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.
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