The right to filibuster legislation remains in place and Democrats fear that removing it may inconvenience moderate and independent voters, alter the character of the Senate and further diminish any attempt at bipartisanship. Democrats in Republican-leaning states have said they don’t support the idea.
But Biden, a product of more than three decades in the Senate that prides itself on its institutional credentials, recently showed more openness to the idea of reducing the filibuster’s power. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said any decision would have to wait for the election, although “nothing is off the table.” It is clearly on the minds of Senate Democrats when they see an opportunity to take the majority.
“Many of us are seriously considering that possibility, but I’m not ready to make a compromise right now,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, told reporters on Capitol Hill. He said a motivating force was how the Senate “has disintegrated under the abuse of the filibuster by Mitch McConnell.”
Once rarely used, the filibuster has become a routine in the Senate as deep polarization began. In the past, Obama was on the verge of asking to be abandoned, but Adam Jentleson, a progressive activist and one of the top advisers to the majority leader in the Senate. At one point, Harry Reid said Obama’s framing of the filibuster as a negative force would make it difficult for Democrats who had been reluctant to consider the move to continue that position.
“He not only embraced the cause of the reform, but called it a structural civil rights issue,” said Jentleson, author of an upcoming book on the decline of the Senate. “Obama has restarted the debate and has given senators a reason to view the reform as a positive asset, a step they can take to fulfill their vision and erase the Jim Crow legacy.”
In trying to change Obama’s comment on Democratic Senate candidates, Republicans said eliminating the filibuster would empower the most liberal faction in the Democratic Party and alienate centrist voters.
“Conventional voters cannot bear what they see of the mafia of liberals kidnapping cities across the United States, and these candidates will have to answer why they want to give them more power,” said Jesse Hunt, spokesman for the National. Republican Senate Committee.
