The Best Way to Honor John Lewis? Ditch the Filibuster, Barack Obama Says
When Barack Obama strode to the front of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s one-time church in Atlanta to eulogize Civil Rights icon and Congressman John Lewis, few expected the take-away to be his call for changes to arcane Senate procedures. But when the histories of Civil Rights in the twenty-first century are written, the former President’s comments on Thursday may well be a watershed moment.
With his signature clipped cadence and sense of purpose, Obama used his globally televised remarks to call for an end to a procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate that gives the body’s political minority outsized power to derail legislation. In his unexpected call to end the filibuster — a trick requiring a 60-vote supermajority to allow anything of consequence to proceed in the Senate — Obama became the most prominent Democrat yet to lend support to a procedural change that could reshape Congress’ routine that, to this point, is designed to stymie fast action.
During his eulogy of Lewis, Obama likened the filibuster to a “Jim Crow relic” used to derail important legislation like a voting rights renewal and statehood for the District of Columbia. Obama lamented how a handful of holdouts could impede movement — and often at the expense of Americans with the fewest rights and the least power.
In practical terms, Obama’s proposal would grease the path for a new slate of legislation that could remake the country with a strong liberal footprint when Democrats at some point reclaim a narrow majority. But it would also mark a step away from the Senate’s traditional role of steady and sober check on the quick-to-act House. And just as easily as it moves Democratic goals, it could just as easily be turned against them when Republicans inevitably reclaim that majority down the line.
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