A growing number of Democrats are campaigning on scrapping the filibuster as polling in key races has the party hopeful it can expand its majority enough come November to weaken or eliminate the Senate rule.
The filibuster, a procedure that effectively gives the minority party veto power over legislation unless it can attract 60 votes, has kept Senate Democrats from passing bills on priorities ranging from voting rights to abortion access.
The party holds a razor-thin, 50-50 majority in the upper chamber, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote. But not all Democrats are on board with getting rid of the rule.
The most publicly opposed are centrist Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), although a handful of other Democrats is wary of completely nixing it.
Now, a chorus of voices is declaring that the midterm elections are Democrats’ best hope of circumventing that opposition. If Democrats can win two more seats in the Senate, they say, the party can get rid of the filibuster — or at least nullify it for bills on certain topics.
The vice president made this case while speaking to donors on Thursday at a private fundraiser in North Carolina, where Democrat Cheri Beasley and Republican Ted Budd are locked in a competitive Senate race.
Speaking on behalf of Joe Biden, Harris said the president has “had enough” and “will not let the filibuster get in the way” of passing critical legislation.
“So what that means is we need to hold on to the seats that we’ve got, and we need two more. One of them is right here,” she said.
For Democrats to send legislation to Biden’s desk, of course, they will need to hold on to their House majority in November as well. Election analysts project the party has better-than-even odds of keeping the Senate, a change of fortunes from earlier this year, but Democrats are generally expected to lose the lower chamber.
Liberals are urging their base to donate to Democrats as though power in Washington depends on it. A major rallying cry has been codifying abortion access into federal law after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
“If we elect two more pro-choice, anti-filibuster Democrats to the U.S. Senate, and if we hold onto the House, we can protect abortion rights nationwide as early as January,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tweeted on Aug. 19.
She linked to a donation page for John Fetterman and Mandela Barnes, the party’s Senate nominees in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, respectively.
Progressives have urged voters to elect senators willing to “take on the filibuster” for months. But eliminating the rule entirely would be an uphill battle, congressional scholars told the Washington Examiner.
“I think it might take a small miracle,” said Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies Congress. “And I say that not because I advocate getting rid of the filibuster. I just think it’s a very long shot.”
If Democrats expand their Senate majority next year, more centrist Democrats may still consider scrapping the filibuster altogether politically unpalatable. A more likely scenario is the party will carve out exceptions that allow them to vote on certain types of bills with a simple majority.
This is the strategy Democrats took in January, when they failed to weaken the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. Forty-eight Democrats voted in favor, with Manchin and Sinema joining Republicans to sink the rules change.
Although critics argue filibusters are an obstructionary tactic — Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) compared them to taking the Senate “hostage” last year — Republicans warn that eliminating the procedure would create a vicious cycle of partisanship.
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“Killing the filibuster would create a politically charged pendulum where major chunks of law are rewritten after every election, tribalism would get uglier, and the public would check out from a noxious and cynical system,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) told the Washington Examiner. “If America is going to recover, the filibuster needs to live regardless of which party holds the Senate.”
Shortly after Senate Republicans lost power in 2021, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warned of a “scorched-earth” landscape should Democrats nix the filibuster, with the day-to-day functions of the chamber grinding to a halt.
