Thread by @fawfulfan

The reason no one wants to run for Senate is Mitch McConnell.

He has destroyed the institution and rules it with an iron fist. And even if he were to lose his majority he would block anything from getting to the floor. The life of a senator is miserable and powerless right now.

When you get this, you understand why Bullock, Abrams, Castro, Hickenlooper, Vilsack, and Stein would rather do anything but run for Senate, even if they have a good shot at winning those states.

Hell, it might even be driving away some *Republicans.* Sununu just said no too.

There have been other cases in American history where a single congressional leader gathered enough power to break the whole branch of government and impose quasi-autocratic rule.

Joseph Gurney Cannon is probably the best historical analogue to what Mitch McConnell has become.

Once McConnell has been removed from power (and history shows that he eventually will be), there's a lot of talk about how to undo the *political* damage he's done (court-packing etc.), but we also need to talk about how to undo the *structural* damage he's done to the Senate.

That is to say: we need to pass reforms to the Senate, as an institution, that will prevent a single person from imposing minority rule over legislation and nominees.

If you've been following me for a while, you know I have some ideas for what we should do.

First of all, we should take the power to schedule votes out of the hands of the Majority Leader, and create a Scheduling Committee with bipartisan-split membership that rotates on a monthly basis. No party should have the right to unilaterally refuse a vote to a bill.

Second of all, the filibuster. I actually believe we should keep it, and restore it for executive and judicial nominees — BUT, we should change the cloture requirement from "60 senators" to "senators representing a majority of the U.S. population." This fixes malapportionment.

Third of all, admit the District of Columbia as a state.

I also think we should admit Puerto Rico, but we would need to hold another referendum on it, because there is not yet a clear popular mandate for it on the island.

In the early 20th century, we decided the Senate should represent the people, not the states. That was good. But to this day, Senate rules make it incapable of representing popular will effectively. That's why a single senator from KY is able to bend the whole thing to his will.

Does that mean I think the Senate should just be a second House? No. In fact, I think part of the problem is it's *too* much like the House, for concentrating power with leadership. Gerrymandering aside, the House is at least proportional, so leadership has a clearer mandate.

The thing that makes the Senate the "saucer" that Thomas Jefferson famously said we must pour legislation in to cool, is that senators are meant to be independent and powerful, with one senator able to force debate on any issue.

The problem is, we've moved away from what was originally intended by that.

"Debate" is no longer a single senator arguing the merits of a bill — it's the party leadership whipping a senator to summarily block vote after vote after vote.

THAT is the Senate McConnell has created.

It's why nothing gets done, the people are never heard in the chamber, and the first thing that must be fixed when he is gone.