The filibuster -- as it currently exists -- is on the way out. E.J. Dionne writes:
Change is on the way. President Biden has signaled that the days of the Senate filibuster’s stranglehold on majority rule are numbered. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is scared to death that he’s right.
McConnell is particularly worried that Democrats will use their majorities in the House and Senate to enact fundamental reforms to our political system, from protecting voting rights to containing dark money’s influence on elections. That’s why the man who supposedly loves Congress’s upper chamber promised to create “a completely scorched earth Senate” if Democrats try to make it easier to pass legislation.
The Republicans have been a minority party for decades. They know they don't have the votes to win elections. So they have tried everything -- from voter supression to the filibuster -- to maintain minority rule. And they have changed the filibuster to maintain that minority rule:
Adam Jentleson is a former top Senate Democratic aide and the author of “Kill Switch,” an appropriately titled book on the chamber. He offered a brisk history of the filibuster in an interview. The 60-vote standard for passing most legislation is really the product of the past 20 years, Jentleson said, and has been truly routine only since 2007.
At the beginning of the republic, he noted, “there was no filibuster.” Then, “there was the talking filibuster, used rarely, mostly against civil rights. Then there was a slow rise [in its use] through the latter half of the 20th century, then it skyrocketed under Sen. McConnell,” Jentleson said to me in an interview. Little wonder, as the author noted, that the word filibuster comes from Dutch references to pirates.
The days of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington have long passed. Biden proposes to return to the days of Mr. Smith and institute a talking filibuster when: "stalling action required its members 'to stand up and command the floor, and you had to keep talking.' That was the rule when Biden first arrived in the Senate.
A voting rights bill will soon usher in change:
Biden made his comments on the filibuster on Tuesday, the eve of the formal Senate introduction of the For the People Act that has already passed the House. The comprehensive political reform bill would block the scandalous attack on voting rights in some Republican states. It would also curb gerrymanders that distort representation, take major steps to limit the power of dark money by expanding disclosure and create strong incentives for politicians to rely on small as opposed to large contributions.
The rubber has hit the road.
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10 comments:
Biden has had an auspicious start to his presidency, Owen. I hope his vision doesn't dim as his term progresses.
He has a tough road ahead of him, Lorne, against people who lack any sense of decency. I hope Biden's fundamental decency prevails.
I recall when Obama was first elected McConnell, bold as brass, announced that congressional Republicans had one job - to undermine every bill, every initiative that Obama might put forward. He didn't qualify that with any thin concessions about bipartisan cooperation. He was absolute. The Republicans would do whatever possible to bring the business of government to a halt.
If the Senate was even remotely demographically representative, if districts weren't gerrymandered (nothing short of rigged), if the Repugs weren't so fond of the dark arts of voter suppression, the party, not of Lincoln, but of angry, fearful old white people would be finis.
Perhaps, once the Republican barricades are cleared, the GOP might find bipartisanship to their liking.
What the Republicans have failed to understand is that old, angry, white males are a dying breed, Mound. I suspect that the party will follow them to their graves.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door".
Except if Huddled masses out number us at voting time
The huddled masses are exactly who the Republicans want to keep out, zoombats.
"He has a tough road ahead of him, Lorne, against people who lack any sense of decency. I hope Biden's fundamental decency prevails."
Problem is that Biden's sense of decency doesn't go far when up against the repugs, as you say they have one. "You bring a knife to a gunfight!"
We went to work on making the young white guys stupid a long time ago. It really wasn't that hard. We even picked up some nonwhites along the way. Now we're working on making them even more scared and angry. The next series of pillow fights will feature some whoppers that we would never have considered using thirty years ago.
The Republicans aren't going to fight fair, Ben. But Biden seems to have the ear of a clear majority of Americans. His task -- admittedly a hard one -- will be mobilizing that majority against elected Republicans.
Trump has a long history of lying, John. What is so discouraging is the number of people who are willing to believe a man who has spent his whole life lying.
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