Thread by @HayesBrown

It. Has. Not. Been. Tradition. The. Whole. Time. You. Dink.

https://twitter.com/chadpergram/status/1480663837825286145

The filibuster is a mistake of the rewritten rules, which deleted the rule for “previous question,” a loophole exploited by the Southern slaveholding class and later the Dixiecrats. That is the history of the filibuster.

The idea that the Senate rules were built around — where the esteemed gentlemen of the Senate will just cordially decide to have a majority vote once debate is naturally exhausted — is not anywhere close to reality

If Aaron Burr hadn’t screwed up the rules and John Calhoun hadn’t taken advantage of it, we’d have no filibuster as we know it. Any attempts to fix it have just made things worse/easier to use, so I have a hard time supporting even reforms over abolition of it at this point.

1918: oh no progressives are filibustering war money. let’s create “cloture” to cut them off with 2/3rds of voting senators

1972: oh no filibusters are eating up floor time, let’s make a two-track system to dodge them

1975: oh no, 2/3rds is a lot, let’s make it a flat 60 votes

2013: oh no, the GOP is using filibusters to cut off our nominees and legislation. better make an exception for executive nominees only.

2017: oh no, a SCOTUS justice is being filibustered. better carve that out too, but leave the legislative filibuster in place for reasons

god, i have written so many pieces on the filibuster in the last year — at least 8 of them since Jan. 21, 2021.

some of my favorites:

msnbc.com/opinion/filibu…

msnbc.com/opinion/vice-p…

msnbc.com/opinion/joe-ma…

AND ALSO: the Founders didn’t invent the filibuster to provide for the rights of the minority! they did a bunch of other things in designing the Senate to prevent the rabble’s mood swings from shifting policy, but the filibuster ain’t one of them

msnbc.com/opinion/gop-fi…

(In retrospect, it’s the “you dink” that really makes this tweet sing)

the whole point of the Senate is not the filibuster, or “unlimited debate,” or even the “minority’s rights” idea

it’s that every state has the same number of representatives. the states are as powerful as ever in this format, to an extent that defies their relative sizes

https://twitter.com/LeaderMcConnell/status/1480661760717828096