On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Democratic colleagues tried and failed to gut the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

By a vote of 54 to 42, the “world’s most deliberative body” failed to muster the special majority necessary to pass constitutional amendments, once again reminding us how wise the founders were to have attached special requirements to the amendment process.

The measure they killed, which was proposed by Democratic New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, would have changed the Constitution and more than 225 years of American political process by giving Congress the power to pass laws that determined what did and what did not constitute heretofore protected political speech.

If anything, Congress should be looking for ways to expand rather than restrict the protections the First Amendment provides to the press and to the people, no matter how they choose to organize themselves to petition the government for redress of grievances, part of what the electoral process is all about. What Reid and his partisan colleagues are trying to restrict is the ability of some (mostly people and organizations with whom they disagree and would like to just go away) to participate in that process.

Since the United States Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case, left-liberals have been on a tear, not only trying to pass legislation that would overturn the decision, but also upping the ante as to what would be permissible in terms of time, place, manner and messaging. The proposed amendment is a power grab to benefit the progressives who dominate the news media culture and to make it tough if not impossible for those who have different ideas to push back.

Part of this is ideological class warfare. Billionaires like Tom Steyer and George Soros, who fund much of what the left does and many of the political advertisements you see on TV, are never the subject of Reid’s wrath – unless they also want to go after Democrats who stray from the party lines. At the same time, public-spirited and politically-minded business leaders who actually make money by producing things (which the left tells us is virtuous compared to simply trading in hedge funds) like Charles and David Koch are singled out by Reid for having the temerity to put their money on the line in substantial ways to defend free minds, free markets and freedom in general.

The contrasting treatment is so vigorously out of sync with what is really going on that one wonders whether the distortions are intentional; at the least, it’s hard to say how they can be accidental.

Part of this is simple political class warfare. Lacking a U.S. president on whom he can pound, Reid has taken to making regular attacks on Charles and David Koch and other civic-minded business leaders who are spending some of their money in the political process. The Democrats think the uninformed outrage that parrots talking points circulated among so-called campaign finance reformers is a game-changer for them on Election Day, that it will actually bring people to the polls to vote their anger.

It’s a doubtful proposition. What is cheerful, however, is that the First Amendment remains alive and well (at least in Ohio) where the Susan B. Anthony List – which had to go all the way to the United States Supreme Court just to establish it had the right to sue on the matter – has won a mighty victory for politically-oriented speech.

The SBA List, which pursues policies and helps elect candidates who will reduce and ultimately end abortion, has won its battle against Ohio’s “false statement law” – a measure that previously allowed politically-appointed government bureaucrats to determine whether statements made in political ads were true or false.

At the same time Reid was trying in Washington to rewrite the Constitution, Judge Timothy Black was ruling the speech panel violated the SBA List’s rights under the First Amendment.

Quoting from the SBA List’s oral arguments in his decision, Black wrote the case was, in fact, about whether the group – and everyone else for that matter – has "a right not to have the truth of our political statements be judged by the Government."

The case comes out of the SBA List's 2010 attempt to put up billboards exposing former Ohio Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus’ support for legal abortion as evidenced by his vote in favor of the Affordable Care Act – which, not coincidentally, is just the kind of activity Reid and Udall are trying to prohibit going forward with their constitutional amendment, of which we have probably not seen the last.