When the slavocracy needed to quash the rising tides of emancipation and free labor, they used the filibuster. When Jim Crow segregationists needed to stymie anti-lynching laws and preserve their poll taxes, they used the filibuster. Today, when the Republican Party must cling to power by strangling the American government and suppressing the American majority, they use the filibuster.
But the filibuster is an accident of parliamentary history; an unintended consequence of minor changes to Senate rules. Now the weaponization of the filibuster against majoritarian democracy has essentially broken Congress.
This week at the Bloc Party, Waleed Shahid, spokesperson of Justice Democrats, sits down with Adam Jentleson, author of the new book KILL SWITCH: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. Waleed figures out why former Harry Reid staffers like Adam end up becoming progressive crusaders, how the filibuster went from accident to shield of white supremacy, and together they assess how the Democratic Party might reform Congress, or fail and forfeit power for a generation.