The Filibuster Was Grounded in Slavery & Now Threatens All Life
March 3, 2021
Today it's a convenient shield for cowardly senators to avoid going on the
record about their opposition to popular legislation, writes Thom Hartmann.
Construction of the Capitol dome, Dec. 31, 1857. (Architect of the
Capitol/Flickr).
By Thom Hartmann
ThomHartmann.com
It's time to end the filibuster and bring democracy to the U.S. Senate.
The filibuster was invented by "the Grandfather of the Confederacy" John C.
Calhoun, and its only purpose is to block legislation that otherwise has
broad popular support but is opposed by racists and big corporate special
interest groups.
It's not even in the Constitution; the Founders were horrified by the
thought of such a thing, because it allows a 2/5ths minority of senators to
block any action by the senate majority.
Sadly, two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, recently
blocked the Senate from killing this democracy-crippling anachronism.
Hidden History
The Founding generation were almost universally opposed to anything
resembling the filibuster; James Madison fought any such rule right up until
his death in 1836.
It is, after all, anti-democratic in that it gives a minority of senators
the ability to block any legislation simply by raising their hand or sending
a one-sentence note to their colleagues. A single senator can invoke it, and
a minority of 41 out of 100 senators can sustain it until legislation dies.
By the 1830s, the institution of slavery was under widespread attack in
America. England had outlawed it, northern states were hardening their
opinions, and the national debate that erupted a decade earlier with the
Missouri Compromise was becoming heated.
Former President John Quincey Adams (1825-1829), after he left the White
House, ran for and was elected to the House of Representatives with the main
purpose of ending slavery; Congress had passed a law against slavery even
being mentioned in debate on the floor and Adams went out of his way to
break that law every single day that Congress was in session.
John C. Calhoun had been Adams' vice president (they were bitter enemies; it
was because nobody won a majority in the Electoral College and the election
was thrown to the House) and then Andrew Jackson's vice president. In 1832,
he resigned as VP to be appointed to South Carolina's Senate seat by that
state's governor.
Oil portrait of John C. Calhoun by George Peter Alexander Healy, circa 1845.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Once in the Senate, Calhoun invented the filibuster specifically to increase
the power of his plantation-owning colleagues and block any sort of
anti-slavery legislation. (Calhoun not only defended the right to keep human
beings enslaved; in an infamous 1837 floor speech he called slavery "a
positive good.")
Civil Rights Laws Delayed for a Century
And it worked. The filibuster not only kept any anti-slavery legislation
from being passed throughout Calhoun's lifetime, but after Reconstruction
collapsed with the Hayes election in 1876 it was turned against Civil Rights
legislation.
As historian Adam Jentleson notes, "[F]rom the 87 years between when
Reconstruction ended until 1964, the only category of legislation against
which the filibuster was deployed to actively stop bills in their tracks was
civil rights legislation."
In 1964 and 1965 Southern conservatives tried to block LBJ's civil- and
voting-rights legislation with a filibuster; President Johnson, however,
invoked the death of JFK and mobilized massive nationwide popular support to
pressure senators to pull together a successful super-majority and overcome
the Southern filibuster. Sadly, such examples are rare.
Now Used by Big Business
Today the filibuster is used by special interests to protect their own
financial interests such as keeping weapons of war on our streets, killing
our children in numbers not seen in any other developed country in the
world.
For example, after the brutal 2012 slaughter of 20 first-graders and six
adults at Sandy Hook, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) put
together a modest bill to increase the use of background checks to purchase
weapons.
Fully 55 senators supported the legislation, as did 80-90 percent of the
American public, but Republicans beholden to the gun industry launched a
filibuster, killing the legislation by requiring 60 votes for passage.
The filibuster was a useful tool - and excuse for racist senators - to block
any sort of civil rights legislation for four generations. Today it's a
convenient shield for cowardly senators to avoid going on the record about
their opposition to popular legislation, instead just shrugging their
shoulders and saying, "Hey, it takes 60 votes; what can I do?"
Since the 1960s, the filibuster is the favorite tool of well-funded special
interests like the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce and Big Banking to prevent any sort of meaningful action on climate
change, labor rights and consumer protections (among other things).
Senate Democrats represent 41 million more American voters than do Senate
Republicans, but the minority GOP is today using the filibuster to help out
their billionaire donors and the industries that made them rich the same way
Southern senators did to keep slavery intact prior to the Civil War.
Modify the Filibuster?
Protester at March for Our Lives gun-safety demonstration, Tucson, March
2018. (Corinna Barnard)
Protester at March for Our Lives gun-safety demonstration, Tucson, March
2018. (Corinna Barnard)
Most Americans think the filibuster requires a senator to stand and talk and
talk and talk, and ends when the senator sits down - because most Americans
got their information about it from dramatizations like Mr. Smith Goes To
Washington.
If the filibuster can't be immediately killed, a short-term measure may be
to modify the rules around it to actually make it work the way it's
portrayed in the movies. That way, it must eventually end and a majority
vote can be held.
It's been modified many times over the years, after all. Harry Reid oversaw
ending the filibuster on federal judges; Mitch McConnell extended that to
Supreme Court justices so he could get Trump's controversial nominees
through. At one time it required 66 votes; now it's 60.
This "stand and speak, and when you sit down it ends" change may well be the
thing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he had up his sleeve when
interviewed Jan. 25 by Rachael Maddow. It could work.
Call Your Senators
The contemporary filibuster's open Senate advocates include every single
Republican (in the pocket of all the industries listed above, among others)
and Democrats Joe Manchin (Big Coal/Oil) and Kyrsten Sinema (Big Banks &
Insurance).
If Manchin and Sinema continue to block Democrats' efforts to end the
filibuster to protect their biggest donors, large parts of the Biden agenda
are in grave danger. Worse, with the near-certainty it'll be used to block
effective climate legislation, their obstruction threatens all life on
Earth.
The office of every U.S. senator can be reached by calling 202-224-3121. Now
might be a good time to let your two senators, along with Manchin and
Sinema, know your opinion.
Miriam's comment: But he's being partisan because if the Democratic Party
wanted to stop it, they could do it now. They are reluctant.