Harry Reid and other Democrats are mad at Republicans. The reason? Republicans have allowed a vote on the Bernie Sanders/Tom Udall anti-Koch Brothers constitutional amendment.

Seriously.

Via Politico:

Many of the Republicans only voted for the bill to foul up Democrats’ pre-election messaging schedule, freezing precious Senate floor time for a measure that ultimately has no chance of securing the two-thirds support necessary in both the House and Senate to amend the Constitution.

The legislation needed 60 votes to advance and Democrats took a cynical view of the 79-18 tally. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the GOP’s tactic was simply to “stall” because it would eat up limited floor time that Democrats are eyeing for votes aimed at encouraging gender pay equity and raising the minimum wage.

“They know we’re getting out of here fairly shortly and they want to prevent discussion on other very important issues,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

 

Get that? Senate Democrats are mad that Republicans have moved forward to allow debate on an issue that they all ostensibly support. Their specific accusation is that Republicans are being “cynical” because they don’t intend to actually vote for the amendment in question.

And why does it make them angry that the Republicans are doing this? Because it is preventing the Democrats from bringing up other terrible bills that they know have no chance of passage that they hope to use in campaign ads in key Senate races. The gall of these people calling Republicans cynical is too rich.

Here’s an idea for Harry Reid if he is really concerned about getting important stuff done before the end of the current legislative session: don’t bring up stupid bills that have no chances of passing just so that you can give your members some campaign fodder. I mean, if you really and truly do have actual business to attend to, maybe you should attend to that first and then later if you have time do your election campaigning from the Senate floor.

Otherwise, don’t criticize Republicans for bringing legislation that you support to the floor for debate. You look a bit silly claiming that Republicans are cynically exploiting a bill that you only brought up cynically in the first place.