During an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her support for eliminating the filibuster-the Senate maneuver that effectively makes 60 votes the threshold for passing legislation, rather than a simple majority-when it comes to abortion rights. 'I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,' she said in the interview, 'and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.'
This didn't strike me at first as especially newsworthy. Embedded in her central policy pledge of restoring Roe protections is the understanding that she would support the filibuster carve-out necessary to achieve that. This is not a subject on which there are 10 Republicans willing to deal, and it's not the type of law that can be passed through reconciliation.
During her March 2022 interview, Harris said she 'cannot wait to cast the deciding vote to break the filibuster on voting rights and reproductive rights.' That was a new position, in 2022. In 2017, she signed a letter with 60 of her fellow senators pledging to 'any effort to curtail' the legislative filibuster.
She, along with quite a few other Senate Democrats who signed the letter, indeed changed their tune when the circumstances changed, and are subject to criticism for that. But it reflects the ongoing tension within the party regarding the filibuster's role in achieving legislative goals.
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