Thread by @AJentleson

The filibuster was not part of the original Senate because the Framers knew exactly how it'd be used- they saw McConnell coming. The filibuster represents Calhoun's vision, not Madison's. Calhoun wanted a Senate where the minority could block the majority. nytimes.com/2021/01/20/opi…

To those who say the filibuster encourages bipartisanship, Hamilton addressed this directly in Federalist 22: "What at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison," he wrote of a supermajority threshold. It doesn't encourage cooperation, it encourages obstruction.

The de facto supermajority threshold was first forged against civil rights. Jim Crow-era segregationist senators repurposed a 1917 Senate rule to force every civil rights bill to clear a supermajority threshold, blocking them all. Only civil rights bills were blocked in this way.

Yes! Calhoun was profoundly racist. He was slavery’s leading defender in the Senate. He argued on the Senate floor that slavery was a “positive good.” And he was motivated to innovate the filibuster by the desire to protect slavery - to give the South veto power. Bad, bad guy.

https://twitter.com/mcbyrne/status/1352279151349293059

In Kill Switch I show how the Senate now applies the standard it used to block civil rights to all issues. There’s no wisdom in this delay, just plain old obstruction. That evolution runs though Richard Russell (a white supremacist) and Mitch McConnell. wwnorton.com/books/97816314…

Yes! In Federalist 62-63, Madison lists all the ways the Senate was supposed to foster wisdom (partisanship per se didn’t exist then). None of them were the filibuster - not just because it didn’t exist, but because Madison believed majority rule was the “republican principle.”

https://twitter.com/nbeaudrot/status/1352325779976192002

Here is Madison calling majority rule the “republican principle” in Federalist 10. Madison and the framers made clear again and again that within their complicated system of checks and balances aimed at protecting minority factions, decision points should be majority rule.