Why the Filibuster Could Be the Sleeper Issue of the 2024 Campaign

The word “filibuster” was not uttered once in this year’s Trump-Biden, Trump-Harris or Vance-Walz debates.

However, this arcane Senate rule that requires 60 votes to pass most legislation could emerge as the sleeper issue of the 2024 presidential campaign.

If either party wins control of the White House and Congress, they could potentially jam through transformational legislation on anything—abortion, guns, taxes, healthcare, energy, immigration—with just 50 votes in the Senate.

That’s what Donald Trump wants. In his first term, he frequently railed against then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for refusing to dump the filibuster. For her part, Kamala Harris now wants exceptions that would allow Democrats to pass legislation protecting voting and abortion rights with bare majorities.

But recent history tells us one filibuster exception soon begets another. In 2013, Senate Democrats eliminated the filibuster for executive branch, circuit and district judicial nominations. In 2017, Republicans did away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations. The next “exception” will likely mark the death knell for the filibuster entirely.

Hardcore partisans on both sides say good riddance. They argue the filibuster is just a tool of obstruction or, worse, a Jim Crow relic that was once used to stymie civil rights legislation. That’s one way to look at it. Another is that the filibuster is the last procedural tool left in Congress that forces Democrats and Republicans to work with, rather than steamroll, one another.

Senator Joe Manchin says the filibuster “stabilizes our democracy, promotes bipartisan cooperation, and protects our nation from partisan whiplash and dysfunction.” Senator Kyrsten Sinema, putting a finer point on the same thought, wrote on X, “To state the supremely obvious, eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v Wade also enables a future Congress to ban all abortion nationwide.”

Of course, Manchin and Sinema are leaving the Senate after this year, leaving the fate of the filibuster unclear. In 2017, 61 senators—many of whom are still serving—signed a letter in support of keeping it. And earlier this year, the Republican senators most likely to serve in leadership positions next year said they support keeping it, too.

Then again, Senators have been known to buckle when their party's president leans on them. Americans better hope there are still enough of them to hold strong because a Senate without the filibuster is a disaster waiting to happen that will only deepen America’s divisions.