Democrats will now have a solid majority in the Senate come January 3rd, with at least 3 more votes than it will take to strip the filibuster out of that body’s archaic rules. We flipped Texas, Kansas, South Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, and North Carolina on a single night (with Mississippi and Alaska in the wings), the sort of repudiation a sitting president gets that only comes along once in a lifetime.
And yet when Chuck Schumer was asked — twice — if he’d finally get rid of the filibuster he refused to answer. Hakeem Jefferies has been ambiguous, noting that it’s not his legislative body.
When John Thune refused to blow up the filibuster to pass the Republican’s ultra-voter-suppression SAVE America Act, Trump went nuts, posting on his Nazi-infested social media site that whichever party terminates the filibuster first “will be the Party that survives and thrives.”
For once in his life, he’s being both truthful and right. And now Democrats will have that chance.
Senator Chris Van Hollen said this past weekend that Democrats should be willing to push through legislation even if it hits Trump’s veto and, therefore, the filibuster has to go. James Talarico correctly called it a “Jim Crow relic” the night he beat Ken Paxton. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have been saying it for years, perhaps decades, and even President Obama called for its end as he stood over John Lewis’ casket.
You won’t find the filibuster in the Constitution; while the rule enabling it was put into place during Jefferson’s presidency in 1806, it wasn’t really used until 1837 when the great theorist of slavery, John C. Calhoun, used it to block a bill promoting the end of that cruel institution.