Opinion | Scott Lemieux: 'Claims that a liberal president and Congress can advance a substantial agenda without killing the filibuster are oblivious to the post-Obama reality.' - NBCNewsTHINK
a recent interview that “the real issue is that you have in Washington a system which is dominated by wealthy campaign contributors.” Even if this true, it is beside the point: Not only would the dominance of big money in politics still exist after the next presidential election, the filibuster prevents bills that could change it from passing.
Claims that the next Democratic president and Congress can advance a substantial legislative agenda with the filibuster in place are clearly wrong. And the fact that the Democratic agenda isthan the Republican one doesn’t mean that public protest will compel Republicans to help a Democratic president get his legislative agenda passed. Instead, even if they are in the minority in the Senate, they’ll just use the filibuster, as they always have..
Another important lesson of the partial elimination of the filibuster is that Senate rules are just norms, and are most likely to be changed when the Senate majority has a compelling need to do so. The battle against the filibuster won’t be won based on abstract procedural arguments; the legislative filibuster will be substantially modified or eliminated when it stops a Senate majority from doing something that it really wants to do.
That’s not to say that it will be easy — and, especially if Democrats have only a 50- or 51-member majority in 2021, it will be very difficult. But the fact that many Senate Democrats are claiming to support the filibuster now doesn’t mean they’ll maintain their support in the future — and, in fact, they shouldn’t.Scott Lemieux is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington.
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