, Udall demanded that Gorsuch earn at least 60 votes.

“Judge Gorsuch will be subject to the same test, and therefore, I will vote no on his confirmation, including cloture,” he said in a statement.

Two-faced Bernie and Double-Talk Reid
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued a statement Friday reading, “A lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be done in a bipartisan way, but unfortunately Mitch McConnell chose to do it in an extremely partisan manner.”

Sanders was not worried about bipartisanship in 2013. He said Reid’s rule change was necessary to address the “dysfunctionality” of the Senate.

“That’s what we’re trying to deal with in a small way today,” he told C-SPAN. “Frankly, I would go further.”

Sanders said the filibuster should be changed even for legislation. Allow senators to engage in lengthy debate, but not forever, he said. “But at the end of that period of time, let’s finally have a vote with 51 votes winning.”

And then there is Reid, himself.

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“It’s time to change the Senate before this institution becomes obsolete,” he said during floor debate in 2013.

Last year, when Reid and many other observers were convinced Democrat Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election and her party would recapture the Senate, he made clear that he expected the party to take the next step and eliminate the filibuster for the Supreme Court.

“I really do believe that I have set the Senate so when I leave, we’re going to be able to get judges done with a majority,” he told Talking Points Memo.

But in 2008 — with a Republican president — Reid denounced the idea the GOP might go nuclear and said he never would.

“As long as I am the leader, the answer’s no,” he said. “I think we should just forget that. That is a black chapter in the history of the Senate. I hope we never, ever get to that again, because I really do believe it will ruin our country.”