Can a Democrat Save the Filibuster?

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Senator Joe Manchin’s statement in support of the filibuster would seem to put a dagger through the heart of Senator Schumer’s hopes to get rid of the most famous rule in the Senate. It was particularly nice to see the context in which the Mountain State maven placed his point — the defining constitutional principle of the Senate, which is the equal representation of the states.

Mr. Manchin came out in favor of the filibuster in an op-ed piece in the Post newspaper in Washington. He vowed that he would vote neither to eliminate nor weaken the filibuster, a rule that requires 60 votes to end debate. The filibuster is designed to protect against the upper chamber passing legislation based on only a narrow margin among the states, each of which gets two seats in the world’s greatest deliberative body.

“It’s no accident,” Mr. Manchin mentions, “that a state as small as West Virginia has the same number of senators as California or Texas.” That “goes to the heart of what representative government is all about.” He notes that the “Founding Fathers understood that the challenges facing a rural or small state would always be very different from a more populous state.” Hence they unmoored the Senate from population.

Here’s how Mr. Manchin puts it: “Designating each state with the same number of senators — regardless of the population — ensured that rural and small states and the Americans who live in them would always have a seat at the table.” In other words, the whole concept of the Senate is to establish protection against the tyranny of the majority. It is supposed to temper the dangers of democracy.

How important was this to the Founders who struck the original compact among the states? It was so important that the Framers actually made it practically impossible to end the system in which each state gets the same votes. They did this by including, in Article 5, a permanent prohibition on depriving any state, without its consent, of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. The point is essentially unamendable.

It’s not our intention here to suggest that the Constitution forbids the Senate from doing away with the filibuster. On the contrary, it reserves to each house the power to determine the rules of its proceedings. All the more notable is Mr. Manchin’s linking of the spirit of the filibuster to the equal suffrage of the states within the Senate. Both rules are part of our system of protecting political minorities.

Which is why it is so hypocritical of President Biden to draw a bead on the filibuster. Protecting the filibuster ought to be a priority in the Senate for any administration pledged to restore a sense of national unity and common purpose, as Mr. Biden ostensibly is pledged to do. No doubt this is why Mr. Manchin warned that the Democrats would not solve our nation’s problems if we seek only partisan solutions. Let’s hope he stands his ground.


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