Public Doesn’t Care About Filibusters

Photo used under a Creatives Commons license by Flickr user <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/metal4rock/1196819338/"_blank">metal4rock</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Earlier this week, New Mexico senator Tom Udall, a freshman Democrat, introduced a resolution that, should it succeed, would set in motion a process that could lead to the elimination of the filibuster at the start of the 112th Congress next January. (If that sentence sounded unnecessarily clunky and complicated, well, welcome to the Senate.)

Udall’s resolution seeks to reverse the long-held notion known as the “continuing body” theory, which posits that Senate rules transfer from one Congress to the next, and thus can only be changed by a two-thirds vote (or, more likely, an act of God). “Continuing body” sounds like a great name for a New Age healing ritual, but it’s a really lousy way to run a government: as a result of the built-in impediments to reform, the Senate operates on a set of rules that only a handful of its members ever voted for. Instead, Udall contends that every Congress has the authority to set its own rules, under Article 1 Section 5 of the Constitution. He’s probably right.

The filibuster’s faults are self-evident, but that doesn’t make its elimination a winning political issue by any stretch. According to a new survey from Pew, only 26% of Americans know how many votes it takes to overrule a filibuster. (For a point of comparison, consider that 32% could identify Michael Steele as the chairman of the RNC). While Democrats have been effective in turning Steele into a political pincushion, a year’s worth of grousing about Senate procedure hasn’t made it into a hot-button issue.

Nor, for that matter, will another year’s worth of grousing have any effect, if history is any indication. At the peak of the filibuster debate in 2005, when Senate Republicans sought to change the rules to protect their electoral mandate, the public remained largely indifferent: 37% opposed the plan, 28% supported it, and 35% didn’t really know what to think. And despite a barage of advertisements in support of the “nuclear option” to end the filibuster, just 14% of respondents admitted to following the filibuster debate “very closely.” That was probably thanks to other more pressing issues like high gas prices, the war in Iraq, social security, the economy, and the search for a new Pope.

Democrats may be right to highlight Senate rules as an overarching obstacle to democracy. But that alone won’t make it a winning argument.

Follow Tim Murphy on Twitter.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate