The Holy Grail of Obstruction

Last Tuesday, Joe Manchin claimed that the Senate filibuster is the “holy grail of democracy,” vowing to withhold his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris after she suggested that the archaic obstructionary tactic should be removed in order to codify abortion rights into law. “Shame on her,” Manchin said, adding, “[the filibuster is] the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids.”

Manchin’s remarks betray a contempt for democracy that has deep roots in the Senate, and that has also been a theme in his own career. But they do contain a half truth: The filibuster has kept people working together to diminish the state’s ability to function, and prevent popular will from being realized as public policy. As much as any other procedural tactic, the filibuster has been instrumental in handcuffing democracy and ensuring the rich and powerful have a greater say in policymaking than the American public. 

The filibuster is a tactic that delays or prevents the Senate from voting on a bill. Originally, senators delayed bills by speaking indefinitely in what was known as a talking filibuster. The most infamous example was a 24-hour speech by segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond intended to sink the Civil Rights Act of 1957, for which Thurmond reportedly prepared by taking steam baths to dehydrate his body. In more recent years, Senator Ted Cruz railed against the Affordable Care Act for 21 hours, which included a reading of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham. But that was a choice. Since the 1970s, senators need not ramble endlessly; they can kill consideration of a bill simply by threatening to filibuster. This so-called silent filibuster gives the minority the power to thwart democracy.

In today’s intensely divided Senate, such a delay can only be overcome with a 60-vote majority. But as Center for American Progress Fellow Michael Sozan notes in a recent report, the filibuster effectively “empowers senators from the 21 least populous states—representing only 11 percent of the country’s population and only 7 percent of its Black population—to block almost anything.” By 2050, he estimates, 30 percent of Americans will elect 70 percent of the Senate. The filibuster only compounds the inherent advantage the Senate confers to this electoral minority. 

In a 2010 Senate Rules Committee hearing, Senator Chuck Schumer lamented that the filibuster “is becoming a straitjacket” on the governing process. The problem has only worsened since. According to research from the Brennan Center, recent Senate cohorts have been some of the most unproductive in decades, passing a fraction of the bills they did midcentury. That Senate legislating has ground to a near-halt cannot be exclusively attributed to the filibuster, but it plays a major role. Senator Dick Durbin summed it up in a recent interview: “We’re now in a dystopian situation in the Senate where we do very little, if any, legislating.”

Over the last century, the filibuster was the mechanism by which both parties stifled anti-lynching laws and civil rights legislation that would have made Black Americans full citizens of this country. This is why, in eulogizing the late congressman John Lewis in 2020, former President Barack Obama referred to the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic.” But it also has derailed attempts to expand democracy to everyone. In 1969, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (338 to 70) for a constitutional amendment that would abolish the electoral college, allowing the American people to directly elect the president. The idea was supported by President Nixon and 80 percent of the American public. But it was killed by a filibuster of segregationist senators, led by Thurmond, who feared that a one-person, one-vote system would threaten white supremacy across the South. 

There is no shortage of areas where the filibuster threatens to stonewall popular will. Just last month, after former President Trump claimed to support universal health insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization, Senate Republicans filibustered a bill that would have codified Trump’s proposal. In 2023, the worst year on record in terms of the number of mass shootings, Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would have established universal background checks for gun purchases, a measure then supported by an astonishing 92 percent of Americans. A decade earlier, the filibuster was used by a minority of senators to block one of the most significant democracy-enhancing measures in recent history, which would have advanced a constitutional amendment to overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision. 

The filibuster is also corrosive to our economy, especially popular efforts to enhance workers’ rights. According to research by my Roosevelt Institute colleague Emily DiVito, eight major pieces of legislation that would have either boosted worker power or reined in corporate power were blocked by the filibuster, despite passing the House and enjoying majority support from the Senate and the president. In the most recent period in which Democrats held unified government (January 2021 to January 2023), DiVito documents three additional worker empowerment measures, including the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, that met a similar fate. These measures would have made it easier for workers to form unions and challenge wage discrimination, enhancing fairness and economic security for everyone. 

Vice President Harris is correct to view the filibuster as a needless barrier to enshrining in law the right to abortion. Abortion rights cut to the heart of personal freedom, economic security, and the independence and agency that a democratic society should confer to all people as a right. Being denied abortion access coincides with a higher chance of living in poverty and a lower likelihood of being employed full-time. States that criminalize or restrict abortion have worse economic conditions, including higher rates of child poverty, lower wages (especially for women), and lower public education spending. 

If there is criticism of Harris’s position on a filibuster carve-out for abortion, it should be based on the fact that it doesn’t go far enough. In every sphere of public life, the filibuster promises to leave us more impoverished, less safe, less free, and unable to meet the most basic of public demands. Ultimately, our democracy is the biggest casualty of this obstruction. In 2022, Manchin was quoted as saying the filibuster “is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity.” If the idea of democracy is insane, then Manchin is right. 

If you ask Eleanor

"I have always thought that filibustering—in the way that the Southern Dixiecrats are carrying on against the anti-poll tax—is an insult not only to the intelligence of the Senate but to the people of the United States. Who wants decisions made in such a stupid way? There is no real discussion on the bill itself. The Southerners just talk to talk. They even read out of books endlessly."

- Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day (August, 1948)

---

Fireside Stacks is a weekly newsletter from Roosevelt Forward about progressive politics, policy, and economics. If you enjoyed this installment, consider sharing it with your friends.