We don't have minority rule. The Republicans cannot pass anything. We have gridlock. This is the best off all possible situations, where only bills that draw significant support from both parties can pass. The Senate just passed a major tech investment bill, because both parties could stand behind it. It would be even better if the house and the President were different parties and strongly opposed on most issues. How can it have been amended so many times if it is virtually impossible? It is actually really easy to amend, so long as there is near unanimous support for amending it. That is the way it should be. The rules shouldn't change because 50% of the senate votes to change.
The Constitution? It's incredibly difficult to amend. Over 200 years since it was written and there have been only 27 amendments. Want a comparison? The Texas constitution has 507 amendments. 507! The Texas constitution needs to be rewritten, but that's another topic.
In principle I can somewhat agree with this. I've previously said that no matter what party you're on you should be careful about removing things that make it easy for the majority considering you're likely to be in the minority. Considering Democrats have had control of the Senate less than the Republicans the last 20 years they should be acutely aware of how quickly things change. That said I agree the filibuster as is has been abused and it is simply too easy to invoke and I agree wasn't meant to be used on every vote. Let me ask you this. Would you support going back to the talking filibuster as the point of the tactic was to delay by holding the floor? Other posters are right. Given the history of the US the Constitution hasn't been amended often and isn't, requiring supermajorities of both Congress and the States. I personally am fine with that and don't think it should be easy.
The steps to amend are written right in the document. It isn't difficult, it just requires consensus. When there is consensus, it is easy. When there is not, it shouldn't be amended anyway. There are not a lot of Constitutional changes that have consensus support. No, because that is just meaningless theater. I like it in that nothing else happens during the filibuster, so it increases gridlock, but I don't think it is meaningful to have someone read a recipe book or whatever. Making it essentially virtual is better. It is like saying, pretend I am up there talking until the bill is withdrawn. I disagree on what you mean by easy or difficult. If you have the votes, it is not really hard it is just voting. Most proposed amendments don't have the votes.
It's the other way around. The intent of the filibuster was if you though delaying or stopping something legislatively was important enough you were willing to hold the floor even at risk to your own health to do it. Just pretending isn't meaningful. It would be like if I said I'm going to take pledges and run a marathon to raise money for cancer research but instead of running it I just pretended I did because I had other stuff to do with my time. There is a reason why the term "supermajority" is used as that means that a vote is harder to get passed. Amendments to the Constitution require supermajorities in both Congress and the States so it is the hardest thing to do under the Constitution.
I disagree. The intent of the filibuster was to prevent the passage of legislation when a majority exists to support it. The mechanism at one time was that a person had to get up and babble for hours. Eventually, there was a decision that if enough Senators supported the bill, they could end it with a cloture vote. Later, it was recognized that this was all really a waste of time, a filibuster would continue until there was a cloture vote and you may as well either pass the cloture vote or, if you don't have the support, move on to something else and not have the song and dance. This was a change to get rid of the silliness of the filibuster, while keeping the intent. It is harder, in that it requires more votes. If you have the votes, it isn't hard at all.
At least make them talk. It's absurd that a senator's aide can send an email stating that they intend to filibuster a bill and that grinds things to a halt. That isn't debate.
Our Constitution was a good try in history, but is an abomination in light of 200 plus years of increasing democracy world wide. When we could start from scratch we have imposed much better and democratic Constitutions of Germany, Japan and other places.
While I agree with your larger point, there has been over 200 years of experimentation and information we did not have when we drafted our Constitution - I don't think the majority of people would be comfortable with just drafting another one...... perhaps if things get bad enough, but it would take some very very bad times - we went through losing the WH to the British, the Civil War, the Great Depression and WWII. We would likely need to be invaded or hit an economic scenario not likely but possible.
BTW this one of the more important threads in this forum and deserves much more discussion. Given the problems with our f'd up Constitution combined with super computer gerrymandering, essentially billionaire control of politicians and media, so . The billionaires and their supporters can block needed changes for the majority and the increased general frustration could lead to a majority passively supporting a military coup that since the government cannot accomplish something, perhaps a strong allegedly honorable military leader could put things in order. We have see this frequently throughout the world in the last half century.
Chile just redrafted a new one. See my last post on why we are blocked from using the flawed procedures for changing the Constitution through amendments. The biggest change is to reform the S. Ct which has a strangle hold on political reform and preventing rule by the majoirity. With few exceptions the must lauded protection provided by the Court of minorities has been for the rich as it was intended.
It does deserve some discussion but its hard to discuss when you are using terms such as military coup and also demonizing all billionaires as if being a billionaire itself is bad. What exactly have we seen frequently in the world in the last half century?
