This is not a big surprise, but today the White House announced its support for filibuster reform:
“The President has said many times that the American people are demanding action,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a statement to The Huffington Post. “They want to see progress, not partisan delay games. That hasn’t changed, and the President supports Majority Leader Reid’s efforts to reform the filibuster process.”
This is important for more than PR reasons. Although there’s some disagreement about how the filibuster rules can be changed, most observers agree that it requires a ruling from the president of the Senate, aka Joe Biden. And Biden isn’t going to support filibuster reform unless his boss supports it too.
So while this is no surprise, it’s a necessary piece of the puzzle. Harry Reid still needs to get 51 members of the Democratic Caucus to agree to a plan, but if he does there’s nothing standing in the way of implementing it.