Leave the alkali alone kids. Anyway, regarding the Maine Democratic senate primary, between the candidate with the totenkopf tattoo* and the 79 year-old who opposes ending the filibuster, I never want to hear anyone from either party claiming D.C. isn’t ready for statehood.

Without ending the filibuster, which gives Republicans a de facto veto over most legislation (reconciliation can be used for some budgetary items, which only requires a majority vote), everything from the policies we need to shore up our democracy, such as court reform, new voting rights legislation, anti-gerrymandering, anti-corruption legislation, and so on simply won’t get passed. Also, we can kiss D.C. statehood goodbye. We can look to the ancient history of… the Biden administration to see what will happen without ending the filibuster: Republicans will filibuster all of this.

And on the policy front, Republicans realize that, were there no filibuster, Democrats could pass a ton of decent (if not good) legislation–this is why Republicans haven’t yet killed the filibuster to end the shutdown, even though they can do that unilaterally.

I say this as a Democratic primary voter: too often, we focus on electability (even as we are pretty bad at predicting what will happen), at the cost of failing to force candidates to actually do things. And no, hoping Republicans will come to their senses isn’t a plan, it’s an excuse for inaction. Whatever state you’re in, push your Democratic senate candidates to end the filibuster, or else nothing happens–and that will be the voters’ failure.

*Regardless of what is currently in Platner’s heart, that he did not get rid of the tattoo is disqualifying. Leaving aside the ethics of the situation (and we shouldn’t!), it will be impossible for Democrats to run as anti-fascist when one of their candidates has a Nazi tattoo that he did not get rid off.