I'M NOT AN ANTI-FILIBUSTER ABSOLUTIST

On Wednesday, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elissa Slotkin held a press conference to announce that they support Chris Van Hollen's bid to become Senate majority leader. Van Hollen wants to abolish the filibuster; the man he's challenging, Chuck Schumer, doesn't.

You might imagine that Sanders agrees with Van Hollen on abolition, but he doesn't:

Would @BernieSanders support abolishing the filibuster for the next two years to enable Democrats to pass more bills through the Senate? Watch his response. https://t.co/99WwPNxQ2D

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 11, 2026

REPORTER: ... Would you support removing the filibuster in this current session over the next two years in order to try to get bills passed?

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s a very important question, and I haven’t reached an answer on it. I think there are a lot of reasons to support it, and that is the majority -- you know, we believe in majority rule, not necessarily having forty people be able to deny what the majority wants. I am worried about protecting minority rights as well.

But what I do believe, absolutely, is that we can, with a major budget reconciliation bill, do a whole lot. You know, Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which I consider to be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever passed, was done through reconciliation.

So I think what we’ve gotta do is sit down, and I think many people agree with this. How do we deal with health care? How do we do with wages? How do we do with war? How do we do with many, many things? We can put that into a reconciliation bill.

I understand Sanders's hesitation. To take just one example: In the absence of a filibuster, the GOP's SAVE Act would have become law in time for the midterms. I don't believe Democrats will have Senate majorities forever. I shudder to think what Republicans would do without a Senate filibuster the next time they control all of Congress and the White House. I know a GOP Senate majority could eliminate the filibuster anyway, but Republicans worry about what Democrats would do if it were eliminated. Once it's gone, it won't come back.

I'd like to see the filibuster significantly reformed, but not eliminated. Jamelle Bouie (a supporter of filibuster abolition) writes:

For most of its history, the Senate has operated by simple majority vote. The filibuster was used only in extraordinary circumstances. The routine supermajority threshold of the past 20 years is less sacred tradition than modern invention.

That's true. There were fewer than ten Senate cloture votes in each two-year Congress between 1917-18 and 1969-70. The total exceeded 50 for the first time in 1987-88, then cleared 100 in 2007-08. In 2025-26, 301 cloture motions have been filed.

I say let's get that down to what it was in the first half of the twentieth century -- fewer than ten per two-year session (or maybe a few more, vbut ten a year, tops). Cloture motions should be like timeouts in football -- you get a limited number, and you'd better use them wisely. If Democrats do this now, the change might endure into the next Republican trifecta.

There are other ideas. Here's a list from 2020:

... ideas include lowering the 60-vote threshold to advance legislation and forcing senators to return to traditional “talking filibusters.” That would require senators to be physically present and debating on the floor to keep a bill from coming up for a vote. Today’s rules don’t even require the 41 filibustering senators to be in the chamber to block a bill from advancing.

... other proposals would reduce the amount of time allowed for debate [and] classify more types of legislation as immune to filibusters (only budget-related bills are now immune).... Democrats might consider forbidding filibusters on “fundamental constitutional” issues, enabling simple majority passage for bills related to voting rights and statehood for D.C., for example.

But if Democrats eliminate the filibuster for a new Voting Rights Act, Republicans will take advantage and sharply curtail Democratic voting when they have full control of the government.

I think what Democrats should be looking for is a way to push more legislation through that also (a) protects Democrats next time the GOP runs all of Washington and (b) gives Democrats a response when Republicans start whining about Democratic extremism. Look, we left you some filibusters. What are you complaining about? Are you telling the American people it's good that the minority party can block every non-budget bill?

But I can't imagine Democrats settling on either abolition or one set of reforms. I also think Schumer will beat Van Hollen for the majority leader post. So I expect the filibuster to remain unchanged for another two years -- maybe until Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez challenges Schumer (and, I hope, beats him) for his Senate seat in 2028.

Bouie is right when he says that packing as many good ideas as possible into budget bills, as Sanders proposes, doesn't convey the sense that Democrats are doing good things for the American people:

It should also be said that the recent habit of packaging all legislative plans into a handful of omnibus superbills has not paid political dividends for the Democratic Party. It is harder to tell a story about laws that contain everything and, from the perspective of voters, do nothing in particular. This was true with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act under President Barack Obama, and it was true with the Inflation Reduction Act under President Joe Biden. The alternative is for Congress to do what it did for most of its history: pass small, individual bills targeted at the particular problems they hope to solve. These bills are easier to craft, easier to explain and easier to sell to the public.

So reduce the number of bills that can be filibustered, until you actually can pass small, individual bills. (Of course, they'll be vetoed now by President Trump, but at least you've shown that you can pass a bill, and will pass it again whenever you get a Democratic president.)

Whatever Democrats do, I also think they should try messaging the party absolutism. Tell Americans who have Republican senators to call those senators and ask them why, for instance, they're filibustering a hike in the minimum wage, or restrictions on data centers, or a tax on the super-rich. I'm not sure most Americans understand that filibusters work because the parties -- Republicans in particular -- vote in lockstep. Tell people about this. If they don't like the results, tell them to let their senators know.