The US Senate, the filibuster, and asymmetric partisan polarization

Joe Biden suggested this week that keeping the filibuster rule if Democrats take control of the Senate might not be the best of ideas. (Max Cohen, Biden signals openness to eliminating Senate filibuster Politico 07/14/2020).

Vox has a helpful video tutorial on how the filibuster works, The weird rule that broke American politics 06/17/2019:

George Packer, safely establishment but a good reporter, did a long New Yorker 2010 article about how aggressive and obstructionist the Senate Republicans were in the first year and a half of Obama's term, when the Democrats had a solid majority in the Senate. (The Empty Chamber New Yorker 08/02/2010) And that was mostly before the Citizens United decision (January 2010) threw gasoline on the Republican fire and the asymmetric partisan polarization that is such a defining character of US politics right now.

It was also before 3 1/2 years of full-bore Trumpism in the White House. Picture what Packer describes and imagine a Republican minority that is high on QAnon injections for which Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is too liberal to win a Republican primary, and you'll get a pretty good idea of what we can expect them to behave under a new Biden Administration in 2021.

It includes this quote: "Vice-President Joe Biden, in his autobiography, recalls that, in the seventies, a bipartisan group of senators and their wives hosted a monthly dinner: 'In those days Democrats and Republicans actually enjoyed each other’s company.')" Since Status Quo Joe has mastered the Zoom conference, hopefully he's willing to adjust to other changes during the last 40 years.

Although according to Bunker Boy's "press conference" Tuesday, SQJ is a Chinese Communist with a far left program aimed at destroying America. Also, he says that Biden has gone far right. I don't foresee the pleasant days of Tip-'n-Ronnie beer-drinking evenings, the ones that Mark Shields and Chris Matthews love to recall, are coming back any time soon. For many reasons, Senators don’t have the time, or the inclination, to get to know one another - least of all members of the other party.

Packer's article gives a historical account of how encrusted Senate procedures, including the powerful filibuster rule, evolved over time. And it illustrates the difference that unwritten consensus can make in making the difference between a functional (if undemocratic) role for a procedure and an obstructive one by a radicalized minority party facing a timid majority party:

In the sixties and seventies [of the 20th centuries], Southern-conservative control was broken by a coalition of left-of-center Democrats and moderate Republicans. Donald Ritchie, the Senate historian, who started working there in 1976, described the Senate of those decades as “a bipartisan liberal institution.” The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was written largely out of the office of the Republican Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen. Every major initiative - voting rights, open housing, environmental law, campaign reform - enjoyed bipartisan support. In the rare event of a filibuster, the motion to end debate was often filed jointly by leaders of both parties. When Medicare - that government takeover of health care for the elderly [as Republican opponents like St. Reagan called it]- was passed, in 1965, it won 70–24.

Earlier this year [2010], the Senate’s procedural absurdities became national news twice in one month. On February 4th, CongressDaily reported that Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, was secretly blocking the confirmation of seventy Obama appointees over a dispute involving defense earmarks for his state. (His tactics exposed, Shelby - whose office maintains that he was responsible for fewer than fifty holds - lifted all but three.) Later that month, Bunning spent several days and a late night on the Senate floor, filibustering to prevent benefits from being paid to millions of unemployed Americans. When Merkley tried to reason with him, Bunning responded, “Tough shit.” (Eventually, Republicans persuaded Bunning to stop.)

These incidents elicited a brief outcry, but the extent of the Senate’s routine folly remains largely hidden. For example, Grassley and Ron Wyden, of Oregon, have been trying since 1997 to end the practice of secret holds, without success. In 2007, the Senate passed a bill banning secret holds that last longer than six days. But to get around the ban two or more senators can pass the hold back and forth - it’s called “rolling holds” - and their party leader facilitates the game by keeping their names secret. [my emphasis]

Republican obstructionism seriously restricted the ability of Obama-Biden Administration.to pass legislation in those two years where they had solid control of both Houses of Congress:

The two lasting achievements of this Senate, financial regulation and health care, required a year and a half of legislative warfare that nearly destroyed the body. They depended on a set of circumstances - a large majority of Democrats, a charismatic President with an electoral mandate, and a national crisis - that will not last long or be repeated anytime soon. Two days after financial reform became law, Harry Reid announced that the Senate would not take up comprehensive energy-reform legislation for the rest of the year. And so climate change joined immigration, job creation, food safety, pilot training, veterans’ care, campaign finance, transportation security, labor law, mine safety, wildfire management, and scores of executive and judicial appointments on the list of matters that the world’s greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing. [my emphasis]

There's a decent chance that a similar set of circumstances will be presented to a President Biden and his Democratic Party in 2021-2. They should make good use of it on behalf of ordinary people.