This came up in another discussion a month or so ago, and I did some checking:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31484169

In short, this is not true. There was a brief window where they might have had 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster, but it's unlikely for a divisive partisan issue like this one. And they didn't have a 60% majority in the House anyway.

To put it very bluntly, the lack of action we've seen from Democratic Party majorities in recent history is very likely because they knew they couldn't pass legislation over Republican opposition. Sure, you can frame it as 'they declined', but that's an uncharitable oversimplification.

> To put it very bluntly, the lack of action we've seen from Democratic Party majorities in recent history is very likely because they knew they couldn't pass legislation over Republican opposition.

No, it’s because they couldn't pass it over Democratic opposition (whether it's actually one or two Senators, or whether those two are pretextual is a matter of debate.)

Republican opposition isn't an excuse with a trifecta. (And, no, the filibuster doesn't change this, since it only takes a majority to change it.)

Opposition in the Republican party was near 100%. Near 0% in the democrats. That's Republican opposition however you spin it.

But removing the filibuster wasn’t even in the tables or discussed half-way seriously when those majorities had power.

It used to be the filibuster was rarely used and the Senate actually compromised to create legislation. There is effectively no chance the filibuster would have been removed to pass an abortion bill. It would have been political suicide.

Even if it had, a federal abortion ban would have been passed the next time the GOP held a trifecta. Not opening Pandora’s box was a smart move.

> But removing the filibuster wasn’t even in the tables or discussed half-way seriously when those majorities had power.

It was with the current majority, and explicitly rejected by key Democrats.

> Even if it had, a federal abortion ban would have been passed the next time the GOP held a trifecta.

It still will.

I agree that the filibuster should have been on the table for removal. I think on paper it's ridiculous, and question the effectiveness of a governing body that needs it to function.

Because I think this one probably does. With how divided we are today, and this issue in particular, I don't think you can rely on a 50%+1 majority to pass a law one way or the other. That is like a coin flip. It seems guaranteed to lead to chaos, as each new majority rushes to redress the 'mistakes' of the preceding Congress.

And to be pedantic, the Democratic party does not have a current majority in the Senate. It's 50/48/2 Republican; Sanders and King caucus with the Democrats but King in particular is very centrist, endorsed the Republican Collins for her reelection bid, and votes with the Republicans most of the time. Maybe you think that is just nitpicking, but I wonder what you think about a 50/50 Senate depending on the VP to break ties. To remove the filibuster. To pass a nationwide abortion law.

Come on.

> And to be pedantic, the Democratic party does not have a current majority in the Senate. It's 50/48/2 Republican; Sanders and King caucus with the Democrats but King in particular is very centrist, endorsed the Republican Collins for her reelection bid, and votes with the Republicans most of the time. Maybe you think that is just nitpicking

No, I don't think it's nitpicking I think it is factually wrong (except that, yes, Sanders and King are Independents). Not only does King vote with the Dems on most important votes, he's not even the most centrist or least loyal to the caucus member of the Democratic Caucus; In the current session, on key issues, if the caucus fails to gather the majority it needs (which usually means there is no vote: Schumer is pretty consistent about that), it is usually Manchin (D-WV) and /or Sinema (D-AZ) — more often the former — that is the problem. (And both of them are to King’s right by both current session and career voting history.)

Yes, Manchin and Sinema are more problematic. Still, I don't think you addressed my actual point, which is that removing the filibuster to pass federal abortion protection would be a big deal, and the best the Democrats could hope for today is a 50/50 vote with the VP breaking the tie. I'd personally be astonished if they even tried, not because they didn't feel like it but because it would very likely be a gun that blew up in their hand.

I believe this is the kind of issue where you'd have to overcome the filibuster, not remove it. This isn't something Democrats were realistically able to do in 2008-2010, and they definitely can't do it now.

They could have easily gotten a few moderate republicans if they moved to 15 or fewer weeks to move it inline with most of Europe. Plenty of Democrats wouldn’t have liked that but compromise is supposed to leave both sides unhappy, after all.

A grand total of 0 republicans voted for the ACA. That's after almost a full year of compromise. It's plainly clear that any republican who voted for an Obama policy would've been voted out in their primary.

I doubt it, because those Republicans would risk being voted out of office.

I think this issue is one where we can safely say one side is not interested in compromise. We had compromise with Roe, and they fought. We had compromise with Casey, and they still fought. We've now witnessed the culmination of a 30+ year campaign to place a particular style of justice on the supreme court, complete with abuse of process to manipulate nominations and nominees being misleading or (arguably) lying about this specific issue to get confirmed. None of this is indicative of a willingness to compromise, to me.

The republicans manage to pass things without a supermajority.

There is a 0% chance ACA would have gone anywhere if it included protections for abortion.

0%. Democrats did not in fact have a "perfect vehicle" nor did they have a chance to enshrine abortion into the law of the land.

Do you think the ACA would have been more or less likely to pass if it had mentioned a federal right to abortion (which would have benefited zero people for the next decade)?

The ACA would probably have had equal chances. It was passed on a party line vote anyway. Besides, nothing stopped them from passing a right to an abortion otherwise.

~25% of House Dems crossed the aisle to vote on a Republican amendment to the ACA to ban federal funding of abortion[1]. While that specific amendment failed in the Senate, it still forced a handshake deal that Obama would issue an EO to that effect.

It seems very unlikely that the ACA could have been passed if it enshrined abortion rights.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stupak%E2%80%93Pitts_Amendment

Both parties benefited from abortion being a wedge issue that wasn't under legislative control. The dems knew that if they enshrined it in law, then the GOP could campaign on undoing that legislative imposition.

The GOP just plays politics better though, so now they're a dog who caught the car they were chasing. The dems have a chance to make that backfire on the GOP in the midterms, but they're awful at getting or wielding power, so I'm skeptical they will.

This is honestly the reason why the DNC chose to gamble on Roe rather than seizing one of the opportunities they had in the last 50 years to write a law.

It's a sleazy move, and I'm not sure why they think people don't see what they are doing.

The ACA was already getting a lot of challenges and multiple attempts to repeal it from day one. I imagine that throwing abortion protections into the mix was deemed to be a poor tactical choice at that moment because it would enflame many of the ACA’s political opponents further and perhaps bring new adversaries into the fold.