Democrats should seize the chance to end the filibuster

A national voter ID law is nothing to fear.

Donald Trump promotes the SAVE America Act. The bill is also known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Contributor via Getty Images)

There’s a weird bit of slightly under-the-radar drama playing out in Congress right now. Donald Trump keeps demanding that Republicans scrap the legislative filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act, while Republican leaders keep insisting this won’t happen and that Trump should get off their backs.

The latest escalation is that Trump wants Senate Republicans to cancel the August recess so they can talk about SAVE, but John Thune doesn’t want to do this because it’s a huge waste of time, which in turn is leading Trump to rage against Thune.

This hasn’t gotten that much attention since I guess it’s hard to get people to read stories about things that aren’t happening. But there are five points I think deserve emphasizing, the last of which is, I think, the most significant:

1. This fight illustrates that even Trump can’t actually pull off the “pound the table harder” approach to getting bills passed that progressives often fantasize that a sufficiently committed Democrat could use.

2. Democrats are holding firm even though the core SAVE concept of requiring photo ID to vote is extremely popular and it might be wiser to get to “yes” on this.

3. Republicans have written a bill that pairs a popular idea that they claim to think is important (photo ID) with a bunch of dumb chaff that makes it impossible to actually enact the thing they’re saying is important.