The Filibuster Stays

Republicans and Democrats agree. By Luke Pickrell

John Thune, the new Senate majority leader from South Dakota, used a good chunk of his inaugural speech to bend the knee and proffer the standard panegyric on the Constitution. While “not a perfect document,” said Thune, the Constitution “made us a country that people around the world look to as a beacon of freedom, a shining city on a hill.” He continued: “It is the solemn responsibility of those of us here in Congress to preserve our Constitution, to guard it against enemies both foreign and domestic, and to ensure that it continues to stand so that our nation continues to stand as a bulwark of freedom and human rights.” 

Thune praised his new domain, the Senate, and its role as the foremost check against the dangers of the tyrannical majority. "One of my priorities as leader will be to ensure that the Senate stays the Senate," he said. "That means preserving the legislative filibuster, the Senate rule that today has perhaps the greatest impact on preserving the founders' vision of the United States Senate." He continued, "Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who would like to see the Senate turn into a copy of the House of Representatives, and that is not what our founders intended or what our country needs.” The framers created the Senate “with the intention of establishing a more stable, more thoughtful, and more deliberative legislative body to check ill-considered or intemperate legislation and protect the rights of the American people.”

Minority leader Chuck Schumer spoke after Thune and made no rebuttals, confirming for the dozenth time that Democrats are just as wedded to the Senate and the filibuster as Republicans. I won’t repeat Thomas Geoghegan's and many others' work by recounting why the Senate should be abolished. Its existence contradicts the idea that the U.S. has a political system based on universal and equal suffrage, the cornerstone of any democracy. 

However, I will reiterate two other points: The Democratic Party will not lead the charge to change the Senate, the Supreme Court, or any other aspect of the Constitution, and neither the Senate nor the Court should be embraced as a way to stop Trump’s agenda. Trump is a product of our minoritarian political system that consistently vetoes popular policies and frustrates sustainable mass organizing in the name of checks and balances, federalism, and other constitutional myths.

Let’s change the discourse: Rather than checks and balances, the Constitution should be described as riddled with veto points that allow, in Lisa Miller’s words, “powerful economic and racial actors” to influence political outcomes. Constitutional myths and their proponents, such as Thume, obfuscate reality and teach us to appreciate what we should despise.

Still, one wonders how long these myths can survive. How many Americans actually think the Senate is “thoughtful, “deliberative,” and interested in protecting our rights? How many think the Constitution is a “bulwark of freedom and human rights"? As Aziz Rana demonstrates, Constitutional reverence was primarily a product of the Cold War. But as many authors and interviewees for this blog have noted, that period is rapidly ending.