Time to End the Filibuster to Protect Voting Rights

The battle for American Democracy is on in earnest. 

By Jim Miller

With the Republicans responding to their recent electoral setbacks by rolling out draconian restrictions aimed at limiting the right to vote in a way that targets working class communities of color in a host of American states, the Democrats have finally decided to fight back at a systemic level.  

As the freshman Senator from Georgia, Raphael Warnock, aptly put it, the Republican efforts are “Jim Crow in new clothes.”  Thus, the Democrats are pushing legislation that would expand and protect rather than restrict voting.  According to the New York Times: 

• [T]he bill, called the For the People Act, would usher in landmark changes making it easier to vote, enact new campaign finance laws and end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts. The legislation passed the House along party lines earlier this month. It faces solid opposition from Republicans who are working to clamp down on ballot access, and who argue that the bill is a power grab by Democrats.

The hue and cry coming from the Republicans is all part of a big lie that is not just Trumpian in character but goes back many decades and is an aspect of a concerted strategy of the Radical Right which has, at present, completely seized control of the party.  

Where did this start?  

Nancy MacLean’s seminal book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America sheds much light on how we got to the dark moment.  In her study, she outlines the history of the right, born in the South as conservatives struggled to push back against Brown versus Board of Education and come up with a strategy that might halt the progress of the Civil Rights movement, roll back the gains of the New Deal, and permanently alter American Democracy to protect the interests of the elite.  

MacLean carefully outlines their list of enemies: regulation loving environmentalists, health policy crusaders, progressive tax advocates, all tax-funded public education, and feminism with its tendency toward “socialism.”  All these things and more were seen as threats to their vision where the only legitimate roles of the government were its policing and national defense functions—and even those could stand for a good amount of privatization.  

Also seen as a danger to liberty is “a broad and inclusive electorate” that would inevitably have the inclination to want more than a servile role in American society.  James Buchanan, the intellectual architect of this current in right-wing philosophy, explicitly complained that the U.S. was “rapidly enfranchising the illiterate” and saw mass voting as a problem to be contained.  

If they are successful, those in this Buchanan-inspired movement envision a Social Darwinist paradise where “some will flourish” and others “will fall by the wayside.”  No one will deserve health care, clean water, housing, education, labor rights, retirement security, fair criminal justice, or even democracy except those who can buy them.  Voting rights will be restricted, state and municipal governments shackled, and the Constitution loaded with multiple “vetoes” to collective power.  

MacLean notes that one of Buchanan’s heroes was James Calhoun, a great enemy of broad-based franchise in American history.  And his vision fell right in line with the intellectual legacy he cherished:

• Buchanan’s desired constitutional order enabled an era of unmatched corporate dominance, in which elites of North and South reunited in a shared disdain for the political participation of the great mass of the citizenry.  His view of the Constitution allowed mass disenfranchisement in the South, suppression of working-class voting in the North and the West, treatment of workers that was odious enough to set off veritable civil wars between capital and labor, ruin the environment in community after community, and more.  

Buchanan’s dream, she notes, was “plutocracy,” and we are well on our way to enshrining it.  That is why MacLean goes so far as to describe the right-wing movement of think tanks and the subsequent political movement they inform as a kind anti-democratic “fifth column” set to undermine all that any lover of democracy holds dear.  

MacLean observes that historically, the right knew that their anti-democratic agenda was deeply unpopular, so they always lied about their true intentions, just as some Republicans in the Senate are doing at present with their protests against “corruption” covering their attempts to permanently corrupt American democracy.  

Indeed, as a recent Jacobin piece observes, “The importance of voting restrictions to right-wing groups has only grown in recent years. Shortly after the 2020 presidential election, WallBuilders’ founder, Barton, was one of many right-wing leaders who promoted the lie that the election had yet to be decided. For its part, ALEC teamed up with other right-wing groups to ramp up its efforts to push voting restrictions in the wake of Joe Biden’s inauguration.”

Now, though, after Trump’s defeat and the shocking turn of events in the Georgia Senatorial campaign, some on the right are starting to say the quiet part out loud in in an effort to stir up enough white resentment to help push a democracy-killing agenda in states across the country.  Thus, Senate leader Chuck Schumer is right to call out the Republican opposition as he did last week:

• “Today, in the 21st century, there is a concerted, nationwide effort to limit the rights of citizens to vote and to truly have a voice in their own government,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader.

• He called the voting rollbacks in the states an “existential threat to our democracy” reminiscent of Jim Crow segregationist laws, chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at the Republicans promoting them.

The question now is whether the Senate Democrats can muster the backbone to drag hesitant moderates to embrace ending the filibuster to save our democracy from this clear existential threat.  

As David Sirota has pointed out, “Filibuster rules allowing 41 senators to halt legislation effectively empowers a group of Republican senators representing just 22% of the population to gridlock the government.”  

Democrats need to win this fight by any means necessary to keep the chains off our right to vote.