How to Lie with Facts - A Call to Re-Nerf the Filibuster

I've been waiting for something to catch my sails. Its been gusty out, and I've been commenting here and there on the hellsite, but nothing felt like a topic for this forum.

Not quite sure why this feels different, I don't have that much on my mind about it, but I'm an intuitive guy. I'll reroll 3 regular dice thousands of times (particularly digital dice, obv.) to get 'better than' a target and I'll finally do substantially better, and I'll stop right there, no saving and trying for even better, no gambler's bias.

I...suppose I've already demonstrated that on the financial blog.

No fear. People like us, we hone our instincts, we don't memorize chemical formulae. We learn the rules...really, really well. And when the rules provide a clear opportunity, we clean house, because we trust the hole will still be there while we step through.

So maybe that's what appeals to me about re-nerfing the filibuster, its messy, it functions by being messy and challenging the faction with the greater commitment to the issue to be more organized than the opposition. And, looking back on these comments from down-the-page, it turns out there is enough misinformation out there about the rule itself to fill the post in plenty, so buckle up.

IDK what level to start explaining at. I can't start at a scope like that Joshua Johnson guy on MSNBC weekends, that shit feels super condescending. To me. WTF do I know?

ThE U.s. SeNaTe Is ThE UpPeR HoUsE oF cOnG...

Joking. I told you I'm not funny.

So, I guess the first crucial thing to know about the filibuster is that Sarah Binder is...not a top notch historian (I'm trying not to be as vicious as the hellsite encourages us to be). (Dr., I assume) Sarah Binder is a George Washington University political scientist who gave a widely publicized testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration that paints a...well a bullshit picture of the history of the filibuster to support her contention that it should be abolished. The filibuster is a rule, not in the text of the constitution but part of the 'firmware' coding that the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives run by, coding that each college of representatives votes on at the beginning of each new two-year session. Sometimes the new set of coding changes, usually in small ways, and often the changes are not debated formally.

I wanted to call the picture of the history of the filibuster offered by Dr. Binder something euphemistic, but there's not really any metaphor that characterizes how she's being full-of-shit. Essentially, she's patronizing the Senators and all of us who may have listened to, watched or read her remarks, daring us to actually do the research to refute her.

Only I don't need to do the research. I've already read more than enough of Burr and Hamilton to know what a crock she's selling.

Aaron Burr was not a man given to whimsy. He was, by all accounts, an unabashed physical coward, and he'd been terrified to duel Hamilton, who was the kind of asshole who made yo-mama jokes, then talked shit about you in the papers while you caught gangrene from the bullet he put in your thigh when you challenged him to a duel over it. Burr challenged the duel only because of the seriousness of the social insult done to the entire Anti-Federalist faction by Hamilton's abuse. It was a highly-reasoned and considered act. In the wake of Hamilton's death Burr would have been in a contemplative state of mind, seeing things with a clarity of purpose suited to his understand of his 'calling' in life (as a Presbyterian), having taken the life of another for the first time and in such a visible and public fashion.

Sarah Binder paraphrases Burr (yes paraphrase, in front of a committee of the United States Senate), trivializing a Founding Father's written opinion on the proposed functioning of the upper house of Congress as housecleaning. It may well be that the present day uses of the filibuster were unforeseen at the time, but every single one of the more famous signers of the Declaration whom we refer to as 'Founding Fathers' was a capable sociologist and cultural anthropologist by present standards. All of them. No I'm not exaggerating, that's what the f****** U.S. Constitution is, a sociology experiment launched by the leading experts of the day.

That they, President of the Senate or college of Senators, either one, should have made or affirmed a suggestion without purpose, intent or forethought is such a ludicrous suggestion as to thoroughly color any other that such a scholar as made it might present. That's school-people talk for 'this lady full of s***, and you don't need not another word to know it.'

But let's just look a little further at her testimony, shall we? To be sure.

Dr. Binder proceeds to spin an account of the history of the filibuster which, reluctantly, we will take her word on, mainly because, as you will see, it is not necessary to chase down the accuracy of this account to confirm for ourselves that her assertions are without merit.

As she tells it, the filibuster lay mostly unused until post-Reconstruction, i.e. the Jim Crow-era, when White politicians began to leverage the higher levels of education of Democrats in the South (White people) compared to Republicans (freed slaves) to enact rules that increasingly restricted the access of poor and low-literacy voters to the polls, rules that magically went unenforced against poor Whites.

When it did gain utility, the filibuster was immediately used in the way that it has always been used, that is, for politicized and not selectively for 'crucial' or grand philosophical purposes. This is as may be, and it would not be especially surprising, because history is never as theatrical as we see it, in hindsight, though sometimes it does come close. Binder also points out that there was resistance to 'innovative' uses of the filibuster from these early (second) stages, though never sufficient to overcome the obstruction made possible by the rule itself.

Never, that is, until 1917, when war, politics and circumstance combine to create enough pressure that a compromise was reached. Binder can intimate, all she likes, that this is sheer kismet and happenstance, but it is, in fact, a political compromise, which is how all lawmaking is done, and she cannot delegitimize one process simply because she wants to change such a law without sufficient political support for the change. Like it or not, there are still half of Americans who want the filibuster, you can't just do away with it by fiat and say you've made democracy better.

So, what is this proposal I've linked about 'remaking the filibuster'? Well, for all of that time that Dr. Binder was mischaracterizing, and for eighty years after that, the actual act of filibustering required senators to stand (not sit) on the floor of the senate chamber, and to speak in opposition to the motion being obstructed. Remember how I said the Founders were all sociologists? They could easily see that this sets a clear, physiological limitation on the duration of any one act of obstruction.

The absolute maximum number of senators who can be involved in a filibuster effort is fifty. That is, half. Fifty for as long as the number of senators remains at one hundred. How is this? Well, if there are more than that, it doesn't matter if they let the motion come to a vote, they will defeat the motion, right? They'd have the clear majority, majority rules.

So, fifty senators makes it substantially easier than when thirteen senators had to take turns holding the floor, but it still requires fifty elected people from different regions of the country to maintain information, schedule and message discipline while under heightened media scrutiny for an indefinite period. What, in fact, is the physiological limit to this sort of endeavor? We have no point of reference under the current media atmosphere, the last talking filibuster was in the 90's.

But it would be different for each issue. Just like there's a different number of senators actually willing to stand up and filibuster most legislation. It varies between 40 and 50, but it always varies. And so would support for an ongoing filibuster wax or wane over time. That makes lawmaking a test of not just statistical comparison, but of collected willpowers.