[erimir]

Bernie Sanders announced his campaign today. A shocking development, to be sure.

Interesting that Bernie Sanders doesn't want to kill the filibuster.

It's hard to imagine 60 Senate votes for any major aspect of his agenda, even in a dream 2020 election scenario for Democrats. pic.twitter.com/G10pUHSr54

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 19, 2019

As of now, Elizabeth Warren has clearly expressed the most openness to eliminating the filibuster. Some big things can be done through reconciliation (you can lower the eligibility age for Medicare to whatever you want, even zero, for example) if they are considered to be basically spending or tax changes. But quite a few important things cannot be done that way: voting rights, anti-gerrymandering, DC/PR statehood, immigration reform, gun control, environmental regulations, criminal justice reforms, etc.

And notably, without pro-democracy changes like those first three, Democrats would likely lose their ability to pass anything or appoint judges after 2022.

But maybe Bernie Sanders is just pretending to be bothered by the idea of killing the filibuster. I hope so.