Schumer ’05: Ending Filibuster Will Be “Doomsday for Democracy”

BUCK: I just want to point out that there’s no limit to the willingness of people like Chuck Schumer to change their principles and lie to the public. There’s really… Whatever works, when it works. Whatever you have to do and say is what he will do and is, and right now, he’s the guy pushing… He’s Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, of course from New York. See, Clay, we got all the worst here. California thinks they’ve got bad politicians. New York the worst libs in office in the country altogether.

CLAY: Andrew Cuomo getting pushed out actually made things worse. That’s how bad New York is.

BUCK: Kathy Hochul somehow has managed to be even more annoying than Andrew Cuomo was at this stage. But, anyway, we have Chuck Schumer saying he wants to have a loophole in the filibuster which would threaten the whole filibuster. Let me just say if Republicans needed to, they should say, “Change the filibustering means as soon as we’re in the majority, it’s gone.” Draw a red line. Say, “Absolutely not. You do this one time; we’ll do it every time.

“You try this, we blow the whole thing up, nuclear option,” and that’s, I think… Let’s be clear. This is what happened with judges, right? Harry Reid… I believe he just passed away recently, right? Harry Reid pushed for the Democrats to have the end or the filibuster for judicial nominees and Republicans said, “All right, fine. Let’s do it for Supreme Court nominees. Let’s go all the way!”

So here’s Chuck Schumer, though, just on the notion of whether this man who sits as the senior senator from New York has any principles whatsoever even when it comes to the protection of the very institutions that he has allegedly served — he’s really serving himself — for decades. Here he is back in 2005 on how terrifying it would be to mess with the filibuster.

SCHUMER: Bottom line is very simple: The ideologues in the Senate wants to turn what the Founding Fathers called the cooling saucer of democracy into the rubber stamp of dictatorship! We will not let them! They want — because they can’t get their way on every judge — to change the rules in mid-stream, to wash away 200 years of history. They want to make this country into a banana republic where if you don’t get your way, you change the rules. Are we gonna let them? It will be a doomsday for democracy if we do!

BUCK: A doomsday. Clay —

CLAY: I just don’t understand how these guys — and that’s from 2005, for people out there listening. I don’t understand. We know that politicians, many of them, are full of crap — and disappointingly, a lot of politicians aren’t even that smart. So they will argue whatever is put in front of them for the moment. But to be… If I had anything that was that contradictory, shouldn’t the media be hammering Chuck Schumer with that clip and saying, “Hey, now you’re in favor of ending the filibuster.

“You said it would basically lead to a dictatorship just 16 years ago. Why are you suddenly flipping?” And the answer is, of course, because now his party is in a position of political power. But it’s so transparently fake, this argument that he’s now making. Make no mistake. He’s now making the opposite argument, that democracy is in peril if the filibuster isn’t destroyed!

And the reality is, this is one place where I think you gotta give credit to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who are Democrats that have at least been consistent here, and they’re saying the entire purpose of requiring 60 votes in the Senate is to avoid massive swings every two years when one party comes into power and the other party is out of power, and we don’t want our American policy to swing widely from one extreme to the other.

The House can exist to provide that on some level. But Schumer’s actually citing the history, the Jefferson quote, reportedly, about the saucer and how the Senate cools the emotions of the day. So he knows the history, and now he is just transparently arguing against it, and I think if we have mention, Buck — ’cause you’re talking about New York politics — a big part of this seems to be motivated in some ways by fear of AOC.

Because Chuck Schumer has gone far left-wing ever since the rumor got out there that AOC might tire of being one of 435 congresspeople and decide to run for the Senate in New York, and she might beat Schumer. And ever since those fears have been percolating in his mind suddenly Chuck Schumer has become super left-wing.

BUCK: It’s amazing to see Chuck Schumer. Over the course of his whole career, this is a guy who has just gone with whatever benefited him, wherever he had to fit into the Democrat machinery for maximum power. It’s just like Joe Biden, and Joe Biden is the president. Joe Biden stood for nothing other than whatever the Democrat Party told him to, and effectively Bidenism and helping his family here and there with some sweetheart deals —

CLAY: “The Big Guy.”

BUCK: — and Chinese oligarchs and some situations —

CLAY: Ten percent for The Big Guy.

BUCK: Ten percent for The Big Guy, Clay. So we’re not gonna let me get away with this nonsense, folks. What we do here, it’s what the media says they do, which is speak truth to power. We speak the truth they want to shut us down for.