EDITORIAL: Democrats, Biden lay groundwork for power grab

After more than two months, President Joe Biden finally braved the cameras on Thursday for his first news conference. Not surprisingly, the sharks that for four years thrashed Donald Trump couldn’t find much chum in the water during their first chance to confront his successor. Expect more fawning deference for the duration of the Biden presidency.

Many subjects — the president’s flip-flop on school reopenings, his looming tax hikes, the unsustainable spending culture in Washington — went unmentioned. Mr. Biden took only a handful of questions, and many of those focused on the migrant problems at our southern border. The president remains in a state of oblivious denial, continuing to insist that his rhetoric had nothing to do with the ongoing surge.

Perhaps the most newsworthy moment came when Mr. Biden predictably did a 180 on the filibuster, saying he’s now open to eliminating the long-standing practice. Like many of the children in the famous 1972 Stanford University marshmallow experiment, the president and Senate Democrats ache for instant gratification while ignoring the potential long-term consequences of their immediate desires.

“I strongly support moving in that direction,” Mr. Biden said of forcing senators to actually hold the floor during a filibuster, “in addition to having an open mind about dealing with certain things that are just elemental to the functioning of our democracy, like the right to vote. Like the basic right to vote. We’ve amended the filibuster in the past.”

He went on to say that he agreed with former President Barack Obama that the filibuster is a remnant of Jim Crow and that, “We’re going to get a lot done, and if we have to, if there’s complete lockdown and chaos as a consequence of the filibuster, then we’ll have to go beyond what I’m talking about.”

Jim Crow. Get it? This not-so-subtle and deplorable smear is especially ironic given that Democrats made liberal use of the filibuster during the Trump years and that Mr. Biden has previously defended the tactic. Apparently, the filibuster is undemocratic and racist only when Republicans use it.

In fact, Democrats and the president will be committing a naked power grab if they attempt to neuter the minority party, and they will eventually come to regret it dearly.

We’ll close with this from 2005 on the Senate floor: “But if the right of free and open debate is taken away from the minority party and the millions of Americans who asked us to be their voice, I fear that the already-partisan atmosphere of Washington will be poisoned to the point where no one will be able to agree on anything. That doesn’t serve anyone’s best interests, and it certainly isn’t what the patriots who founded this democracy had in mind.”

Those are the words of a young senator named Barack Obama.