The House of representatives is supposed to operate as a rough, knock down, drag out chamber. Those seats are meant to be direct representatives of the people’s will. The Senate on the other hand is supposed to be the deliberative body. They are supposed to weigh the consequences of what they are doing and save the people from themselves should the need arise.  The founders recognized that direct democracy was just another term for mob rule, and the Senate was to be the buffer against that.

Originally, the members of the senate were to be selected by the states legislatures. This established a direct link back to the states that they represent. It also forced accountability back to the states legislatures that they are meant to represent. The 17th amendment that was ratified in 1913 made Senators elected by the people, bypassing the state’s bodies.

But, to help the senate fulfill its purpose, they had several rules that made passage of legislation more difficult. They realized, and I think correctly, that real harm to the nation can only come from the senate’s actions, not by its inaction. This is because the true governance of the people was to come from the states, not the federal government.

The filibuster is one of those rules meant to impede the process of passing laws. A version of this rule exists in many world governments, but the version in the US deals with the debating of a bill. In order to get to a vote that allows the passing of a bill by a simple majority, the senate first has to invoke cloture, ending the debate. Cloture requires 60 votes. That is the reason a lot of bills die in the senate. If there isn’t enough support to close off debate, then the bill never gets an up or down vote.

The Democrats have been trying to eat away at this process for a while, and always when they have a very slim majority. After all, it is just a rule for the senate, not a requirement. The senate can change its own rules with a simple majority vote. That is exactly what they did during the Obama years with judicial appointments. They didn’t have enough votes to get cloture, but they had enough to change rules, so they did. The republicans warned them that they wouldn’t always have a majority, and this change was likely to bite them. And it did when Republicans regained control and forced a record amount of judges through with a simple majority vote.

So why would the Dems want to change the rule now for all legislation? Because they are assuming that they will never lose control of the senate again. The plan is to change the rules for cloture to 50 votes, and then pass the For the People Act. That bill would federalize all election laws that are currently maintained by the states themselves. It would federalize the same laws that were used to steal the last presidential election.

With that kind of power over elections, the Democrats will just use the blueprint of 2020 for all future elections and freeze out any real opposition. That is why the filibuster is the last thing standing between us, and socialism.