During the 111th Congress, from the appointment of Al Franken until the death of Ted Kennedy, as well as during the term of his appointed successor Paul G. Kirk, the Democratic party held 58 seats in the Senate and caucused together with 2 more senators.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress "gave the Senate Democratic caucus sixty votes, enough to defeat a filibuster in a party-line vote."

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/us/politics/01minnesota.h... "providing Democrats with something they had long hoped for: 60 votes, and thus at least the symbolic ability to overcome filibusters."

There were conservative democrats such as Manchin and leiberman who beleived their constituents weren't in favor of abortion rights. A straight party line vote on abortion rights wasn't going to happen. There were also republicans in more urban states that knew the majority of their constituents favored abortion, but because they were worried about being primaried they wouldn't vote for abortion rights.

Do people not remember that Joe Lieberman single-handedly torpedoed the public option? He's a liberal in the same way that my dog is a cat.

Sure but the possibility of getting dem senators from red states to vote for abortion was extremely, extremely unlikely. Republicans tend to stick together but Democrats do not on these slim "majorities". Check out Manchin and Senema, they are essentially moderate republicans despite their party affiliation. They are heavily sponsored by right wing corps and PACS.

>"especially when it's already the law of the land?"

I believe Roe was the precedent of the land and not something explicitly codified into federal law.

Supreme court rulings are law in this country because of Marbury v. Madison. You can try to claim precedent and law are somehow different, I think you'd have an incredibly hard time convincing most people.

Marbury v Madison established judicial review, meaning that the courts can strike down unconstitutional law. It does not give the courts legislative ability.

Maybe you're using a fuzzier definition of "law", but there was never any federal legislation that guaranteed access to abortion. That is what we need.

You are apparently unfamiliar with the legal systems in the US (the federal system and 49 states), which are Common Law[0] systems (Louisiana uses a French style "Civil Law" system):

"In law, common law, also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law, is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions.[2][3][4] The defining characteristic of “common law” is that it arises as precedent. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts, and synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law

If you scroll to the US section of the article you linked, you will see that the federal government does not have a common-law system.

Huh that is surprising! "There is no federal general common law"

Though it does kind of make sense, after all it's the United States of America, not the United People's of America, or the United Local Jurisdictions of America.

The States can have rights that supersedes the people apparently.

>Huh that is surprising! "There is no federal general common law"

My reading of the particular passage[0] in the Wikipedia article is that while Federal courts are no longer independent sources of common law, they operate along with other systems that are, and often impact the common law of the several states with rulings that set the limits of Federal, State and individual power.

As such, the reality is a bit more complicated,

N.B.: IANAL and this is not legal advice.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#United_States_feder...

It wouldn't make sense the other way around, since whenever individual rights contradict that of the State's, the federal court(s) would effectively undo the basis of their sovereignty.

> It does not give the courts legislative ability.

But it does. Our common law system treats judicial rulings as law. There is nothing stopping the supreme court from ruling on literally anything they like. They could make cars illegal in the next session if they wanted.

The filibuster is basically an imaginary rule that can be changed or modified by a simple majority at any time. It’s irrelevant.

Not when legislators refuse to overturn it. That's obviously an issue too, but it's not really related to the problem here, which is that the two party system causes many people to have their opinions unrepresented.

It's a lot like fiat currency, it has respect of "all". Parties know if they kill the filibuster, the next time that the pendulum swings back everything they did will get thrown on the trash heap.

There is an element of truth to this but we’ve seen the filibuster selectively weakened to accomplish a specific goal under Mitch McConnell as well as Harry Reid before him. Its been done by both just within the last 2 presidencies, and there’s no good reason to assume your opponent won’t be the one to do it first when it suits them.