Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a striking speech on the Senate floor last night, making a powerful case against the institution’s existing filibuster rules. The Connecticut Democrat said the Senate’s 60-vote threshold “stands out like a sore, rotting thumb — this anti-majoritarian drain clog, designed intentionally to stop the majority of Americans from getting what they want from government.” Murphy also called the status quo “downright dangerous.”
The sentiment is becoming increasingly common among Senate Democrats, a growing number of whom are ready to reform the institution’s rules. They are, however, far from unanimous on the subject.
Take Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), for example.
“I’m giving it thought … I managed to pass the first assault-weapons bill. So it hasn’t been an impediment, that I have seen. Now somebody, for their bill, may find different … I know jeopardy from no jeopardy.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the filibuster and democracy not being in jeopardy, via Forbes reporter Andrew Solender.
The comments come roughly two weeks after the California Democrat said she “would want to protect” democracy if it were in jeopardy, but she doesn’t see it being in jeopardy right now.”
We explored in some detail soon after why such complacency, in the face of a Republican voter-suppression onslaught, is so difficult to understand. If the current circumstances do not reflect a democracy in jeopardy, what would? How much further would GOP officials have to go to spark a greater level of concern from Feinstein?
But these new comments from the senator seem just a little worse.
To hear Feinstein tell it, the Senate passed an assault-weapons bill 27 years ago, which as far as the Californian is concerned, is evidence that the filibuster “hasn’t been an impediment.”
But while it’s true that the legislation was approved by majority rule in 1994, Feinstein appears to be missing the point of the reform debate: the Senate is a dramatically different institution than it was nearly three decades ago.
The evidence is more quantitative than subjective. In the two years spanning the 103rd Congress, when Democrats approved Feinstein’s assault-weapons ban, there were 46 votes in the Senate on cloture (votes to end a filibuster). By historical standards, that was a large number at the time. But in the current Congress, the Senate is on track to have well over 200. In the last Congress, the total was nearly 300. As Feinstein really ought to know, the use of filibusters used to be a rare tactical move that delayed votes. In time, they evolved into a tactic that occasionally derailed certain bills in extraordinary cases. But in contemporary politics, practically every bill is dead unless it enjoys super-majority support. Not to put too fine a point on this, but Feinstein’s assault-weapons bill passed with 52 votes. If she championed a revised version of the legislation this year, it couldn’t pass with 52 votes — because filibusters that were less common in 1994 have become routine in 2021. Or to use the senator’s phrasing, the filibuster would be “an impediment” to approving the policy.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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