The filibuster should, of course, be abolished -- except, maybe, in its speaking incarnation. It is a mechanism by which a minority in the Senate can block the will of the majority in the Senate.The mid-session revision to Senate rules will prevent use of the filibuster to block executive and judicial nominations, with the exception of Supreme Court nominees. It lowers the 60-vote threshold to move forward on such nominations to a simple majority. The change does not apply to legislation, meaning that all bills will still require 60 votes to clear the Senate.
Now, blocking the will of the minority can sometimes be a good thing.
But the Senate, without the filibuster, is already anti-majoritarian. It does not need a mechanism to make it even more anti-majoritarian than it already is.
The people of Wyoming, whose population is less than that of any one of the US's major cities, already have the same two Senators as do the people of California, where about one of every eight Americans lives. That is more than enough anti-majoritarianism.
It is a good thing that a minority can sometimes block the will of a majority. The alternative is what de Tocqueville rightly called the tyranny of the majority.
But the filibuster allows less than a majority of a minority to block the will of the majority. That has never made any sense.
With any luck, we will soon see the end of the filibuster in all its incarnations.
