The Filibuster

There’s been some loose talk recently to the effect that the Senate might change its rules s.t. the filibuster is weakened, and the majority thereby empowered. I would be astonished if this happened in the current Congress; it makes no sense in the face of the current (and expected future) political landscape.

Today

The biggest problem with weakening the filibuster today is that the Democratic majority wouldn’t get much out of it. No laws move without the cooperation of the House of Representatives, and the House is now controlled by a GOP caucus to the right of the Senate GOP minority; i.e., any law that can get out of the House won’t be filibustered by the minority in the Senate, so weakening the filibuster won’t help the Democrats to move their preferred legislation. (Actually, it’s a bit worse than that: One can imagine a scenario in which the House passes center-right legislation that can command a majority in the Senate — made up of the GOP minority and a handful of “conservative” Democrats — which the Democratic leadership would be unable to filibuster as a result of their own changes.)

Now the Senate does do other, non-legislative stuff: Treaties, and advise-and-consent. The filibuster is really irrelevant to treaties, though; it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster, but 67 votes to ratify a treaty. That leaves advise-and-consent, and the desire to pack the courts. That’s not nothing, but it’s not much, especially in light of the mysterious future.

Tomorrow

The Democrats have to defend a lot of Senate seats in 2012, and, while that’s a long way off, when one considers the way the political winds currently blow, a GOP run of the table (Presidency, House, and Senate) looks not at all unlikely. If that came to pass the Democrats would have little but the filibuster to rely on to fight off legislation that they found distasteful. If the GOP could cite Democratic precedent for weakening the filibuster, the Dems would be hoist by their own petard.

I don’t think much of the average politician’s brains, but this is too obvious for even Harry Reid to miss.

Yesterday

Finally, if the Dems were really eager to change (or ever particularly open to the idea of changing) the filibuster rules, they would have damn well done it in 2008, when they had both houses of Congress, a shiny new president, big plans, and the wind at their backs. If they didn’t do it then, when it would have been easy, they would have had much to gain, and apparently little to lose, why on earth would they do it now?

It makes no sense.