There's a lot of confusion out there about the root of the filibuster dispute, so ... a short thread.
The key: political scientists have found that, on balance, legislation favors progressives. More often than not, those seeking legislation are seeking change/reform.
The key: political scientists have found that, on balance, legislation favors progressives. More often than not, those seeking legislation are seeking change/reform.
That's not always true, of course, but on average, over time, the more legislation there is, the more movement there is in a progressive reform direction. Active gov't is, on balance, a tool for change. It's really important to understand this.
The obvious upshot is, if you're on the conservative side -- the side benefiting from & protecting status quo power dynamics -- you want less legislation. Less/smaller gov't generally. You want gov't to leave things alone, because the way things are works for you/your people.
The US filibuster is just about the ideal situation for conservatives. They can use simple Senate majorities to cut taxes (via reconciliation) & approve nutbag judges, but the 60-vote supermajority requirement makes normal legislating effectively impossible.
The real conservative fear about getting rid of the filibuster is not that policy would whiplash back & forth, but that policy would, over time, trend progressive. Thing is, people *like* active/helpful gov't. When new gov't programs are passed, they tend to stick.
Republicans could theoretically come in every few years & wipe out a bunch of popular new policies, but they would suffer for it electorally. You see this in other democracies, where conservative parties have been forced to make peace with, eg, universal health care.
Basically, if progressives are allowed to implement policy, it will be popular & difficult to reverse. The more legislating goes on, the more the US will trend toward other advanced democracies, w/ an actual social safety net, etc. Conservatives know this.
Making normal legislation impossible, especially w/ an obscure & mostly hidden procedural quirk like the filibuster, is ideal for the GOP. It makes Dems look feckless & gov't look dysfunctional. It causes general fuck-the-system angst *that benefits conservatives*.
Anyway, yeah: the filibuster is for people who don't want government to do things and know that in a true one-person-one-vote democracy, government would do a bunch of things. So they need to prevent too much democracy.
Everything else around this debate is noise.
Everything else around this debate is noise.
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