Op-Ed Columnist
The best-case scenario for Democrats in 2020 involves winning the White House, keeping control of the House and winning a narrow majority in the Senate. There is no realistic chance that Democrats will have the 60 Senate seats needed to break filibusters.
They would still be able to pass some ambitious legislation through a process known as reconciliation, as they did to pass Obamacare in 2010 and Republicans did to pass the Trump tax cut in 2017. But reconciliation comes with major restrictions. Some of the biggest progressive goals — like a response to climate change, an expansion of voting rights and statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia — will therefore depend on whether Democrats are willing to get rid of the filibuster. A simple majority of senators has the power to do so.
The fate of the filibuster has become a standard question in interviews of the 2020 Democratic candidates. Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington State and a potential candidate, has called for its elimination. Elizabeth Warren told “Pod Save America,” “If the Republicans are going to try to block us on key pieces that we’re trying to move forward, then you better believe we’ve got to keep all the options on the table.” Kamala Harris says she’s “conflicted.” Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand all sound somewhere between torn about whether to get rid of it and unenthused about doing so.
This morning, I want to walk through both sides of the argument.
Death to the filibuster!
The filibuster arose largely as a historical accident, as Sarah Binder of George Washington University, among others, note. The founders did not intend a minority of senators, let alone a single one, to be able to obstruct the majority of the chamber.
Over the years, both liberals and conservatives have called for its demise. The filibuster “has obscured democratic accountability and made voters feel less efficacious — when voting majorities to power isn’t enough to change the way things are, it’s fair to wonder if electoral politics is worth the trouble,” my colleague Jamelle Bouie writes in his latest column. David Winston, a former aide to Newt Gingrich, called for the filibuster’s abolishment last year, arguing that it “has become the enemy of progress.”
In the past, when senators used the filibuster less often, it caused less damage. But it has now become a regular part of Senate business. Adam Jentleson, a former Democratic aide, has explained that Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, transformed the filibuster “from a procedural tool used to block bills into a weapon of nullification, deploying it against even routine Senate business to gridlock the legislative process.”
In our current polarized era, it’s folly to believe that the filibuster promotes compromise. It has not done so for years. Instead, it leads to gridlock, as Vox’s Ezra Klein notes, and flawed legislation that needs to be written with an eye toward surviving the technicalities of reconciliation. “The result is legislation that is often unfinished, poorly written, or booby-trapped,” he writes.
Keep the filibuster!
Whatever happens in 2020, neither political party is likely to control the federal government for years on end. So if Democrats scrapped the filibuster and passed major legislation, they would be risking repeal as soon as Republicans held Congress and the White House.
The uncertainty hanging over such legislation would give Americans more reason to doubt the federal government’s ability to function well. And Democrats should be looking for ways to restore trust in government, rather than adding more chaos.
Chris Coons, the Delaware Democratic senator who signed a 2017 letter along with 31 other Democrats arguing against removing the filibuster, has a simple case: “President Trump thinks it’s a great idea to get rid of it. Perhaps progressives should think that over.”
As Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts, tweeted yesterday:
The bottom line
My view is that Democrats don’t need to decide this question now. They won’t stir up much excitement by talking about process change. If they’re ever going to persuade the public that the filibuster should go, it will be as part of a fight over specific legislation — say, an expansion of Medicare, a major federal jobs program or a serious response to climate change in the wake of a destructive storm.
In this situation, they can first try to pass a bill through reconciliation, as Slate’s Jim Newell suggests. And if that doesn’t work, they can consider taking the next step.
There is nothing sacred about the filibuster, and it’s healthy for people to be thinking about its fate. But there is no rush.
