What Would James Madison Have Thought Of The Filibuster?

This article by Greg Sargent is published by The Washington Post. Here is an excerpt:

With Sen. Joe Manchin III digging in behind his seemingly unshakable devotion to a minority veto over legislation in the Senate, the West Virginia Democrat committed a howler on Tuesday, claiming the filibuster goes back 232 years — meaning all the way back to the founding.

That’s not even remotely true. But regardless, it captures something essential about the position of filibuster defenders: that in some sense the filibuster is squarely in keeping with the vision of the Senate espoused by the framers.

By contrast, in his speech on Tuesday, President Biden called for a temporary suspension of the filibuster to pass voting rights protections. He cast abuse of the filibuster as an impediment to good government, and argued that this position is more consistent with restoring the Senate’s true institutional purpose.

Read the full article here.