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Can We Just Get Rid of the Filibuster Already?
A once-useful legislative trick has become a tool used to erode democracy
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell loves the filibuster.
Through a series of historical accidents, he’s been handed a tool that allows him to stop the Senate in its tracks — and he doesn’t even have to take to the Senate floor to do so. When Democrats held the majority, McConnell filibustered everything. Now in charge, McConnell relies on the filibuster to grant him plausible deniability as the Republican majority fails to pass any legislation. He doesn’t want to make law; he wants to confirm judges. No matter what dreams of bipartisan harmony centrists like Joe Biden cling to, the Senate’s status quo is and will remain inaction.
Unless, that is, Democrats decide that they are ready to stop clinging to their fantasies about the history and potential of the “greatest deliberative body in the world.”
First, a quick primer. Broadly speaking, a filibuster is a procedural rule wherein a politician debates proposed legislation for the express purpose of creating a roadblock toward a decision around that legislation. Filibusters have been used by politicians of all ideological stripes: In 1957, for example, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond spoke for over 24 hours in an…
