For a glimpse of the new American “Newspeak” — to use George Orwell’s coinage — look no further than the language being used in the fight over the filibuster. Starting with the President, who said in Georgia: “Today I’m making it clear. To protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights.”

Then again also, too, action on voting rights is actually being blocked by a majority of Senators. That is, ending the filibuster is opposed by the 50 percent of the upper chamber who are Republicans and, depending on which changes to the filibuster one is considering, one or two or several Democrats. So President Biden has come down with the fantods over the recalcitrance of a majority of the senators.

A nifty illumination of this is up on the Washington Post’s site, in a story headlined “Where Democratic senators stand on changing or eliminating the filibuster.” Only 21 Democrats actually favor “eliminating” the filibuster, according to the latest update of the Post’s tally. Only an additional 23 Democrats favor changing it. Four are “open” to changing it. And two Democrats — Magnificent Manchin and Sensational Sinema — oppose “any” changes to the centuries old tradition.

The whole issue is in the news because absent a change in the filibuster, it looks to be impossible to proceed to changing election law. Net net, though, it isn’t, again, a “minority” of senators who are blocking the changes to our election law. It’s a majority. That is, all the Presidential petulance on display this week in Georgia is about the behavior of — not to put too fine a point on it — more than half of the Senate.

So unless a raft of Republicans breaks ranks, the solons who are standing in the way constitute not a minority but a majority. Which puts the president and the partisan press precisely into a particularly poignant pickle. Feature the Times story headlined “Biden’s Longtime Defense of Senate Rules Withers Under Partisan Rancor.” It’s about how the president is lashing out at senators who are blocking voting rights legislation.

That is, it’s not just Republicans who have — as the Times puts it — “abused the filibuster” but a handsome bi-partisan majority of the Senate. So we’re not talking about “partisan” rancor. Or even any “rancor.” The affection for the filibuster is bipartisan. The rancor abides solely among those who favor ending the filibuster, and that rancorous fen is inhabited entirely by Democrats.

Finally, consider Mr. Biden’s efforts to hold himself out as an “institutionalist.” By which he apparently means an “non-institutionalist.” That’s because whatever else one can say in respect of the filibuster, it has stood in one form or another since 1806. So it is itself an institution. He would have been an “institutionalist” had he defended the Senate. To use the word “institutionalist” in that sense, though, would have rung wrong in the new American Newspeak.

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Image: Senator Long of Louisiana, seen here after his famously long filibuster against New Deal legislation in 1935, via Wikimedia Commons.