Filibuster Hypocrisy

Guest Post: Progressives stood up for risky measures, ignoring the downside risk of GOP control

By Andy Rotherham and Rob Saldin

Rufus Miles, the legendary federal administrator, coined the aphorism that “where you stand depends on where you sit.” Miles’s Law certainly seems to apply to the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to move most legislation in the United States Senate and has been a target of progressives frustrated by its high bar for compromise.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, recently acknowledged the hypocrisy out loud after Republicans won back Senate control: "Am I championing getting rid of the filibuster now when the [GOP] has the trifecta? No. But had we had the trifecta, I would have been."

Not long ago - earlier this year - Jayapal and many progressives were advocating scrapping the filibuster as a way to advance their priorities. It’s like a political marshmallow test of immediate versus delayed gratification. Luckily for Democrats, they didn’t succeed. With 53 Republican senators in 2025, plus a tie-breaking vice president, the filibuster is the only leverage Democrats have left in government.

Jayapal isn’t the only one struggling to recognize that actions have downstream consequences. In 2022, two abortion rights groups pulled their support from Senator Kyrsten Sinema because she voted against changing the filibuster rules. Sinema isn’t Nostradamus. She simply had the common sense to realize that political alignments change, majorities are not permanent, and maximalist political positions often backfire.

As Sinema noted, "To state the supremely obvious, eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v Wade also enables a future Congress to ban all abortion nationwide. What an absolutely terrible, shortsighted idea."

Outgoing Senator Joe Manchin came in for similar criticism for his unwillingness to tank the filibuster out of short term interest.

The Senate filibuster is always a target at any given moment depending who wields power. So it’s reassuring that incoming Majority Leader John Thune has signaled his intention to retain the institution even though it could constrain his flexibility and power. Thune seems to realize that doing so keeps fidelity with the Founders’ vision for the American political system and the Senate’s central role within it. Like Sinema he, too, may appreciate that in the American system majorities are never permanent and durable change requires compromise. 

Besides, we already have one House of Representatives. Turning the Senate into a second one doesn’t seem like it’s in the national interest or what the founders intended. 

Thune should steel himself, however, for the inevitable pushback when President Trump’s agenda encounters its first headwinds and Republicans start parroting progressive talking points about how some fill-in-the-blank issue is simply too important for the filibuster to stop. Trump called for ending the filibuster during his first term. Thune will be under similar pressure in no time, and Democrats unfortunately spent the past few years writing Trump’s talking points for him. Thune has an opportunity to show everyone that the institution he will soon lead has its own crucial role to play in the American story and that it doesn’t take its marching orders from the executive branch through White House pressure. 

The filibuster has a bad rap, and part of that is well deserved. It was used to thwart civil rights legislation. And in our era of disillusionment with institutions, the arcane Senate and its filibuster seems a more attainable target than say packing the Supreme Court. Yet as we noted a decade ago, Democrats too often forget that it’s also helped them defend against Republican extremism, as it did in 1994 when it stalled the GOP’s Contract with America. That’s a situation more analogous with today. 

The chaos of the last decade and the tumultuousness of the presidential transition is an acute reminder that institutions like the filibuster exist because political conditions change, and lurching too far at a moment of triumph can bring grave risks. The American political system was designed to temper the impulses of those in power, precisely for moments like this.

Democrats should know this by now. While former Senate majority leader Harry Reid never invoked the full “nuclear option” when Democrats held power, it was nonetheless shortsighted to water down the filibuster as he did. It opened the door to further weakening it. Like the old joke, once you’ve crossed the line you’re just arguing about price. At the time, confirming judges was seen as imperative. But every issue is important to some constituency. And while Reid did succeed in pushing through a few of his preferred lower court nominees, it set a precedent. It also made it much easier for Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett to later assume their posts on the top bench. They’re likely to be joined soon by at least two more Trump appointees who will almost certainly be confirmed by a margin several votes shy of the filibuster threshold.

Senate minorities using the filibuster should be judicious. Today’s keyboard filibusters are used too casually. One reform with promise would be returning to the “talking” filibuster, whereby the minority has to hold the floor and actually, well, filibuster the Senate. This would make debates visible to the public, allowing voters to decide if the stakes are worth grinding the Senate to a halt. It would also force compromise in the many cases where they are not. To de-escalate our politics we need measures that increase accommodation and decrease acrimony. 

That's why this matters to centrists. If you want a more moderate, consensus driven and pragmatic politics then the filibuster is your ally. Indeed, come January the filibuster will be one of the last things that keeps the parties talking to each other in Washington – at least until Democrats can wrest back control of the House.

Miles’s Law holds up overall. But when it comes to institutions ignore Jayapal’s situational approach: where you stand should be where you stand.

Andrew Rotherham is co-founder and senior partner at Bellwether, a national education non-profit, and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Rob Saldin is director of The Mansfield Center's Ethics and Public Affairs Program and a professor of Political Science at the University of Montana, and a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center.