Why The Filibuster Rule Must Go, And Why The Trump Impeachment Must Go On

Well, that didn't take terribly long.

No sooner was Joe Biden sworn in as our 46th President, and gave an Inaugural Address in which he committee himself and his Administration to national unity while asking for a reciprocal committee from the rest of us, than obstruction struck.  In the form of now-Senator Minority Leader Mitch McCONnell, who needlessly delayed the reorganization of the Senate under Democratic leadership with a transparently insincere request for a commitment to preserve the filibuster rule, which effectively blocks a majority Senate vote on most legislation.  And also in the form of McCONnell and the majority of his caucus, for shying away from their earlier willingness via the impeachment process to call Donald Trump to account for his seditious organization and promotion of the insurrection against the Capitol on January 6.

As House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's obsequious kneeling to Trump at Mar-a-Lago this past week illustrates, the only thing that is clear is that, almost without exception, the Republicans and their conservative allies are unified--by the personality cult of Trump.  And the Democrats, with the admirable assistance of a slice of Republicans, are unified around progress and democracy.

There's really no other way to look at America right now than with this overarching truth:  the second Civil War in our history is very much on.  In hindsight, January 6 looks very much like its Fort Sumter.

And it will be anything but a Cold War.  The temporary fence that went up around the Capitol now looks like it's going to be a permanent one.  Even at that, it's not going to keep everyone who works safe.  Not with the likes of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene blithely carrying firearms around metal detectors that have been set up around the House chamber.  Not with young congressional staffers so fearful for their lives that hundreds of them have signed a letter begging Senate Republicans to do the right thing at Trump's impeachment trial.  As if the school shootings with which they have grown up isn't enough trauma to inflict those who represent whatever future this country has.

And not with Nancy Pelosi herself, a proud institutionalist and a pioneer in expanding opportunity within our institutions, agreeing with them 100%.  Indeed, the enemy is not just within the House of Representatives.  It's also in the Senate, where the likes of Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have effectively whipped their caucus to back Trump at the trial, come hell, high water, or even enough evidence to choke a horse, in the form of video that recorded the menace that threatened all of their lives--even Cruz and Hawley, who actually whipped the mob itself.  Just ask Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In this context, there is a curious quaintness in talking about the filibuster rule, and perhaps even the impeachment process.  Although only one of the two is actually part of the Constitution, both of them are built on the fundamental assumption that has, for most of our history, made our constitutional order work:  government by consent of the governed.  Yet, if Trump's following is any indication, 46% percent of the American people, and as many as 74 million voters, are now more than prepared to withhold that consent.

And, as McCarthy's willingness to toady to Trump, which has already helped to cost him some of his popularity in his own caucus, and earned him some well-justified mocking from Brian Williams (no stranger to justified mockery himself), that 46%, those 74 million, are by and large hanging together, in the hope (with apologies to Benjamin Franklin) that they can ultimately hang each of us separately.  There's a very simple reason for this.  The modern Republican Party isn't about limited government, personal responsibility, original intent, the value of religious freedom, or whatever bumper-sticker-of-the week they want to scream about.  The modern Republican Party is about power, and about coalescing to a point at which they cannot be opposed. 

I realize I've made that same statement, or some version of it, many times.  But I can't stress it enough.  No one can stress it enough.  And, in the wake of Republican obstinacy about the filibuster rule and the impeachment trial, coming after an event that endangered them every bit as much as it endangered Democrats--remember the "Hang Mike Pence!" chant?--anyone who ignores it for any reason does so at mortal peril to themselves, to their fellow Americans, and to constitutional government itself.  They are not simply willing to die.  They are willing to take the rest of us with them, whether we want to go or not.

Obviously, only Republicans can control how they vote at Trump's trial.  Only they can decide whether America or Trump is worth their lives, their fortunes, and their honor (sacred or otherwise).  But the trial will go forward, and, if it does nothing else, it puts on the historical record forever the stain of January 6, and the responsibility of Trump for making it happen.  Hopefully, there will be 67 votes to convict, and a subsequent majority vote to bar him forever from public office.  If not, the criminal justice system will need to do its work to jail Trump, and as many of his cronies as possible.  Thankfully, in part because of Trump's love of being on TV, he's given the criminal justice system a lot of ammunition to use against him.

But there remains the filibuster rule, which McCONnell intents to use to stop a lot of popular, essential legislation dead in its tracks.  And McCONnell is never so insincere as when he talks, as he had the nerve to do recently, about the need of the filibuster to promote comity and debate in what used to be known as the World's Greatest Deliberative Body.

My question, in response to McCONnell on this point, is straightforward and simple:  what debate, and what comity?  Under his leadership, the filibuster rule has never been used to promote a discussion of legislative alternatives, and certainly not a vote on any such alternatives.  It has been used solely and exclusively to block anything the Democrats, and especially Barack Obama, might have otherwise wanted to do.  Not to discuss alternatives.  Indeed, not to do anything that might address the various crises that we're confronted in the 14 years that McCONnell has lead Senate Republicans.  Just to obstruct.  Or, as McCONnell himself enjoys describing his role, to be the "Grim Reaper."  And, I'll have to concede, he's done that pretty well.  Maybe that's why no one should be surprise by the fact that chaos and death are the result.

And when McCONnell had a chance to defend his view of the filibuster rule by reversing the change that then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made in the rule for federal district and circuit court nominations, to thwart McCONnell's filibuster of them, he didn't reverse it.  He expanded it to include not only Supreme Court nominations, but all appointments to the executive branch requiring Senate confirmation, including Cabinet departments.

In other words, and to perhaps repeat myself, he has consistently used the rule not as a vehicle for building consensus, but to maintain and expand power.  And this he has done, at the expense of the needs of the American people.  To expand on the eloquent summation recently made by a former Republican National Committee chairman (full disclosure:  we're both from Maryland and former state employees), we've all been "punked."  And that's putting it mildly.

And, as it turns out, it's not even helping him to do that.  The new Congress is less than a month old, and already Republican senators, even ones in states where their re-election seems almost a foregone conclusion, are heading for the exit or eyeing it with real longing.  Even the subtle pleasure of spending all of their time saying "no" to Democrats and the American people just isn't enough to keep them in the clutches of their cushy jobs.

And, on the other side of the aisle, what about the Democrats themselves?

At the very least, if McCONnell is genuinely interested in effectively putting the filibuster rule on the table by asking for a guarantee of it in writing, well, why not take him up on it, as Norman Orenstein has suggested here?  Why not ask him for something in return for his unprecedented request, even now that he has allowed the Democrats to organize as a Senate majority?  Why not use this as an opportunity to smoke his hypocrisy out into the open, by putting him and his party on the record as opposing goals that the American people overwhelmingly support?

And, if the Senator from "no" is still the Senator from "no" after that, you have a perfect predicate (as if one didn't exist already) for modifying or even eliminating the rule.  And, if the only people really preventing you from doing that are Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, your two most conservative caucus members, don't just jawbone them.  Poll the voters in West Virginia and Arizona, and see how they feel about having goals they might like thwarted by a rule that requires a supermajority instead of a a simple one.  After all, their new-found roles in the Senate majority just might depend on the outcome.

In fact, that might be true of all 50 members of the Democratic Caucus, to say nothing of President Biden and Vice President Harris.  It may very well be the case that, if the government doesn't really care much about governing, maybe Democratic voters will stay home for the midterms, allowing Republican voters to elect the "entertainment"--and the nightmare--that the Trumped Republican Party now represents, even to itself.

Democrats have good ideas.  Hell, Democrats have better ideas that Republicans have.  Even in a post-filibuster world, where a simple Republican majority in the Senate would have the power to make bad things happen easily, would they do so?  Maybe it's time for the Democrats to bet big on the power of their ideas, rather then spend all of their time watching them disappear into a political graveyard.  A graveyard that might even one day claim the Democrats themselves, if they don't get their act together.

And get it together they must.

Democrats won the election, across the board nationally.  As a wiser man than me recently said, they should start acting like it.  Eliminate the filibuster rule, so that Joe Biden and all of us can build back better.

Fight The Cowards

Happy New Year!

Are you wondering whether we should say that?  Or even can say that?  I don't blame you.  Not after January 6.  Not after decades of speculation about a potential civil war in the United States gave way to a reality I had hoped and prayed we would not have to experience.

But given way it has.  And now we know what we're facing.  Not the "economically dispossessed."  Not victims of a new world order.  Not regular folks who have been "disrespected" by a cultural elite.

We're facing bullies.  Even worse, we're facing bullies whose intolerance is empowered not just by racism, but by religion.

I don't speak in a vacuum about either phenomenon.  Let me take a few lines to explain.  Fair warning:  it will probably be more than a few.  You may want to take a few minutes to go and get a drink, some popcorn or other snacks.  It's fine with me.

Settled in?  OK.  Here goes.

I grew up in Baltimore County, Maryland in the 1960s.  I went to public schools that were dominated by white, middle-class students and faculty whose views on race and religion were decidedly white and Christian.  In the America of that time, this was considered to be completely normal.  Even patriotic.  If you weren't white, if you weren't middle-class or more, if you weren't Christian, well, you weren't part of the majority of the nation.  You weren't American.  Period.

I was brought up to object, to speak out against this, as much as I possibly could.  And I did.  And I paid a price, one that was painful but do not regret for an instant.  I was bullied.  I was beaten up once by a gang that outnumbered me seven-to-one.  I was kicked down from behind by a member of this gang who was upset by the fact that I called him a coward (irony, obviously, was lost on him).  I was extorted for lunch money and chased down when I didn't surrender it (and that happened when I spent a year in California, then as now a more "liberal" state).  I was bullied, physically and verbally, all the way through high school, even by a teacher who objected to my support for George McGovern's presidential campaign.

From that experience, I moved on to college, with self-esteem so low that it could not reach up to touch bottom even if it stood on top of the Empire State Building.  That led me into the world of evangelical Christianity, a world that taught me to dis-enthrone my brain in dealing with day-to-day reality, to embrace belief--but belief as defined by an interpretation of Scripture that could alternate between being narrow and being slippery.  Over a period of more than a decade, and despite denials from my fellow believers, that interpretation marched this country further and further to the right.  I tried to hold on to my faith as long as I could, until reality demanded my brain back.

So, with regard to the present moment, what should you take from this slice of autobiography?

That bullying can break people down, and open them up to blinkered ideology.  And that ideology can become bullying in and of itself.  Until you decide to take charge of your life, internally and externally.  Which I did.  And it turned by life around, completely and positively, in every single way.  Without fear of what might happen if I was willing to make major changes.  Without worrying about how anyone might react.

In sum, I know how bullies work.  I know how ideologies work.  And I know how to fight them both, even when they work hand-in-hand, like the insurrectionists who assaulted our democracy 12 days ago.  And those insurrectionists, first and foremost, are bullies.

Bullies are sneaks.  Bullies rely on overwhelming force.  And bullies, when they've achieved the object of their bullying, pretend that the rancid consequences of their bullying, pretend that their victims are to blame for the actions of the perpetrators.

In a word, bullies, like my attacker-from-the-rear of so very long ago, are cowards.

And bullies armed with ideology are even worse.  By definition, using reason against them is useless.  By definition, they respect no boundaries except the ones they choose to create.  For their purposes.  Not yours.  Not ours.  Theirs.

January 6 exposed white, male, Christian ideologists, and their ideology, as the bullying that poses the clearest and most present danger to our Republic.  They relied on overwhelming numbers and unprovoked violence.  They used intimidation to achieve what they could otherwise only have dreamed of doing.  And their success is defended in public by allies in high places, allies who demand--no softer word suffices--that the bullying be forgiven, or overlooked, or perhaps even justified, all in the name of--I can barely stomach even typing the word--healing.

This much is certain:  nothing that happened on January 6 can be justified in the name of conservatism.  Certainly not as conservatism as it has been redefined over the past four decades.  The assault on the Capitol was certainly not about limited government.  Limited government does not permit a mob organized by one branch of government to launch a full-scale attack on another.  And it was certainly not about personal responsibility.  After all, to borrow a phrase, "If conservatives believe so strongly in 'personal responsibility', why do they constantly blame liberals for all of their problems?"

Classical conservative was defined very differently, as I've noted here more than once.  Classical conservatism was all about reverence for, and learning from, history.  Indeed, when it comes to the need to preserve historic structures and sites, I consider myself to be a conservative.  I mean, good grief, the word conserve is embedded in a minute.  And that illustrates a central and tragic irony about modern American conservatism.  It systemically rewrites, revises, and even destroys history, and the physical fabric of historic sites, because the lessons of history distract from and ultimately defeat from the narcissistic, short-term goals that matter to it, such as personal profit.  Read about the history of Rhodes Tavern if you want to see an example of how this has, and does, work.  And, slowly but surely, over forty years, modern conservatism has burned through a number of narcissistic, short-term goals--profit, military adventure, advancing theocracy--until it only has one left, the one that threads through the entire American experience:  white nationalism.  And this is why physically desecrating one of the most sacred of American buildings, and threatening and even killing those who occupy it, should not at all be shocking, as shocking as it nevertheless is to so many of us.  

White nationalism has always tried to hide behind fundamentalist Christianity; as the Reagan era has collapsed in slow-motion, the evangelicals are the only die-hard Republicans left, their faith and their bigotry representing what Pat Buchanan once celebrated as the triumph of belief over reason.  That triumph, sadly, as I have already described, is something essential that white nationalism shares with fundamentalist Christianity, something that allows those who subscribe to either movement, or both of them, to jump in for the emotional sugar-rush, and stay for the manipulation by the leaders.  And make no mistake:  those leaders are not among the "economically dispossessed"; far from it, as the leadership at the Capitol insurrection illustrates.

And the Commander-in-Chief was the Insurrectionist-in-Chief.  Donald Trump has never been a fundamentalist Christian, but he has always been a white nationalist, and one of his few real talents, as a con artist who knows what a mark looks like, has, throughout his campaign and presidency, understood the overlap between the constituencies and how both of them can be manipulated to assist him in his pursuit of power.  And, as any woman with any experience with Trump can tell you, he is no stranger to the use of violence.

No one should doubt that this was an insurrection, either.  Violent overthrow of the government for the sake of protecting Trump was, without any doubt, the goal of the attackers.  As for Trump's own appraisal of his supporters?  "I love you.  You're very special." 

Nor should anyone doubt the lack of spontaneity for this event.  There is plenty of evidence of planning and coordination.  By dark money interests.  By the wife of a Supreme Court Justice.  By Trump apparatchiks at the Pentagon. By Members of Congress themselves, directed in some cases at other Members.  Even at the Speaker herself.  And this is why the outcry to respond through the impeachment of Trump, and the permanent barring of him from public office, is as bipartisan as it can be, including Tom Nichols and John Podhoretz as well as the New York Times.

Perhaps above all, no one should doubt the naked bigotry that fueled the attack, as well as the equally naked reliance on the police to express said bigotry.  Sadly, this even applies to the Capitol Police, who in the past have been guilty of needlessly heavy-handed treatment of peaceful protestors (for the record, here are Exhibits A and B).  Not so on this occasion:  they not only welcomed the attackers with open arms, but even posed with them for selfies.  After all, like police officers in other events (Exhibits C and D), this is what they were supposed to do.  And, when they didn't, the attackers let the police know their displeasure, both verbally and physically.

Oh, and one more thing:  no one should doubt that the insurrectionists may have placed the national security of this nation, and perhaps the world, at risk in the process.  Their safety, as well as yours, not that they give a damn about the latter.

And even this does not bring an end to the list of those who bear responsibility for the insurrection.  

After all, the attackers were attempting to block a normally routine, but essential process in our democracy:  the certification of the Electoral College votes and the formal declaration of the presidential election winner.  This year, the process was anything but routine:  despite the absence of any voter fraud, and the failure of dozens of court challenges alleging the existence of such fraud, many Republicans in both houses of Congress went into the certification joint session having publicly announced their intention to challenge the certification.  Even more stupefying:  147 of them, even after they and their colleagues were assaulted and threatened, still voted to reject the certification.  None of them should be allowed to remain in Congress, and all of them, at the very least, should be investigated for criminal violations relative to potential participation in the attack and the violence that resulted from it.

And now we come to the truly cowardly part:  the efforts by conservative press commentators to minimize the attack and its consequences by either engaging in "whataboutism"  or blaming the violence of their allies by alleged infiltration by the left (Exhibits E, F, and G).  Regarding the latter, I'm not worried about the likelihood of its success; the video evidence to the contrary, provided by both the perpetrators and brave observers, is more than enough to refute that canard.  As for the former:  well, to an extent, I do blame the Democrats.  Not for fighting too hard, but for not fighting hard enough in the past.  Had they done so, I have to wonder, and I think we all have to wonder:  did that lead their opponents to view them as a soft target?  That is something that they will have to guard against, going forward.  And the rest of us have to help them, while simultaneously holding them to account.

Perhaps the biggest way in which we can help them is by holding the right-wing media, and Rupert Murdoch to account, for marshalling lies, gossip, and other forms of informational malice in the service of their craven ambitions (Exhibits H, I, and J).  And, in the process, the best way we can expose the bullying by the right, and the ideology it tries to advance, is by exposing the cowardice that characterizes the bullying, as well as the cravenness that characterizes the ideology.

What does all of this portend for the future?

Well, we've got an inauguration of a new Administration, and an impeachment trial for the soon-to-be-former President coming up.  And, with Democrats in charge by the thinnest of majorities, forward progress on behalf of the American people (i.e., the work the government is actually supposed to do) will be hard.  Perhaps above all, and for the first time since the Civil War, there's legitimate reason to be concerned about the survival of the American experiment, a subject about which multiple commentators have already opined (Exhibits K and L).

Frankly, I respect their concern.  Indeed, I share it to a certain extent.  But I believe that Americans, and the word, need America to survive.  And, as a survivor of both bullying and ideology, I firmly believe that survival, and better than survival, are possible.  Especially in a case like this one, in which the bullies may be starting to turn in on themselves.

But we have to do so on our feet, not our knees.  And we have to do so with our ideas, and not just our feelings.

Those are the only ways to deal with bullies and ideologues.  And they are the only ways to not only preserve our heritage, but to build upon it as well.

And with those thoughts, and my own commitment to act upon them as though our lives depend upon it, I say once again to all of you:

Happy New Year.

Celebrate a new presidency and, with it, a new hope.