Christopher Jones

Minot

I applaud the many Democrats who, after years of vigorously employing the filibuster, have realized just how anti-democratic it is.

I suppose if you use a tool often enough, you learn more about it. This has happened as, 100 years into the maneuver’s existence, Democrats have discovered that it was invented to stymie the progress of civil rights bills. How dirty the Democrats must feel, especially about the hundreds of times they employed that racist tool in 2020. Now we know that thing is downright systemic. Thank goodness someone finally cracked open a history book and found out the awful truth!

Now, though, the attempts to do away with the filibuster are running into an obvious problem: the minority party which benefits from the filibuster will never go along with any rule change that does away with the only thing that stops the majority party from ruling by fiat.

I have a simple solution.

A bill to eliminate the filibuster should contain this stipulation: “This bill will go into effect on the opening date of the next session of Congress in which the current majority party in the Senate has become the minority party.”

Boom.

This proposal would clarify the issue quite marvelously. The proponents of democracy would surely vote for it, for they are most concerned with ending the racist policy no matter which party gets first crack at running a filibuster-free Senate. Based on recent sanctimonious pronouncements, that’s most of the Democrats. Many Republicans would vote for it, some because they secretly agree that the filibuster is anti-democratic and some because they want a guaranteed two years of ruling by simple majority.

Really, though, does it matter why a Republican votes for a bill that is so important to the Democrats, so long as they vote for it?