THINK BEYOND THE IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION.

I think both G. K. Chesterton and Robert Frost have reflected on fences, with a strong emphasis on understanding why somebody put it up in the first place.

Our overwrought, self-styled progressives lack that capacity for reflection.

We must vote in historic numbers for our ancestors, for our children, and for the generations to come. We must ensure that extremist members of Congress, in both houses, remain in the voting minority.

Alongside this historic effort, we call on Congress to expeditiously and absolutely end the filibuster and take legislative action immediately to codify Roe v. Wade, ensure universal, single-payer healthcare, including the expansion of Medicaid in every state, and ensure the full protections of the Voting Rights Act in every election. We call on President Biden to take immediate action to guarantee reproductive freedoms and use the power of his executive authorities to unabashedly fight for the heart and soul of this country, especially the 140 million poor and low-income people.

All of this rage because constitutional conservatives, rather than organizing street protests to question abuse of authority by federal courts, staged their own long march through the institutions, starting with Richard Nixon campaigning on a pledge to appoint "constructionist" Justices and most recently with the most unlikely Republican president working off a list that did not include Jeanine Pirro or his sister to reconfigure the High Bench. But persuasion and patient footwork are not the way of the so-called progressives.

[The constitutional conservatives'] naked grab for power is succeeding—but it could still backfire if we set our minds to it.

What would that look like? In the short political term, a promise from every Democrat that they would overturn the filibuster and expand the Court if elected. We can't get rid of every archaic part of our governmental structure, but the Constitution doesn't get in the way of these changes. And they would liberate majorities to actually write policy and not see it struck down by the partisans that currently inhabit the bench.

As I suggested last week that it would be easiest if this fight was led by Joe Biden, perhaps on a train. Biden did, yesterday, say that he favored a "filibuster carve-out" to codify Roe into law, but saying it is not the same as campaigning for it. (Also, could he maybe figure out a less convoluted way of saying it). I confess: I suspect that Biden lacks the fire to lead this fight. He has done a creditable job of restoring some kind of normalcy to America after Ketchup Boy's reign, but that's a different task than really leading a crusade.

"Biden lacks the fire" is an understatement; his brain is mush: and I suspect a lot of the people who voted for him in 2020 sought an anodyne Democrat as a corrective to the show business of the Trump presidency, and they hoped the party platform, written by the communist wing of the Donks, was standard political theater. Valerie Jarrett had other plans.  Red State's Bonchie, though, suggests that somewhere in that skull full of mush is a bit of political muscle memory.  "Biden is unwilling to outright overthrow the institutions of the United States in order to secure short-term political wins."  No matter what sort of old-man ravings the speechwriter has put into the script, it's all show, and if anything, the so-called progressives exercising their slim majorities now to ram even more foolishness through will bite them, and soon.  Bonchie continues, "While screaming about 'democracy,' they seek to exact complete power over its institutions, no matter what it takes. So despite his radicalism, Biden may be the last of a generation not willing to go quite that far."

Because once you tear down the fences, whatever was fenced in, which might include Militant Normals tired of spot shortages of peanut butter, expensive gasoline, and the baby formula locked up with the big bottles of expensive liquor, is free to roam: payback will be coming.

Is Mr. Biden so unfathomably clueless about how a rule such as the filibuster works that he really believes that it can be switched off and on at his whim and nevertheless remain a rule? Or does the president here cynically reveal that he has absolutely no respect for the native intelligence of the American people? The correct answer is unclear.

Could Mr Trump have gotten the slate of constitutional conservative judges and justices through had the Senate not reduced "advise and consent" to a bare majority.

Seeking a short-term political win, [former majority leader Harry] Reid followed through on what both Democrats and Republicans had taken turns threatening to do for the better part of the past decade: abolishing the filibuster for judicial nominees. And the move did indeed pay some short-term dividends, as Democrats were able to use their Senate majority to push through a bunch of circuit court judicial nominations that had been stalled by GOP filibuster threats.

Once the fence is down, it's down.  "Taking shortcuts that 'undermine who we are' takes us in the wrong direction." Eric Boehm continues.

But the problem with changing the rules for the elections bill or an abortion bill is the same as the one for abolishing the filibuster for judicial nominees: There's no way to actually do this in a narrow sense. One side doesn't get to break the norms by claiming it's "only just this once" or only for a special reason. Once the filibuster for judicial nominations was scrapped, there was no doubt that it would soon be abolished for Supreme Court nominations too. The same will happen if Democrats kill the legislative filibuster—no matter how good of a reason they might think they had.

Once it's gone, it's gone. And the Senate is (whether fairly or not) tilted in favor of Republicans.

But being mugged by reality never seems to register with the self-styled progressives.

Liberals are finally learning what it’s like when the courts make decisions rather than legislators. Guess what, conservatives never understood why the Supreme Court invented law from the bench. Now that they’ve finally seen common sense, liberals throw up their hands and cry, “Fascist!”

Seeing them fruitlessly beg Biden to do something would be a “Get the popcorn!” moment for conservatives, if we weren’t paying for his incompetence in other ways. He won’t do what it takes to rein in inflation or build up oil production to lower gas prices.

Every day the shelves remain empty, every day it's a hundred bucks to fuel the car, every day the gerontocracy hectors us, the day of reckoning for the Democrats nears.  And it will be them defending the protections against majoritarian tyranny.  "How odd that leftists are destroying the very customs and traditions whose loss will come back to haunt them when the Democrats lose the Congress in November."