Filibuster Followup

To say a bit more about the eye-popping filibuster chart I posted earlier today, it's worth considering that the GOP's unprecedented use of the filibuster is, at the end of the day, part and parcel of a clear upward trend in filibustering over time. The Republicans, in short, are certainly perfidious, but their current filibustermania isn't a particular sign of perfidy nearly so much as it is the logic of a bad procedural rule playing itself out over time.

Fundamentally, this should worry people more than tactical gambits about how to paint the Republicans as obstructionists. The filibuster is a bad rule. The need for a bill to pass two different legislative houses elected by different constituencies and then be signed by a president who isn't responsible to the legislature is already plenty of countermajoritarian elements in the institutional porridge. In particular, progressive politics would benefit from making it easier to pass laws. Universal health care will be almost impossible to get enacted, but once enacted no country dismantles its health care system.