Do yourself a favor and listen to “The Filibuster’s Sordid Past and Present with Adam Jentleson,” the latest “Why Is This Happening?” podcast. Jentleson’s “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy” details the curious history of the Senate filibuster from a process by which a minority speaks its mind before a bill passes by majority vote to a means by which a minority vetoes the will of the majority. An early Senate rule allowed a majority of senators to end debate; it was never intended that a minority overrule the majority. But because it was rarely used, it was removed in an effort to streamline the rules.
In time, lack of a rule for cutting off debate became handy for southern senators to stop civil rights legislation for which they used it almost exclusively, says Jentleson. The filibuster became a means of flexing power out of proportion to their numbers. How little has changed.
Ed Kilgore elaborates:
Fundamentally, the filibuster (which really didn’t exist in a meaningful sense until the late 19th century) allows any determined Senate minority to resist and in many cases kill legislation it dislikes. Until 1917, with the invention of “cloture,” there was no way to force the end to a filibuster. Still, the filibuster didn’t achieve its full evil flowering as the favored tool for preservation of Jim Crow until between the world wars, and then the late stages of segregation. And it didn’t become a de facto supermajority requirement until a 1970s “reform,” designed to let the Senate function during a filibuster, relieved those using it of the exhausting chore of actually holding down the floor and gabbing incessantly.
Since then the filibuster has become a tool of convenience. And, as we know too well, it is just another tool in the anti-democratic tool box along with the electoral college, structure of the Senate itself, surgically precise gerrymandering, manipulation of the census, vote-suppression laws and other practices limiting access to the polls.
Kilgore concludes:
But all in all, the filibuster has been used to halt progress more often that it has been useful to facilitate it or defend it from attacks. And it remains incontestable that limited reforms — such as restrictions on the measures subject to the filibuster, or a return to the days when “talking filibusters” were required — are available short of its outright abolition which could preserve minority rights in the Senate without thwarting majority rule. Filibuster reform should remain at the top of every progressive legislative agenda. Those center-left or center-right politicians who always find excuses to oppose reform need to be regularly asked: How much damage to America and Americans are you willing to accept to maintain this terrible tradition?
Time to go bye-bye.