Members-Only Article
So, interesting developments over night in the Senate. Both sides are portraying the agreement as a win. But basically McConnell caved. So chalk up a win for Chuck Schumer.
McConnell said that he got the assurances he needed when Joe Manchin and (less volubly) Kyrsten Sinema said they absolutely positively won’t ever support getting rid of the filibuster. But they’d already said that. And unfortunately they made it clear from the outset that they’re not ready to get rid of the legislative filibuster during this Congress.
What McConnell wanted was for the Democrats to agree as part of the organizing resolution to take it off the table entirely for the next two years. The whole thing boils down to symbolism, in any case, since the majority cannot actually bind itself in this way. The majority can only always decide to change the rules on a majority vote. But as I argued yesterday these points of symbolism are very important. For whatever reason McConnell decided to call off the stand off.
That leaves us where we expected to be. The filibuster remains the rule of the Senate and will remain that way unless and until at least Manchin decides otherwise. That means Biden should have a pretty free hand getting his nominees confirmed. The Democrats can and will use the ‘reconciliation’ process to push through COVID relief and other budget relevant items on straight majority votes.
The next thing the Democrats need to focus on is making the filibuster more visible, which is partly a matter of floor votes but also a matter of working the press. Republicans have done a great job of making it impossible for the government to function and then running against its dysfunction. Political junkies know about the filibuster and that most legislation, in practice, requires 60 votes. But in most cases this just amounts to a lot of things never happening. In practice, that last point is all that counts. A lot of Republicans are up for reelection next year. It is critical to find a way to structure a lot of votes, and work press coverage of them, to make Republicans own their opposition to popular legislation. That’s next.
