Following a frustrating two years topped off with crushing losses on Election Day, Senate Democrats should start looking for creative solutions to improve their chances in 2016 and beyond. There has been chatter about replacing Harry Reid as leader, but even that step is not a game-changer. Instead, the Democrats should take the one bold move that would show they care more about governing than politics, the move that could help reverse the current slide of Congress into partisan irrelevance and eventually help the Democrats accomplish some of their legislative goals whenever they eventually regain the majority:
Kill the filibuster.
This may seem to be counterintuitive, as the filibuster is being credited for the Republicans' climb back to power. This belief only holds if you ignore the mountain of historical evidence showing that a president's party almost always suffers in an off-year election. The 2014 election may have been a Republican tidal wave, but there's little reason to think the filibuster was anything but a minor cause.
That's not to say it hasn't played a real and detrimental role in politics. As the Senate has gotten more partisan, the filibuster has become the rock the minority party can use to gain some measure of influence. It has the added benefit of driving the majority party crazy. It is not as though the filibuster was ignored before, but it has now become the weapon of choice for the minority.
The result is a continual cycle that starts whenever the Senate changes hands. The two parties are constantly jockeying for political position. The majority claims the use of the filibuster is ahistoric and illegitimate and needs to be reined in. The minority immediately starts shouting about tyranny. On the political level, the minority seems to win this battle, as it both succeeds in delaying the Senate from taking substantive action and, no matter who is right, presents the majority party as vindictive and obsessed with technicalities. This success is why the filibuster is a hard habit to break.
But now is exactly the time to disarm the filibuster. It is easy to promote the change when your party is in the majority and such a change will help you. The time to move against the filibuster is when it hurts you, and you can show you are making a sacrifice for the future. It would actually be a gutsy vote.
There's no political gain — the voters who actually decide general elections most likely don't care that much about legislative procedure. The minority party will also lose some of its ability to force the majority to take embarrassing votes that could be used against sitting senators in future ads. There would also be an intraparty risk — the voters who actually care about procedure are exactly the type to run primary campaigns against members of their party for letting the opposition off the hook with a filibuster reform.
But the principle holds on multiple levels. For one, the Democrats can call the Republicans' bluff — you won the majority, you've got the power, you rule. Let's see how you do. But the bigger point is the long-term gain.
