The Filibuster Will Survive Because a Few Democrats Are Smart Enough Not To Kill It

Republicans are threatening to filibuster the bill-read Walter Olson for a primer on the legislation's shortcomings-and it seems unlikely that the tenuous 50-seat Democratic majority will be able to muster the necessary 60 votes to break that filibuster if it happens.

The filibuster persists not because it is impossible or even difficult to abolish it, in other words, but merely because each subsequent Senate majority recognizes that it won't retain control forever and will someday want to make use of the filibuster to stop the other team's agenda.

Democrats had not even retaken control of the federal government yet when some leading liberal voices began clamoring for the death of the filibuster.

Notably, the voting rights bill that Democrats are now using to push this debate forward was only one of several excuses Klein identified for abolishing the filibuster.

He wasn't arguing that the filibuster should be abolished to accomplish any specific policy goal; rather, he was arguing that it should be abolished so Democrats can accomplish all of their policy goals at once.

Elsewhere in the piece, Sinema correctly points out that the filibuster has been used in the past by both parties to achieve their respective goals-a silent rejoinder to the historically nonsensical argument that the filibuster is nothing more than a relic of Jim Crow-era politics.

In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid abolished the filibuster for lower-court judicial nominees, ostensibly to allow Democrats to confirm more of then-President Barack Obama's picks for the federal bench.

https://reason.com/2021/06/22/the-filibuster-will-survive-because-a-few-democrats-are-smart-enough-not-to-kill-it/