There are 30 senate democrats on record in support of filibuster reform. However that includes people like Lieberman who said he supported a Medicare buy-in, and we all know how that worked out. Even among mainstream Dems, Feinstein has spoken out against reform and Boxer is non-committal. With 52-53 projected in the Democratic caucus next year, and all Republicans expected to oppose, it’s hard to see how it could happen.

It’s a long-term project, or at least needs to be. The country is crumbling as a near-direct result of broken government.

Long-term as in the next time Republicans are in the majority?

To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault lies not in the filibuster but in the Democrats. Obama and the Democrats have not pushed a progressive agenda. Remember even in areas where Obama could act outside of Congress he has pursued a Blue Dog agenda. So how would changes in the filibuster affect any of this? Remember too that Mitch McConnell announced at the end of 2008 that he would block anything and everything he could, and the Democrats still went ahead and passed an organizing resolution in the Senate that let him.

Let’s be clear too. Reforming the filibuster is kabuki. What does it even mean? The Democrats never made Republicans filibuster. Republicans only had to threaten to filibuster and Democrats caved. But again what is the concrete proposal to change the filibuster? I want to know what it is. If the Democrats want to run on it, can’t they at least tell us what it is? That they haven’t, that the talk is all confined to “reforming” the filibuster, without saying what this means, well, that’s kabuki, folks. We should recognize it. We have seen it for years.

Oh, the broken government ruse rears its head at DemRoots Nation.

Funny. The filibuster reformist are the same ones who have been so silent when it comes to election fraud investigations.

Doesn’t Kos have a “speak-no-ill about-2000/2004-election-results” prohibition on his site? Kossacks have never heard of Diebold but they are gung-ho on filibuster reform?

Here’s an idea: Make them, ya’ know…filibuster.

Great. Change the filibuster rule just in time to vote on the “cat food commission” recommendations to cut Social Security to prevent the vote from being blocked by Progressives. Be careful what you wish for!

Go talk to KagroX at dKos. He’s been covering this stuff for years.

Or start, you know, actually reading dKos, like a lot of the rest of us do already.

The presence of the filibuster is not the problem. The problem is that Barack Obama didn’t have the political courage and smarts to dare the republicans to use it against real reform bills when he took office. If he had done that at that time, there would have been a firestorm of public anger breaking on their heads; they would have folded within two weeks, and he would have looked like Captain American going after the bad guys.

Now, he looks like Mortimer Snerd, wanking off under his desk while he hides from the big, bad, republicans.

Hugh nails it: Netroots Nation talking about this is just more Kabuki. We ought not to be so eager to get rid of it; at the rate Obama and the dems are going we’re going to need it no later that 2012, and maybe sooner.

I’d rather see a per year limit on the number of filibusters – as a percentage of proposed changes… 10 to 25 percent max. Otherwise, the Republicans/Corporatists/Democrats will walk all over our Constitution.

Let’s not be short-sighted. Democrats aren’t exactly the good-guys. Clinton and Obama have instituted policies to the right of Ronald Reagan.

the Republicans would push their agenda through if they get the majority

Imagine that…a political party that governs according to the particular vision they campaigned on, and reaps the benefit-credibility. Never mind whether that vision is crazed reactionary, people know that Republicans will do what they say they will do, at least enough to say so with a straight face. Democrats? Funny. We said we would, but it’s too hard, and we don’t really want to do it anyway, and besides, FOX and the rest will say mean things about us if we try! So….sorry, we can’t do it until we get rid of the filibuster. Of course, by then the Republicans will be back in charge anyway, after the pathetic spectacle of the Democrats trying to avoid effectively governing.

Short of it:

All of the nonsense about doing away with the filibuster is just the “centrist” progressives looking for an excuse to cover Obama and the dems feckless asses.

I.E.: This happened yesterday, because the republicans used the filibuster to force Obama to send another 30,000 troops into Afghanistan:

http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/07/24/5-us-troops-die-in-blasts-in-southern-afghanistan-3/

Amid the frustration of a sidelined policy agenda despite large majorities in both houses of Congress, attendees and policymakers at Netroots Nation turned to procedural reform as a way to break the deadlock and bring some accountability back to the legislative branch.

I was against “the nuclear option” when we were in the minority and am still, we WILL be in the minority in the future and we WILL rue the day

Biden is the one who needs to be pressed on this as it wouldn’t even come to the vote without Biden’s ruling. This is what Biden has said peviously about the filibuster and how he thinks requiring 51 votes is bad:
“At its core, the filibuster is not about stopping a nominee or a bill, it’s about compromise and moderation. The nuclear option extinguishes the power of independents and moderates in the Senate. That’s it, they’re done. Moderates are important if you need to get to 60 votes to satisfy cloture; they are much less so if you only need 50 votes. Let’s set the historical record straight. Never has the Senate provided for a certainty that 51 votes could put someone on the bench or pass legislation.”
Biden is (or at least has) been very committed to being sure that the Senate isn’t majoritarian. As long as Biden opposed a democratic Senate, it wouldn’t matter if there were 55 Senators who would agree to change the rules because Biden is the gatekeeper.

Doesn’t Kos have a “speak-no-ill about-2000/2004-election-results” prohibition on his site?

Not that I’ve ever noticed. Granted I don’t hang out there as much as I used to but it’s still a good place to go for election information.

Of course, note that the support for filibuster reform is gaining steam now that the Democrats are pretty much on track to lose their majorities in the midterm elections.

Of course, it’s not like they’ve done much with them, so I still support this bill. It needs to be done, even if it means it will grant even more power to the Republicans in the short term.

They can’t change the Senate rules until next term at the earliest. Those rules are voted on at the beginning of term and not revisited until the next term.

I agree. The bad could far outweigh the good. Imagine a Prez Palin w/rethuglican majorities.

Hugh is right, Obama and the dems have pissed it down rat hole.

“Obama and the dems have pissed it down the the rathole.”

And done so with arrogant disdain and malice aforethought, all the while telling us, most unctuously, that it was for our own good …

DW

Abolish the filibuster. Outstanding idea! Then when the Dems are back in the minority, they can try to reinstate it. Good luck with that.

Abolish the filibuster . . . every time I think the Dems can’t get any dumber, they do.

It must be fun to stop by FDL and leave a turd so often?

Does it pay well?

Um, I don’t know if anyone noticed, but there are exactly zero members of the House and Senate who really advocate for our prerogatives, and who are willing to take a stand for them. We learned this in spades, or should have, with the HCR fiasco.

Since we have no representation in D.C. at all, the only way filibuster “reform” will accomplish anything, is if it requires zero votes for cloture.

I love this asinine way of thinking. You’re scared of majority rule, and prefer minority rule. Because that’s the effective outcome. Allowing a minority in the Senate to de facto dictate policy to the majority.

The way I see it, now that the subject has been broached, the next time the Republicans take control of the Senate, they’ll railroad through filibuster reform and they, unlike the Dems, won’t care what anybody else thinks about it.

Ah, the desperation: first Lynn Woolsley reintroduces the public option, now this. They must think we are idiots. The dems are like the girl/boyfriend who knows they are about to get dumped and tries to clean up their act after 3 years in one week. But money talks, bullshit walks. I’m not biting, I don’t trust any of them as far as I could throw them. Public option, EFCA must pass before I ever vote for another democraven. We have the power to teach them a lesson in November, let’s not get suckered again.

To those who want to abolish the filibuster: name One Single Time something has been filibustered in the last year. Not threatened to be filibustered, but where opponents of legislation had to actually stand at the podium for hours defending their position or reading the phone book. Screw the ‘we don’t have 30 hours of floor time to actually force votes’ crap, it’s not like anything else is getting done instead.

More than filibuster reform, we need a Dem leadership team with one nad between them.

No they won’t, because they know they’ll be in the minority again someday and will want to use it. They broached it first, if you’ll recall. It doesn’t matter who’s in power, they just make threats and Dems cave.

I disagree. If the Republicans thought of or cared about the future, why are they doing everything in their power to alienate everybody not white and male? Because females are already in the majority and only the blindest fool thinks that caucasian people will still be in the majority ten, twenty years from now.

At its core, the filibuster is not about stopping a nominee or a bill, it’s about compromise and moderation

Biden is and has always been a bloviating ass. What the filibuster is really about nowadays is ducking responsibility. If there were no filibuster, then the majority party (especially if that party also controls the White House) owns its legislation. More than this it owns whatever crises come up. And yes, God forbid, parties would actually have to live up to their campaign promises. They wouldn’t be able to say, “We would have liked to act, but couldn’t,” because quite simply they could. The upshot of this is that our political system would become more parlementarian. In a parlementary democracy, the majority party really does control the agenda. Now if Biden is saying that our system is so full of assholes, bigots, and flakes that such a system would not work, he should just say so, and then immediately resign, seeing as he was one of these for so many years.

You miss my point. Why would they kill a rule that only benefits them?

That’s very true. The best way to beat the filibuster is to beat it at the polls. We need more, not less, progressive democrats in congress. There were times in the past when the dems had large majorities and could pass the legislation they pleased. That is not the case today and has not been for the past year and a half, and no matter how much hand wringing and Obama bashing we do, we still do not have the votes. And it looks like the dems will not have the votes anytime soon. So be careful what you wish for because we could very soon be in the minority.

Because it won’t benefit them when they are in the majority and Senate rules can only be changed at the beginning of a term, not during one. Therefore, if they get control of the Senate, it would behoove them to change it then, especially in light of the fact that they usually don’t consider the future.

Which 30 Senate Democrats are on record as favoring filibuster reform? Is their support contingent on Democrats being the Senate majority?

Didn’t something like 99.44% of Congress favor term limits?

Which specific filibuster reform do they favor?

Gee, I didn’t realize you are such a fan of the Democrats.

If he who can destroy a thing controls a thing, then the Rethugs and their willing accomplices control Congress. Without 65 real progressives, we are toast…

How much support does filibuster reform have among Democrats who’ve served in the Senate minority with a Republican President? Folks like Landrieu, Bill Nelson, Kerry, Feinstein, Boxer, Levin, Stabenow, Murray, Cantwell, Feingold, Kohl, Wyden, etc. meet those requirements.

It’s very dangerous to outright abolish the filibuster. The only point of a filibuster is liberty – the absolute right to be heard. Maybe not agreed with, maybe not even listened to, but heard, and on the record. The filibuster is liberty’s proof of concept.

Sure, recently the filibuster has been irrationally applied and abused. But no reform can eliminate schmucks. They’ll always piss off and piss on someone or other.

I might be very mistaken, but I think the filibuster made it possible for the so-called Pentagon Papers to be made public by being read aloud- in their entirety – into the record.

The filibuster today is not the filibuster of yesterday. Yesterday’s filibuster required that you start talking and continue night and day. Today’s filibuster requires just the word, “No.” When a repuke says, “No” the dems go running. All they need to do is enforce the filibuster. It is all the repukes can do just to show up. Having to be there 24 hours a day will cause them to run out of steam real fast.

OBAMA AND THE REST OF THE CLOWNS NEED TO PULL THEIR THUMBS OUT AND FORCE THE FILIBUSTER.

attendees and policymakers at Netroots Nation turned to procedural reform as a way to break the deadlock and bring some accountability back to the legislative branch

The only problem I see here is that you’re assuming our so-called leaders actually WANT to pass laws their financial backers don’t like. From my perspective, the government is completely broken and can’t be fixed. Nobody in it wants it to work, anyway.

I would so much rather see all this incredible energy and passion directed toward creating new ways of living outside of the current culture and belief systems. Our growth-driven economy is unsustainable, no matter who runs the government.

Your rights end at the end of your nose. I don’t believe that it is useful to think of the filibuster in terms of individual rights. Discourse requires more than the ability to say whatever one wants to say, it requires a structure in which one can be heard, which is a different thing entirely. Those of you who have been to college, especially in political science in the 80s, probably had that one conservative in the class who wouldn’t shut up and kept highjacking every discussion, which meant the rest of us couldn’t discuss the topic at hand. We were trying to discuss the fine points of, say, Marxist theory and the conservative wanted to talk about Afghanistan. I have no problem telling an individual “enough”.

Agree.

“our so-called leaders”: That’s a profound problem, how we use language, how language is used to control. We aren’t in chains and blindfolded. At most, these people who have political power are trustees. When they lose our trust, the government is broken, as you say.

In the 80s I was on the other side of the lectern, and I invited that kind of student to step outside where I showed her or him the clause in the syllabus about ‘disruptive conduct’ and my absolute authority to interpret it and act upon it as I saw fit, after which she or he could continue the fair and just due process as she or he saw fit.

We’re not talking here about the abstraction of ‘discourse’, but instead we’re discussing the real fact of the US Senate and its rules of assembly.

Because it won’t benefit them when they are in the majority and Senate rules can only be changed at the beginning of a term, not during one.

Margaret, since it apparently interferes with their agenda, I guess we can’t expect David Dayen or Jon Walker to point this out to you (although I’m not sure they understand it themselves, as specifics in this partisan, Party-generated campaign are scarce), but that is simply not true.

The amount of misinformation about this topic is appalling (last I knew, KagroX was not helping set the public record straight about it, either), and Senators themselves are some of the worst offenders in spreading it, or letting it be spread, unchallenged.

I’ll repeat, for all the good it will do: Senate rules may be changed any day of the year that the Senate decides to try to change them, by simple-majority vote, unless and until an actual filibuster manifests itself (in which case, either the filibuster must be waited out, delaying the vote, or a cloture motion may be filed by the majority, which would need 67 votes to pass to bring the filibuster to an early close). Any successful rule change would then remain in effect indefinitely, until the Senate again decides to change the rule (rather than suddenly vaporizing at the end of the two-year term of the Congress that passed the rule change).

The “beginning of a term” mythology is related to a desire to violate the existing rules before changing them (which is what both the “nuclear” option – which doesn’t bother waiting for a new Congress – and the “constitutional” option – which pretends that the next new Congress begins with no Senate rules, for the first time in over 200 years – are all about). In the process of throwing existing rules out the window, the precedents clarifying their use in practice would follow, including those intended to preclude this very approach [from Page 935 (PDF Page 2 of 4) of the “Motions” PDF of Riddick’s Senate Procedure]:

“A motion directing the Chair [the Vice President] to put to the Senate without further debate the consideration of a resolution to change the rules under his constitutional right to get a vote on changing the rules at the opening of a new Congress is not in order.”

[Followed by:]

“When such a motion is made, it is in order to make a point of order against such a motion, and a point of order having been made, the Chair has the authority to submit the question to the Senate, ‘Shall the point of order made by said Senator be sustained?’”

Translation: In addition to pretending that all the existing Senate rules – many of which are essentially unchanged since the Senate was formed, without having been “readopted” or changed automatically at the beginning of each Congress – somehow suddenly dissolved at the close of the last Congress, those advocating using either the nuclear or the constitutional option, simply to avoid the already-optional use of Rule 22’s supermajority cloture process (or the need to wait out any real filibusters) are, as one plan of attack, intending to ignore the clear Senate precedent in the first cited sentence, by asking a simple Senate majority to refuse to sustain a point of order made against that majority’s own indisputably “out of order” motion.

Those pushing these options should at least be honest about what they’re proposing. [Although it's encouraging to see that most commenters here are apparently beginning to recognize this Democratic Party-peddled fraud of a reform for what it is, even as most of us recognize that the Senate is not functioning as its existing rules intend it to function.]

Bottom Line: There would be no 60-vote thresholds in the Senate today if the Democrats simply ceased filing their repeated cloture motions, and let “threats” to filibuster materialize into reality, in public. But then, debate and public accountability might actually return to the idling, empty Senate Chamber (both those vital ingredients for a democratic, self-governing legislative body are already long gone from the House, thanks to just such “efficient,” concentrating-power-at-the-top rule changes), and the Parties can’t have that.

Sure, recently the filibuster has been irrationally applied and abused.

The filibuster doesn’t work so we should keep it. What kind of an argument is that?

Good job, and thanks for taking the time to present that.

(Disclaimer: I was active in formal parliamentary bodies for some 50 years.)

In other words, you’re saying that my entire fallacy is wrong – is that it?

Hey, unlike you, I wouldn’t take your words out of their full context even if you were the last person on Earth.

A few years back when I too was an instructor (interestingly, teaching US Gov among other things) I would simply point to the door and say “out” when someone was disruptive. But things have changed to where the disputes aren’t political anymore but rather that they only want to know what is on the test and go home. Different generation, and to think that Xers like myself were called “slackers”.

Some of you are real idiots. Job #1 of a Republican majority will be to abolish the filibuster. Unlike Dems, they aren’t idiots. This is not the 2005 Republican Party – THEY WILL DO IT.

How dumb do you have to be to believe that they would allow Dems to obstruct the Palin Administration in that way?

Too many people fly, too many eat at restaurants, and too many go to college.

We’re the one’s who want democracy, we aren’t afraid of it. Let’s bring the Palin administration out in the open. Besides, Bush was able to accomplish far more in his first term with a far smaller majority in both houses (including his psychopathic war in Iraq), what good did the filibuster do the democravens then? The problem for the democravens isn’t the filibuster, the problem is lack of spine, but perhaps taking the filibuster away will give them one less skirt to hide behind.

Because it won’t benefit them when they are in the majority

But it doesn’t hurt them, either, because there are enough DINOs that will vote for cloture against their caucus. In recent practice, nobody filibusters, but Rs get their way just by claiming they will.

Thank you. We certainly need more of your kind, and of your informed input, around these parts. Very few Americans these days (never mind members of the media, or legislators themselves) seem to know the value, or appreciate the importance of fair and democratic “parliamentary procedure” in our federal legislature. It’s all might-makes-right, Party-run power plays – the careful, orderly, deliberative process of actual good faith debating and legislating, be damned.

Any candidate for “legislative” office who demonstrates open contempt for the actual art and science of public legislating – by urging less, not more, debate in the already debate-impoverished Senate – instantly loses my vote and respect.

The House is already basically lost. Meaning that there’s no genuine debate left in the House Chamber now – nothing is brought to the floor without a pre-ordained outcome, and only the Speaker gets to decide which, if any, amendments will be offered on the floor (through her always-obedient, lockstep-voting Rules Committee). I guess the Party loyalists don’t know, or care, that their Representatives (even if one of the 435 in the body with membership in the majority Party) generally get no opportunity to offer amendments to improve legislation on the floor in the modern House. By no definition that I know is that a good thing or a recipe for successful policy-making for the nation. Five minutes at most (but usually just one) is instead allotted to a minority of members, for an hour or two (whatever the Speaker decrees), on every major bill that reaches the floor. Just enough time to spew a talking point or two toward the “other side of the aisle” before the gavel comes down on the Speaker-ordained outcome. End of “debate.” And that’s the model some want the Senate to follow, I guess because self-government seems “slow” to them.

In the Senate, the Parties have entrenched the idea of the (endless) Quorum Call that isn’t really a quorum call – so that they can all painlessly disappear into the back rooms to make their deals in private, for hours on end. Again, to little notice or care from the population at large, or from the media (which is too busy hanging on the President’s every word, as a rule, anyway).

Meanwhile, the media has managed to transform the Chief Executive (who’s expected to enforce the law of the land, without fear or favor) into the Chief Legislator (who can’t be bothered with faithfully executing laws when he’s busily writing them instead), and the Parties and their fans run cheering and jeering behind him, eager to turn our Senate into just another partisan football in their petty, destructive game of politics.

P.S. To Hugh @ 43: The fake filibuster and the fake quorum call don’t work for the betterment of the nation or the Senate itself, so we should keep the real, debate-driven, filibuster and the real quorum call.

Since you haven’t specified the “real idiots” to whom your namecalling is addressed, I’ll consider myself one of the targets of your abuse, and respond.

The Democrats, under Majority Leader Reid, have already “abolished the filibuster,” in all but name, and instituted supermajority rule in the Senate in its place, by voluntarily equating (private) threats to filibuster with actual (public floor debate) filibusters.

What you actually mean, it appears, is that you’re sure that the Republican Party will keep the (optionally-deployed) cloture rule (part of Rule 22), but reduce the threshold for passage of a cloture motion to 51 (from 60, or 67 for a rule change), as some Democrats now propose doing (see Comment 42) by forcing a rule change through in violation of the rules. What’s wrong with this picture, if true? Answer: Both Parties would be demonstrating their lust for power, at any price, and their utter contempt for our democratic legislative institutions and their intended purpose. [Alternatively, without making a single rule change, or violating any rules, a Republican Party returned to the majority could simply force a return to real filibusters, and the nation will be able to watch the minority Democratic "opposition" crumble into pieces before their eyes.]

Neither Party can or should have to answer for how the other Party will act in future, but they can and should answer for their own behavior while a majority Party. As a solid majority, the current Democratic Senate has little to fear from democratically sharing some of their power with the “other side” – while the Senate and nation have much to gain from the weakening of the destructive, artificial Party-imposed divide in our Congress. Contributing to that overdue weakening of the Party grip on power, which is maintained at the expense of the individual will and independent thinking of our legislators, should, I think, be the primary objective this fall of what little leverage we voters have left at the polls.

Sorry, Kossacks only think elections aren’t rigged unless, its one of their people who won.

Where did I get my info? Here, here, here and here.

I don’t mind living with the Catch-22 fact that sausage-making can never be kosher. But we know there are idiot-prophets who want it to be otherwise, we know there are snake-oil candidates who prey on those idiot-prophets and feed them their forlorn fairy dreams. How did it ever come to this?

Were she still alive and thriving, I think Margaret Mead would divide our last 50 years into the pre-blowjob and post-blowjob periods. I would divide them into pre-C-SPAN and C-SPAN periods.

I don’t think Newt Gingrich would have become very well-known and then powerful were it not for the House’s Special Orders privileges, and the way Gingrich milked C-SPAN’s TV late-night coverage (in one time zone) for all it was worth – which turned out to be plenty: he used that House ‘filibuster’ to bring down Speaker Carl Albert and raise himself up into the national spotlight. The 1996 mid-term victories for the Republicans I believe happened largely through Gingrich’s ability to manipulate the House’s privileges and C-SPAN’s cameras to his advantage. Yeah, it was fun to watch that bomber-Bob guy from California; but the old-style legislative process had its fate sealed in those few years. The House and Senate had to take into account the new and very real effect of C-SPAN, especially as access to cable TV was growing rapidly and widely.

It could be worse, of course; the raving lunatics don’t have governing power yet. It’s impossible to tell whether we keep dodging bullets or are actually bleeding to death from unending ambushes.

If the fucking technology would just stay-the-fuck-put for at least five minutes so everyone could catch their breath and try to get their bearings, maybe a few serious issues can be resolved.

Gingrich didn’t get elected to Congress until after Albert retired. You are referring to Jim Wright. Bomber-Bob would be Bob Dornan. The mid-terms were in the middle of Clinton’s 1st term: 1994.

I used to be more orderly and have better recall of historical facts. I’m a little bit ashamed, but I’m more grateful for your attention and your generous (and kind) edits. Thank you.

Gingrich was my Congressman. We thought he was a joke, Then we discovered the power of his message of hate and resentment.