The Filibuster’s Time Is Up
The Filibuster. A once obscure procedural rule of the United States Congress’ upper chamber, this tool has been used in the Senate for a century. Officially passed as “Senate Rule 22” in 1917, the filibuster has been used countless times by both Republican and Democratic senators. The longest filibuster in US history was carried out by Sen. Strom Thurmond when he filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Since the mid-20th century, the filibuster has been dying a slow death. It was amended in 1975 to require three-fifths of all senators to end debate, down from two-thirds. In 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, passed the so-called “nuclear option” in order to confirm several of President Obama’s appointments that had been blocked by the Republican Minority. This rule change which allowed all presidential appointments (not including the Supreme Court) to pass with 51 votes instead of 60 was later expanded to Supreme Court nominees by Mitch McConnell once Republicans had taken control of the Senate and wished to confirm President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch in 2017.
In the last half-century, multiple rules changes have erased the filibuster but for passing legislation. Now, with Democrats in the slimmest majority with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking 51st vote, the filibuster likely faces extermination. Despite the opposition by Democratic senators Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), a strong showing for Democrats in the 2022 midterms will undoubtedly bring about the death of the filibuster once and for all.
The debate around the filibuster slowly re-ignited in 2019 when the Democratic Presidential Primary was heating up and Democrats were hoping to take back the Senate and the White House the following year. At the September debate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren backed removing the filibuster altogether, enabling a majority party to pass legislation with 51 votes. At that time, Sen. Warren stood alone on the issue, surrounded by four other sitting senators.
Now, nearly two years later, the Senate Democrats are seriously flirting with doing away with the filibuster. Outright holdouts from Senators Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Manchin (WV) stand in contrast to every other Democrat in the Senate who all hold some openness to doing away with (or reforming) the filibuster. This means that the filibuster will meet its end very soon, for one of two reasons.
The first is that Republicans have already demonstrated the same desire as Democrats to remove the obstacles that prevent them from getting work done. Barring some miracle in the 2022 midterms, a Republican majority would still be short of the 60-vote threshold. It would likely only take a few Democrat-led filibusters on key Republican legislation for them to have the same conversation that the Democrats are having right now and ultimately kill the filibuster.
The second is that as the 2022 midterms take shape, Democratic candidates from Arkansas to California are unabashedly calling for the end of what some candidates are calling “the Jim Crow Filibuster”. Here’s where things currently stand:
There are currently some 57 Democratic or Democratic-adjacent candidates running for senate across the country. Fourteen are incumbents, the other forty-three are challengers. Some challengers like Michael Soetaert (KS) are running obscure campaigns with unintelligible platforms. Others, like Rep. Val Demings (FL), are running juggernaut campaigns that will likely dominate the news cycle. Regardless, twenty-seven out of the Democratic challengers for Senate (62.8%) support abolishing the filibuster outright. This includes the establishment-type candidates like Rep. Demings and Rep. Tim Ryan (OH). Another three candidates are weighing filibuster reform. Notably, there isn’t a single Democrat who has explicitly stated that they’re against reforming or abolishing the filibuster.
The support for reforming or abolishing the filibuster is consistent across the ideological spectrum, signaling to the current Senate Democrats that this issue will not go away any time soon. In fact, there are four states where the entire (current) Democratic field supports abolishing the filibuster–California, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wisconsin– though, other states like Ohio, Connecticut, and Hawaii technically count since there’s only one Democrat in the race. In Florida, every candidate except for Miami Commissioner Ken Russell is in favor of abolishing the filibuster (Russell is in favor of reform).
It’s still early, so the Democratic fields are expected to grow, leaving room for potential naysayers to enter the fray. But the future of the filibuster is clear. If Democrats can defend vulnerable seats in New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, while also taking just two open seats, the filibuster will meet its end in the 118th Congress–just a decade after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid first opened this Pandora’s Box.
All of the data on the 2022 Senate Democratic candidates can be found on this spreadsheet.