Brief comments on the present and future of the filibuster

 As the Senate considers the filibuster and its implications for policymaking, I have just a few bullet point-style comments.

1)  The Democrats don't have the votes to "reform" the filibuster in any way.  The Senate is 50-50-Harris.  By using the "nuclear option," the majority party can cheat and re-write the rules with 51 votes, even though the rules actually say that you need a 2/3 supermajority to change the rules, but Joe Manchin won't vote for any rule change.  So this is all sturm und drang.

2)  That makes McConnell's "scorched earth" threats doubly-bizarre.  McConnell's middle name is "Scorched Earth" anyway (terrible parents!), as we learned in 2007 when control of the Senate flipped from R to D, and McConnell escalated filibustering to the norm.  If you want to know when the filibuster went from an occasional tactic on the rise to the default, that was the precise moment.  You can track it with cloture motions.  McConnell did it.  He scorches earth.  It's what he does.  A threat is meaningless unless acceding to the threat will result in the threatener not carrying out the threat, and McConnell will scorch earth.  He has a gigantic flame thrower, pointed at the ground, and he's going to drive around in a gas-guzzling Hummer, scorching every bit of earth he can reach.  So... what's the threat here?  And if the Democrats don't have the votes to do what he's saying, then... huh?!

3)  In the hypothetical case that Democrats did reform or eliminate the filibuster, and McConnell did find a way to escalate his scorched earth tactics, there's a response.  Keepin' on truckin' nukin'.  (Sorry, I actually detest the Grateful Dead.  What did the deadhead say when he ran out of drugs?  "These guys suck!  Where are the Allman Brothers playing?")  Anyway, the point is that if McConnell responded to the things the Democrats don't have the votes to do with dilatory motions, the response would be to declare them dilatory, and reject them, enacting rules changes to prevent such motions, turning the institution into an even more majoritarian institution, more like the House.

4)  Is that what you, or anyone else want?  The Democrats keep telling themselves that the filibuster must go, because blah-blah, "democracy!," but as I have explained many times, there is really no such thing as "majoritarianism" when you dig down into the math, and you don't really believe in it anyway.  See:  Brown v. Board, and plenty of other examples.  Also, remember when the filibuster saved Obamacare?  Were you whining about how unfair the filibuster was, and how undemocratic it was, and how the Democrats needed to let the GOP repeal Obamacare because the filibuster was just so philosophically unjustifiable?  Yeah, I thought not.  Weigh the pros and cons as you will, but don't give me this shit about how you are really, truly, in your heart of hearts, opposed to the filibuster unless you actually wanted Obamacare gone a few years back.

5)  Realistically, the filibuster will go away eventually.  It has been scaled back sequentially, through incremental uses of the nuclear option, increasing uses of budget reconciliation, and the general pressure against it.  Combine that with increasing polarization, and the pressure all works against the filibuster.  The filibuster's days are numbered.  One way to look at it, then, is this.  Someone's gonna press the button.  Pick your moment, and get the maximum benefit.  Of course, thinking in those terms, Democrats don't have that moment now.  They don't have the votes, and an infrastructure bill is probably not the maximum benefit.  But, that ought to be the calculus.