It’s easy to sympathize with the liberal desire to bury the Senate filibuster forever. The 60-vote threshold for Senate legislation is a choke point in a political system defined by gridlock, sclerosis and futility. It provides an excuse for policy abdication, encouraging the legislative branch to cede authority to the presidency and the courts, and the Republican Party to decline to have a policy agenda at all. Its history is checkered, its pervasive use is a novelty of polarization, and its eventual disappearance seems inevitable — so why not adapt now?
At the same time, it’s also easy to see why Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator from a conservative state, might have some doubts about his party’s confident filibuster-busting ambitions.
Listen to Manchin’s fellow Democrats talk about their political position and the constitutional structures impeding them, and you would be forgiven for thinking that they have been winning commanding majorities for years, of the sort enjoyed by Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson, while being thwarted again and again by a much smaller reactionary faction. Continue reading.