Here's Joe Biden, then just plain old former vice president and candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in January 2020, when asked: "[among] abolishing the Electoral College, expanding the size of the Supreme Court, setting term limits for justices, abolishing the legislative filibuster. Which, if any of these, do you support?" He said unequivocally and simply: "None." Pushed on the filibuster, he said: "Because there’s a lot of things people agree on, though you don't—there's two things. One is that there are a number of areas where you can reach consensus that relate to things like cancer and health care and a whole range of things. I think we can reach consensus on that and get it passed without changing the filibuster rule."
Biden has clearly been spending time with some current Democratic senators, including those he's been thinking about appointing as his own vice president—particularly Sen. Elizabeth Warren. On Tuesday, Biden suggested to reporters that his stance has softened. Considerably. "It's going to depend on how obstreperous they [Republicans] become," he said when asked about it this time. He did say he still thinks he can find common ground with Republicans, "[b]ut I think you're going to just have to take a look at it," he added.
The confluence of events—the coronavirus, Black Lives Matter, everything Trump has done lately—has gotten Biden thinking, obviously. "I do think we've reached a point, a real inflection in American history," he told reporters. "And I don't believe it's unlike what Roosevelt was met with. […] I think we have an opportunity to make some really systemic change." He's clearly been talking to Warren.
That he's looking at a serious transformation—big systemic change—was clear from his speech Tuesday on climate change. As Mark Sumner wrote, the speech "showed that he has fully absorbed the need for a dramatic change that would reshape both America’s energy policy and the economy. In a 20-minute address that also took time to punch Donald Trump for his failures to listen to experts in dealing with COVID-19," Sumner continued, "Biden presented the outlines of a policy that's genuinely bold, and a view of how the economy and environment are related that was aimed squarely at ending the false dichotomy between good jobs and a clean future."
This is absolutely the big thinking—Roosevelt, New Deal kind of thinking—that is required to recover from what Trump has wrought. "We won't just tinker around the edges," Biden said. "We're going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity and meet this moment in history."
That will almost certainly mean no more filibuster, because it would take a miracle for Democrats to win 13 Senate seats this November and a minor miracle for Sen. Mitch McConnell to be dislodged from his seat. As long McConnell is in the Senate and has the filibuster as a tool, we will never be able to have nice things again—none of the visions Joe Biden is clearly now having for the nation's future. It seems as though Biden is working his way to that realization, and it also seems like Warren has helped him get there.