To the Editor:
In “Can Senate Democrats Save the Party?” (editorial, Nov. 27), you call on the Senate Democratic minority to rely upon the chamber’s “arcane rules” to confront the Trump agenda directly.
What you don’t say is that in 2013 the then-Democratic majority unilaterally changed longstanding filibuster rules to override Republican opposition to any of President Obama’s executive appointments or judicial nominations below the Supreme Court, a move you celebrated at the time (“Democracy Returns to the Senate,” editorial, Nov. 22, 2013).
Indeed, before this year’s election, many leading Democrats were so confident that they were about to win back the Senate majority (and keep the White House) that they began warning Republicans against blocking a President Hillary Clinton’s legislative agenda or Supreme Court picks, lest those remaining parts of the “arcane rules” be blown up as well. Now they are desperately hoping that Republicans do not follow that advice.
In 2013, Senate traditionalists of all political stripes warned the Democrats that haphazardly changing Senate rules to take advantage of a fleeting political moment was akin to playing with historic fire. They are now in serious danger of getting burned.
STUART GOTTLIEB
New York
The writer, a former Senate adviser and speechwriter, teaches at Columbia.
Note from KBJ: Obama and the Democrats taught Trump and the Republicans exactly how to achieve their ends. I can't wait to see the look on Democrat faces when what they did is used against them. What goes around comes around.
