You know what's more radical than abolishing the filibuster?

[kpete]

Watching 19 states pass voter suppression laws and doing absolutely nothing to stop it.

Link to tweet

?s=20

[Magoo48]

1. Yes, yes, and yes.

The future is now.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. No kidding! And, Damn right.

We must pull out all the stops to prevent our vote from becoming a rubber stamp with the results already determined by the wrong people.

[cayugafalls]

3. THIS, so much this...

I really wish they would listen to the people and abolish the filibuster so we can get things done.

[gab13by13]

4. I have a solution

allow Speaker Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to trade places for 2 months.

[mucifer]

5. manchin and sinema don't give a flying ef about it.

[Funtatlaguy]

6. So find out what they DO care about and give it to them

in exchange for a carve out on voting rights.

[leftieNanner]

25. What Manchin has said about a carve-out

is that he fears (rightly) that if we do a carve-out for ANYTHING legislative, then if Mitch is ever back in control, he will get rid of the filibuster entirely. Mitch will claim (as he did about Harry Reid and judicial nominations) that the Dems did it first so he can toss the whole thing. I'm not making an excuse for what Joe Manchin is doing.

The right thing for Manchin and the Dems to do is get rid of the filibuster entirely and pass lots of awesome legislation without it.

I still think we need to fight to get these bills passed so we can show the American people that we can do good things to make their lives better.

[Funtatlaguy]

32. If we don't do the carve out, we may never win again. They will steal them all.

[leftieNanner]

33. I agree nt

[OldBaldy1701E]

7. I will not disagree with that sentiment

However, seeing as how things will shift one day and we will find ourselves in the decided minority, I hope this zealous desire to remove the filibuster does not come back to bite us on the ass. Both sides have used it in the past, after all.

[bucolic_frolic]

9. True, and we have seen little benefit of this over the last 25 years

The parties are engaged in a death struggle. GQP think they can eliminate democracy and Democrats and own it all, Democrats think universal voting will put them in a permanent majority. Voters may have a different idea for both sides.

[OldBaldy1701E]

10. Yup. (n/t)

[Celerity]

15. no, the Rethugs will keep it, as it almost always fucks us and barely effects them

The filibuster hurts only Senate Democrats -- and Mitch McConnell knows that. The numbers don't lie.

My own add - Sinema wants a 60 vote threshold on EVERY legislative action!. Not joking.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/filibuster-hurts-only-senate-democrats-mitch-mcconnell-knows-n1255787

snip

Cutting off debate in the Senate so legislation can be voted on is done through a procedure called "cloture," which requires three-fifths of the Senate — or 60 votes — to pass. I went through the Senate's cloture votes for the last dozen years from the 109th Congress until now, tracking how many of them failed because they didn't hit 60 votes. It's not a perfect method of tracking filibusters, but it's as close as we can get. It's clear that Republicans have been much more willing — and able — to tangle up the Senate's proceedings than Democrats. More important, the filibuster was almost no impediment to Republican goals in the Senate during the Trump administration. Until 2007, the number of cloture votes taken every year was relatively low, as the Senate's use of unanimous consent agreements skipped the need to round up supporters. While a lot of the cloture motions did fail, it was still rare to jump that hurdle at all — and even then, a lot of the motions were still agreed to through unanimous consent. That changed when Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 and McConnell first became minority leader. The number of cloture motions filed doubled compared to the previous year, from 68 to 139.

Things only got more dire as the Obama administration kicked off in 2009, with Democrats in control of the House, the Senate and the White House. Of the 91 cloture votes taken during the first two years of President Barack Obama's first term, 28 — or 30 percent — failed. All but three failed despite having majority support. The next Congress was much worse after the GOP took control of the House: McConnell's minority blocked 43 percent of all cloture votes taken from passing. Things were looking to be on the same course at the start of Obama's second term. By November 2013, 27 percent of cloture votes had failed even though they had majority support. After months of simmering outrage over blocked nominees grew, Senate Democrats triggered the so-called nuclear option, dropping the number of votes needed for cloture to a majority for most presidential nominees, including Cabinet positions and judgeships. The next year, Republicans took over the Senate with Obama still in office. By pure numbers, the use of the filibuster rules skyrocketed under the Democratic minority: 63 of 123 cloture votes failed, or 51 percent. But there's a catch: Nothing that was being voted on was covered by the new filibuster rules. McConnell had almost entirely stopped bringing Obama's judicial nominees to the floor, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

McConnell defended the filibuster on the Senate floor last week, reminding his counterparts of their dependence on it during President Donald Trump's term. "Democrats used it constantly, as they had every right to," he said. "They were happy to insist on a 60-vote threshold for practically every measure or bill I took up." Except, if anything, use of the filibuster plummeted those four years. There are two main reasons: First, and foremost, the amount of in-party squabbling during the Trump years prevented any sort of coordinated legislative push from materializing. Second, there wasn't actually all that much the Republicans wanted that needed to get past the filibuster in its reduced state after the 2013 rule change. McConnell's strategy of withholding federal judgeships from Obama nominees paid off in spades, letting him spend four years stuffing the courts with conservatives. And when Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was filibustered, McConnell didn't hesitate to change the rules again. Trump's more controversial nominees also sailed to confirmation without any Democratic votes. Legislatively, there were only two things Republicans really wanted: tax cuts and repeal of Obamacare. The Trump tax cuts they managed through budget reconciliation, a process that allows budget bills to pass through the Senate with just a majority vote.

Republicans tried to do the same for health care in 2017 to avoid the filibuster, failing only during the final vote, when Sen. John McCain's "no" vote denied them a majority. The repeal wouldn't have gone through even if the filibuster had already been in the grave. As a result, the number of successful filibusters plummeted: Over the last four years, an average of 7 percent of all cloture motions failed. In the last Congress, 298 cloture votes were taken, a record. Only 26 failed. Almost all of the votes that passed were on nominees to the federal bench or the executive branch. In fact, if you stripped out the nominations considered in the first two years of Trump's term, the rate of failure would be closer to 15 percent — but on only 70 total votes. There just wasn't all that much for Democrats to get in the way of with the filibuster, which is why we didn't hear much complaining from Republicans. Today's Democrats aren't in the same boat. Almost all of the big-ticket items President Joe Biden wants to move forward require both houses of Congress to agree. And given McConnell's previous success in smothering Obama's agenda for political gain, his warnings about the lack of "concern and comity" that Democrats are trying to usher in ring hollow. In actuality, his warnings of "wait until you're in the minority again" shouldn't inspire concern from Democrats. So long as it applies only to legislation, the filibuster is a Republicans-only weapon. There's nothing left, it seems, for the GOP to fear from it — aside from its eventual demise.

snip

[MoonlitKnight]

18. Exactly. It only benefits Republicans

And even if it didn’t it flies in the face of majority rule. Democracy means we debate, vote and the majority wins. The filibuster doesn’t even allow for debate in its current form.

[OldBaldy1701E]

30. This is all true.

However, I know you understand that the filibuster has been around long before McConnell. Let's not focus solely on the last 15 or so years to decide on what to do about this is what I am saying.

[Celerity]

31. McTurtle or no McTurtle, the current template for usage of the filibuster isn't going back to a

previous model. The Rethugs will never give up one of their biggest weapons. There is never going to be return to the halcyon days of comity and procedural fairplay that constitute the delusional fever dreams of windmill-tilters like Manchin and Susan Collins.

As for the historical nature of the filibuster, here is a fairly lengthy treatment on it (which was created by mistake in 1805/06)



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_States_Senate

The emergence of cloture (1917–1969)

In 1917, during World War I, a rule allowing cloture of a debate was adopted by the Senate on a 76–3 roll call vote at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, after a group of 12 anti-war senators managed to kill a bill that would have allowed Wilson to arm merchant vessels in the face of unrestricted German submarine warfare.

From 1917 to 1949, the requirement for cloture was two-thirds of senators voting. Despite that formal requirement, however, political scientist David Mayhew has argued that in practice, it was unclear whether a filibuster could be sustained against majority opposition. The first cloture vote occurred in 1919 to end debate on the Treaty of Versailles, leading to the treaty's rejection against the wishes of the cloture rule's first champion, President Wilson. During the 1930s, Senator Huey Long of Louisiana used the filibuster to promote his populist policies. He recited Shakespeare and read out recipes for "pot-likkers" during his filibusters, which occupied 15 hours of debate. In 1946, five Southern Democrats — senators John H. Overton (LA), Richard B. Russell (GA), Millard E. Tydings (MD), Clyde R. Hoey (NC), and Kenneth McKellar (TN) — blocked a vote on a bill (S. 101) proposed by Democrat Dennis Chávez of New Mexico that would have created a permanent Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) to prevent discrimination in the workplace. The filibuster lasted weeks, and Senator Chávez was forced to remove the bill from consideration after a failed cloture vote, even though he had enough votes to pass the bill.

In 1949, the Senate made invoking cloture more difficult by requiring two-thirds of the entire Senate membership to vote in favour of a cloture motion. Moreover, future proposals to change the Senate rules were themselves specifically exempted from being subject to cloture. In 1953, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon set a record by filibustering for 22 hours and 26 minutes while protesting the Tidelands Oil legislation. Then Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina broke this record in 1957 by filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes, although the bill ultimately passed. In 1959, anticipating more civil rights legislation, the Senate under the leadership of Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson restored the cloture threshold to two-thirds of those voting. Although the 1949 rule had eliminated cloture on rules changes themselves, Johnson acted at the very beginning of the new Congress on January 5, 1959, and the resolution was adopted by a 72–22 vote with the support of three top Democrats and three of the four top Republicans. The presiding officer, Vice President Richard Nixon, supported the move and stated his opinion that the Senate "has a constitutional right at the beginning of each new Congress to determine rules it desires to follow". The 1959 change also eliminated the 1949 exemption for rules changes, allowing cloture to once again be invoked on future changes.

One of the most notable filibusters of the 1960s occurred when Southern Democrats attempted to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by filibustering for 75 hours, including a 14-hour and 13 minute address by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. The filibuster failed when the Senate invoked cloture for only the second time since 1927.From 1917 to 1970, the Senate took a cloture vote nearly once a year (on average); during this time, there were a total of 49 cloture votes.

The two-track system, 60-vote rule and rise of the routine filibuster (1970 onward)

After a series of filibusters in the 1960s over civil rights legislation, the Senate put a "two-track system" into place in 1970 under the leadership of Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Majority Whip Robert Byrd. Before this system was introduced, a filibuster would stop the Senate from moving on to any other legislative activity. Tracking allows the majority leader—with unanimous consent or the agreement of the minority leader—to have more than one main motion pending on the floor as unfinished business. Under the two-track system, the Senate can have two or more pieces of legislation or nominations pending on the floor simultaneously by designating specific periods during the day when each one will be considered.

The notable side effect of this change was that by no longer bringing Senate business to a complete halt, filibusters on particular motions became politically easier for the minority to sustain. As a result, the number of filibusters began increasing rapidly, eventually leading to the modern era in which an effective supermajority requirement exists to pass legislation, with no practical requirement that the minority party actually hold the floor or extend debate.

In 1975, the Senate revised its cloture rule so that three-fifths of sworn senators (60 votes out of 100) could limit debate, except for changing Senate rules which still requires a two-thirds majority of those present and voting to invoke cloture. However, by returning to an absolute number of all Senators (60) rather than a proportion of those present and voting, the change also made any filibusters easier to sustain on the floor by a small number of senators from the minority party without requiring the presence of their minority colleagues. This further reduced the majority's leverage to force an issue through extended debate.

The Senate also experimented with a rule that removed the need to speak on the floor in order to filibuster (a "talking filibuster" ), thus allowing for "virtual filibusters". Another tactic, the post-cloture filibuster—which used points of order to delay legislation because they were not counted as part of the limited time allowed for debate—was rendered ineffective by a rule change in 1979.

As the filibuster has evolved from a rare practice that required holding the floor for extended periods into a routine 60-vote supermajority requirement, Senate leaders have increasingly used cloture motions as a regular tool to manage the flow of business, often even in the absence of a threatened filibuster. Thus, the presence or absence of cloture attempts is not necessarily a reliable indicator of the presence or absence of a threatened filibuster. Because filibustering does not depend on the use of any specific rules, whether a filibuster is present is always a matter of judgment.

Abolition for nominations: 2013 and 2017........

snip




now, as to the origin actions that made it all possible, here are the mistakes made back in 1805/1806, although it never mattered until 1837, and again, the modern system only came about post 1917 to 1975



Senate Filibuster Was Created By Mistake (in 1805/1806)

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2013/11/20/senate-filibuster-was-created-by-mistake/

In 2010, Brookings Senior Fellow Sarah Binder, an expert on Congress and congressional history, testified to the Senate that “the filibuster was created by mistake.” We have many received wisdoms about the filibuster. However, most of them are not true. The most persistent myth is that the filibuster was part of the founding fathers’ constitutional vision for the Senate: It is said that the upper chamber was designed to be a slow-moving, deliberative body that cherished minority rights. In this version of history, the filibuster was a critical part of the framers’ Senate.

However, when we dig into the history of Congress, it seems that the filibuster was created by mistake. Let me explain. The House and Senate rulebooks in 1789 were nearly identical. Both rulebooks included what is known as the “previous question” motion. The House kept their motion, and today it empowers a simple majority to cut off debate. The Senate no longer has that rule on its books.

What happened to the Senate’s rule? In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr was presiding over the Senate (freshly indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton), and he offered this advice. He said something like this. You are a great deliberative body. But a truly great Senate would have a cleaner rule book. Yours is a mess. You have lots of rules that do the same thing. And he singles out the previous question motion. Now, today, we know that a simple majority in the House can use the rule to cut off debate. But in 1805, neither chamber used the rule that way. Majorities were still experimenting with it. And so when Aaron Burr said, get rid of the previous question motion, the Senate didn’t think twice. When they met in 1806, they dropped the motion from the Senate rule book.

Why? Not because senators in 1806 sought to protect minority rights and extended debate. They got rid of the rule by mistake: Because Aaron Burr told them to. Once the rule was gone, senators still did not filibuster. Deletion of the rule made possible the filibuster because the Senate no longer had a rule that could have empowered a simple majority to cut off debate. It took several decades until the minority exploited the lax limits on debate, leading to the first real-live filibuster in 1837.

snip

[bucolic_frolic]

8. Former AG Holder has been quiet

Wonder if he's doing anything

[BumRushDaShow]

13. His org has been focused on redistricting

https://democraticredistricting.com/

That org is watching Wisconsin's redistricting -

Link to tweet

TEXT

NDRC
@DemRedistrict
🚨MAP DROP ALERT🚨

Wisconsin’s People’s Maps Commission just released second drafts of its congressional and state legislative maps. 🗺️This will be the LAST public comment period before the PMC presents their final maps to the WI Legislature.
6:04 PM · Oct 20, 2021

Meanwhile Marc Elias and his (new) organization "Democracy Docket" - https://www.democracydocket.com/ is filing (or preparing to file) suits against the Voter Suppression laws as well as gerrymandered maps as they start coming into play. In many cases, this is normally happens in the state courts.

Elias is also focused on TX -

Link to tweet

TEXT

Marc E. Elias
@marceelias
As soon as this is enacted, Texas will be sued.
Stephen Wolf
@PoliticsWolf
95% of Texas' population growth was people of color, but instead of adding any new Latino districts, the GOP's congressional gerrymander weakens 2 existing ones. Almost every GOP district cracks communities of color &/or Dem-trending suburbs.

DRA version: https://davesredistricting.org/join/491033aa-c35c-48e1-a042-17e676abc4be
https: //twitter.com/TexasTribune/status/1450306956783128576
Image
1:28 PM · Oct 20, 2021

Link to tweet

TEXT

Marc E. Elias
@marceelias
🚨NEW: States to watch for new voting rights, redistricting and pro-democracy litigation (in order of likelihood):
1. Texas
2. Virginia
3. Ohio
4. New York
5. Kansas
6. Iowa
7. Georgia
8. Alabama
9. North Carolina
10. Arkansas

We are not done fighting for democracy.
12:00 PM · Oct 17, 2021

One of the issues that they have all run into - like the draconian TX anti-abortion law, is that unless/until the "proposals" are actually "enacted and/or provisions are used", the courts have been throwing out "preemptive" lawsuits.

And unless/until Democrats/liberals BUY MEDIA OUTLETS, they will always be accused of being "quiet" and "not doing anything" because unless you follow them on social media, you certainly won't hear much about what they are doing from the RW-owned M$M.

[Kablooie]

11. I fear we are on the verge of permanent Republican control.

Democrats seem to be totally helpless against all the ways Republicans are rigging the system. They don’t do anything.
What the right has done to the courts they will soon do to the whole government while Democrats fight among themselves over a plan that looks like it will come to nothing.
If Democrats are incapable of fighting to preserve the country we’ve got two parties working to destroy our nation.

We may soon be controlled by the Christian Taliban and have no way to escape.

[Nikki28]

12. Yes yes

I am now losing sleep and my trump humping sister is not making it easier. She is back to happy bullying and ready for her man to come back in office. I am so sick of her.When we have family functions, she is there with this garbage. Most of us are sick of her. We promised to keep politics out of our functions,but not her. I had to leave early and won't be going to anymore. At least one of my brothers get her when he said, Trump is the Antichrist. That got her mad, but she still got worst .So I left. I told the family in private that I will not be going to anymore family functions unless you can shut her down. I think we are going to lose our country to one Trump control. Let that sink in? Trump will finally rule over us and there would be no guard rails because he will finally be Putin.Our country is in a bad place.We need some younger ones to run in 2024 and why can't 41 pass to end Filibuster if 41 can filibuster?

[JudyM]

14. 1000 rec's

I would add crisis-level climate destruction in there, too.

[Celerity]

16. +1

[shotten99]

17. Restore the talking filibuster as it was intended to be.

That would solve the problem. If they had to hold the floor indefinitely, this would sort itself out pretty quickly

[sarchasm]

19. uhhh, yeah

[lagomorph777]

20. At this point, Filibuster-worship is anti-American

[Rabrrrrrr]

21. I was going to suggest it would be tying an anvil to my testicles and dropping it off a bridge,

but that works, too.

[maxsolomon]

22. Senate inaction isn't "Radical". It's the opposite: the Status Quo.

The Senate exist to maintain it.

Sometimes I think Progressive tweets like this aren't helpful.

[calimary]

23. THANK YOU!!!!!

[Joinfortmill]

24. Yup, scary shit going on in the States.

[StClone]

26. It has been noted the filibuster is not good, but it alone is not he problem!

What Republicans do within the rules guiding Government is the problem. Without the filibuster, they found ways to "Muckconnell" things up. With the filibuster, they found other ways to stall and derail Democracy. These so-called "Officials" representing their voters are the problem, they find ways to damage as much as possible within the rules rather than operate with the spirit of the laws. No wonder Trump is their hero as that is his MO.

[ecstatic]

27. It's disgusting to watch. Democrats are losing support from the

media and it's getting harder and harder to defend the lack of action. I'm trying but even I'm too upset these days.

Use your power! This is not endearing to anyone... You look WEAK AF!
Do something NOW!

[marble falls]

28. I've had green friends slip right, but I do not know anyone who's ever pulled a Sinema.

[Rhiannon12866]

29. Twitter replies:

Link to tweet

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