There's a lot of Senate Democrats eyeing the White House in 2020, and all of them are looking ahead to the prospect of trying to get their agenda through a Senate that will likely have a very narrow majority, either way. That means they're thinking about the filibuster, for either themselves or whichever of their colleagues goes to the White House on Jan. 21, 2021.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren says what they all should be saying: "Everything stays on the table. You keep it all on the table. Don't take anything off the table." That seems pretty obvious, right? There are going to be critical progressive, big-thinking ideas like Medicare for all, Warren's tax increase for the wealthy, and the Green New Deal. They've got to be looking ahead to how hard those things will be to accomplish if Republicans hold them to 60-vote thresholds on everything. It would take a wave of massive proportions to shake up Mitch McConnell's Republican conference (and probably the defeat of McConnell) enough to give up this tool for obstruction.
Sen. Tom Udall, who has put in many long hours trying to get rid of the filibuster in a smart way, makes it clear. "How are you going to do like a big climate change bill? It's very hard to do big broad legislation under the filibuster." Sen. Chris Murphy adds,"It is very hard to figure out how you do a major health care reform without changing the rules," but as Warren says, they need to "win first and worry about how to get stuff done second."
Other presidential hopefuls are a little more circumspect, perhaps not wanting to alienate fellow senators who declare they hold the filibuster sacrosanct. Newly announced candidate Sen. Cory Booker says "We should not be doing anything to mess with the strength of the filibuster. It's one of the distinguishing factors of this body. And I think it is good to have the power of the filibuster." Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is cautious: "It's a very important question. I want to weigh all the pros and the cons over the next few weeks. I think it's something that my colleagues will consider heavily. … Having just lived through being in the minority and how destructive the 51-vote threshold has been for Supreme Court justices, I just want to think long and hard about it."
The 51-vote threshold for judges, including Supreme Court justices, is not going to go away. That's just gone forever. The legislative filibuster is probably only still there because the only things that mattered to McConnell were tax cuts, which could be done under budget reconciliation with just 51 votes, and ramming as many judges into the system as humanly possible. That, and it is somewhat of a check on Trump's crazy. Democrats have to leave it on the table for 2021, and they have to get their colleagues ready for it. Not doing so is just pre-emptively shooting themselves in the foot.
This post has been edited to reflect that, unfortunately, the next president won’t be inaugurated until 2021.