Calhoun played a pivotal role in creating the filibuster that we know today, and in the 20th powerful southern Democrats used their positions as heads of Senate committees to stifle, or at the very least defang, civil rights legislation. Just as importantly, as Jentleson points out, there have always been those who yearned to make the minority more powerful than the majority, and, throughout the 19th and 20th century, these individuals have been fixated on the issue of race. The result is a chamber that doesn’t adequately represent the country, primarily because the Constitution’s guarantee that all states have equal representation in the Senate is ill-equipped to deal with the increasingly vast population differences between the largest states (such as California) and the smallest (such as Wyoming). In fact, it is the logical endpoint to decades, even centuries, of efforts by the minority to exert its dominance of the majority, often in direct defiance of the wishes and intentions of the Founders (particularly Alexander Hamilton and James Madison).
Given the obstruction that his COVID relief bill has already faced, there are increasing calls, particularly from the left, to abolish the filibuster and use this new opportunity to push through a raft of rprogressive legislation, ranging from a new voting rights act to a raise to the minimum wage.Īs Adam Jentleson reveals in his new book, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy, this state of affairs didn’t come out of nowhere. Even as I write this, there is consternation among many on the left that the Republicans in the Senate-joined by moderate Democrats Joe Manchina of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona-will become significant stumbling blocks to President Joe Biden’s ambitious legislative agenda. Though this has been the case for quite some time-ever since Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky announced that the goal of his caucus was to make Barack Obama a one term president-it’s become increasingly clear with each passing year and each legislative debacle. It’s no secret that the United States Senate is, in a word, broken.
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