Kill Switch Lib/E: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy

by Adam Jentleson, P.J. Ochlan (Reading)

An insider's account of how politicians representing a radical minority of Americans are using the greatest deliberative body in the world to hijack our democracy. Every major decision governing our diverse, majority-female, and increasingly liberal country bears the stamp of the US Senate, yet the Senate allows an almost exclusively white, predominantly male, and radically conservative minority of the American electorate to impose its will on the rest of us. How did we get to this point? In Kill Switch, Adam Jentleson argues that shifting demographics alone cannot explain how Mitch McConnell harnessed the Senate and turned it into a powerful weapon of minority rule. As Jentleson shows, since the 1950s, a free-flowing body of relative equals has devolved into a rigidly hierarchical, polarized institution, with both Democrats and Republicans to blame. The current GOP has merely used the methods pioneered by its predecessors, though to newly extreme ends. In a work for fans of How Democracies Die and even Master of the Senate, Jentleson makes clear that, without a reevaluation of Senate practices--starting with ending the filibuster--we face the prospect of permanent minority rule in America.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, American History, Political Science, Government, Audiobook

Audio CD

First published January 12, 2021

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a timely, important book about the rise of an obstructionist, minority-rule Senate. Jentleson (former Deputy Chief of Staff to Majority Leader Harry Reid) does an excellent job laying out the Senate's origins as a majoritarian institution and tracing its evolution into its modern form, where a "superminority" can block the priorities of a much larger number of Americans into perpetuity. I knew much of this history in the abstract, but the author does an excellent job of connecting the philosophy and leadership of historical figures (Madison, Calhoun, Russell, Reid, and McConnell, among others) to changes in the institution and ultimately how our country is governed. I learned a number of details with which I was generally unfamiliar.

Modern Republicans come in for more criticism, which is correct and reasonable -- in fact, their approach to governance is much of the problem, and I view many of the Senate's current travails as symptomatic of that broader issue. But I give Jentleson significant credit for acknowledging openly the role that Democrats like Lyndon Johnson and Harry Reid played in centralizing power in the Majority Leader's office. He also effectively debunks that the Senate's current dysfunction is solely because we give small states too much power; instead, the problems are first and foremost the rules and norms of the institution. When norms and practices change, the rules need to as well.

My complaints about this book are minor. It occasionally spends too long on some of the profiles of individuals who shaped the Senate and or lapses into passages that seem mostly focused on settling scores with some of the more obnoxious folks Jentleson crossed paths with on the Hill. (Don't get me wrong, I'm here all day for pointing out how terrible David Vitter is, so I enjoyed it, but these kinds of passages were distractions from the larger, more important themes of the book). The two-part structure worked well, but the chronology of the book could have been a bit tighter, as it unnecessarily dips between past and present in a few places. The solutions section could have used some further elaboration as well, but in many ways, that section is beyond the point: Jentleson is laying out a major problem and how we got there, as well as the principles we must restore if we are to move forward. Getting deeply into the weeds of solutions can be addressed in other venues.

4.5 stars, rounding up for timeliness, clear writing, and producing a book that shouldn't obviously have just been a magazine piece. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

[Anthony Caruso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everybody who knows me, or follows me on social media, knows that I am a political nerd. Probably, to a fault, I could be described as a political hobbyist. Likewise, anyone who knows me or follows me on social media knows that my political leanings are no secret - raised in a Conservative household, I adopted the Republican points of view when I wasn't engaged, but evolved over the years as I started paying attention more to become a hardcore progressive, supporting candidates such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the already iconic AOC.

There's a reason I need to make the above views known, which will become clear in a moment.

I had Adam Jentleson's "Kill Switch" on pre-order since July of 2020 and have been eagerly anticipating it ever since. While well-versed on how the Senate has been manipulated over the years and turned from the greatest deliberative body in the world to the place where legislation goes to die, I was looking forward to reading a detailed history on its decline written by a former staffer of former Majority Leader Harry Reid. Having just finished this extremely informative and well written novel, it's clear from a fact-based, objective point of view that only one party is responsible for the degradation of the upper chamber of Congress - Republicans.

This book details how Republicans from John Calhoun to Mitch McConnell broke norms and widened divisions in our country by dog whistling to White Supremacists in order to trample the wishes of Madison and our Founders to give the smallest minority in our country - a "superminority" - a chance to decide the fate of every piece of legislation and every executive appointment that passes through the Senate. Adam Jentleson tells this true story in a compelling manner, proving he's a master storyteller as he weaves his narrative back and forth through time, explaining to the reader how our country ended up in the crappy situation we find ourselves in today. Not only that though, but Jentleson, a student of the great Harry Reid, also outlines in great detail his solutions for fixing the Senate, which nobody - especially after reading this book - can deny is fundamentally broken and doesn't represent the majority of Americans or the will of the people of this country.

Is this book for everyone? Probably not. But if you like true stories, are a history nut, and/or a political nerd like myself, this is one of the more engaging historical accounts of America's upper chamber of congress out there. Written less like a textbook and more like a novel, including ending his chapters with tantalizing hooks to make you want to keep reading, Jentleson's book is a must read. I can only hope his next project details the history and evolution of the House of Representatives next. 5 out of 5 stars.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent tracing of the history of how, in the author's wonderful turn of phrase, "the Senate's minority protections have been inflated into tools of minority domination." There is a ton of good information here, not only about the history of the Senate's filibuster rule but also about why it has been used by the minority party. It's shocking to see how only 41 people have, due to the filibuster, total power to completely shut down all lawmaking and progress. The author has extensive knowledge of the Senate's inner workings due to years as a senior aide.

My one caveat here is that the author doesn't seem to recognize when his arguments don't match the historical record. For example, he claims that the Framers of the Constitution were 100% invested in majority rule, yet neglects to mention that the people eligible to vote as part of this so-called majority were white men with some wealth. Less than 29,000 people voted in the first presidential election; at the time, Virginia alone has 300,000 slaves. The Framers did not care about majority rule, so it's quite hypocritical to claim that the current state of the Senate is against what the Framers wanted. It may be undemocratic, but it was designed that way.

[Holly Weston Bull · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually thought Kill Switch was outstanding. Adam Jentleson, former aide to Harry Reid, knows his stuff. And I completely agree with his thesis that the Senate is a broken institution.

I also really appreciated the ideas he lays out in the epilogue for how this once-august chamber could revert to being the deliberative body the Founders intended.

The only reason I’m giving Kill Switch 4 stars instead of 5 may be an unfair one: it’s just that Jentleson’s partisanship is so apparent. Of course Mitch McConnell is a conscience-free opportunist who has made an already bad Senate into a joke, but I think Jentleson lets his former boss off too easily; Harry Reid certainly shares some of the blame for the appalling state of the modern Senate.

Still and all, a very fine book and one I’m certain I will reread.

[Wick Welker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The filibuster must go.

I was hesitant dive into Kill Switch, afraid it might just be a liberal rant only offering sensationalism. Certainly there is liberal bias by the author but I was pleased to find a lot of history about how the US Senate has become the calcified, obstructive and corrupt body of minority will that it is today. Jentleson lays out some important ground work starting with James Madison. He is often quoted by those who assert that being a republic is supposed to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. This is a modern, conservative spin and Madison in fact intended the exact opposite. A republic, by design, is supposed to be ruled by majority consensus. The Senate was designed from the beginning to legislate by simple majority, meaning a simple 51 of the 100 senators. Is it perfect? Of course not, but we weren't supposed to have a system where Senators that literally only represent 35% of the population can obstruct policy when the majority of the publicly clearly favors it.

The current filibuster is new and is not what was originally intended. Jentleson lays out some nice history of one in particular: John Calhoun. White supremacist, segregationist Senator and Vice President from South Carolina who very much tried to get minority will to drive everything the Senate did. He is the grandfather of the modern filibuster. Unlimited debate was NOT intended by the framers of the US constitution but this exactly what Calhoun wanted: to obfuscate to protect southern white supremacy and their economy of slaver. Filibustering started to be used when rule 22 was invented as a slavery abolition obstructionist tool and to continue to ensure power of the southern states. Whether it was democrats or republicans at the time, either way, it was used by southern white supremacists to preserve white apartheid state.

Flash forward to LBJ and Jesse Helm. These two men greatly contributed to what would become the modern use of the filibuster. The super minority draws its strength from conflict, not broad appeal. These senators figured out that as long as they don't piss off their base, they can become political heroes simply by filibustering and to require a super majority to even vote on bills. But requiring a super majority does not encourage debate and consensus, it only obstructs and creates false political martyrs who stoke culture wars and bring in campaign dollars. Harry Reid also radically changed filibustering when he "went nuclear" and made it so presidential appointments didn't have to have a super majority (except Supreme Court appointments). Enter Mitch McConnell who ironically early in his career was an enormous voice for campaign finance reform. McConnell then tried to get corruption denied only as explicit exchange and quid pro quo. This was obviously before Citizens United ruling which made all this moot and completely destroyed US elections in my opinion.

I found Kill Switch to be hugely informative and brought to my mind the salient problems with our Senate, the foremost is that the filibuster is hugely abused to require a super majority. The facts are simple: a minority voting block of white Americans wield outsized control over the US through the Senate. 35% of the US population controls the levers of meaningful legislation. And this is a new trend. Before President Obama, there were only 82 filibusters ever; during his administration he alone had 86 filibusters by the GOP. This is unprecedented stuff.

The filibuster is anti-democratic, corrupt and it must go. It can happen, too. We'll see...

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

[1 Sept 2023]
For politics junkies, this is a valuable history of the U.S. Senate, and especially the filibuster. The author worked in the Senate for many years, as an aide to Harry Reid, who was the long-term Democratic majority leader. It starts out a little slowly, going back to the Founding. Those chapters were a little dry, but they're important for understanding the later developments. Jentleson traces the development of the filibuster, from the Great Compromise, which gave us a bicameral Congress with a Senate composed of two senators from each state regardless of size, to the efforts of Southern Senators to preserve the rights to "unlimited debate", to today's filibuster which involves no debate at all. It's all very arcane and confusing. I think Jentleson does a pretty good job of explaining the history and giving us a picture of the main players involved. He seems to believe that the Senate is a pretty much toothless institution these days and he blames Senators of both parties who gradually changed the rules in their efforts to maintain their own power. He does not even exempt Harry Reid, who he obviously admired, but who did not do anything to undo the trend. Jentlesen provides some proposed solutions for remaking the Senate as "the greatest deliberative body", but they've mostly all been suggested before and are unlikely to be implemented as long as the U.S. electorate remains so evenly divided.

It's an interesting read and not too long. I recommend it.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly interesting refresher on the history of the US Senate. There's quite a big jump made after Johnson's term as Majority Leader—which Jentleseon explains, but is still odd. Given that today's Republicans would rather overturn US democracy rather than lose an election, it seems unlikely that much will change with the Senate or the electoral college, but perhaps some of todays' Senate Democrats will read this and learn something. Ahem.

> Johnson’s maneuvering in the summer of 1957 is rightfully considered a historic feat of personal persuasion, tactical brilliance, and strategic acumen. But only months before, Johnson had defeated an effort that might have rendered much of it moot, along with the gutting of the bill that resulted. By blocking the bipartisan coalition of reformers led by Nixon from reforming Rule 22 in January, Johnson preserved the South’s ability to credibly threaten the civil rights bill with a filibuster, making it necessary to gut the bill and win their cooperation

> Politically, the passage of the 1957 bill completed the third step in Johnson’s plan, making him a hero to many liberals. Within the Senate, it was the accomplishment that gave him the authority to finally stand on his own, apart from Russell. He would need it. Passing the bill with southern acquiescence had allowed him to delay his inevitable break with the “Old Master.”

> All other presidents combined had endured a total of eighty-two filibusters against their nominees. But from 2009 to 2013, President Obama alone faced eighty-six … under President Bill Clinton, unanimous judicial nominees—those who ended up having zero votes cast against their nomination—waited an average of 17 days to receive their confirmation votes. Under President George W. Bush, the wait was 29 days. Under President Obama, it was 125 days

> he started the process of going nuclear. He brought up a vote on a nomination and asked the presiding officer, Senator Patrick Leahy, for a ruling on whether it took a supermajority to invoke cloture. Leahy ruled that it did, since that is what Senate rules stated. Reid then called a vote to overturn the ruling of the chair and it passed, 52 to 48. This method of changing Senate rules was dubbed “the Reid Precedent” by longtime Senate staffer William Dauster. The change executed by Reid and Senate Democrats that day meant that from then on, it would take only a majority to invoke cloture and end debate on most presidential nominations, excluding, for the time being, Supreme Court nominees.

> In the twenty-first century, Senate Republicans have represented a minority of the population every year, despite holding as many as fifty-five seats, as they did from 2005 to 2006

> At thirty-nine million people, California’s population is as big as the twenty-two least populous states combined.

> From 1957 to 1960, as we have seen, Nixon was advocating for strong civil rights bills and leading a largely successful effort to expand GOP outreach to black voters. But in 1968, Nixon returned to American political life with a very different approach, using Democrats’ support for the civil rights bills Johnson passed as president to draw racist white voters

> At a moment in history when the GOP was still relatively liberal on social issues, Helms pushed it to become the culture-warring party we know today

> As the Senate grew and changed, one constant remained: the role of party leader was at best a figurehead. In 1878, the New York Times noted that the Senate had no “distinctly recognized leaders.” … to deal with the challenges of memberships and workloads that continued to grow, Senate Democrats created the formal position of leader in 1920 and Republicans followed in 1925 … This was true until 1952, when Richard Russell anointed Lyndon Johnson as the Democratic leader.

> Johnson exploited Democrats’ insecurity to break the seniority system, convincing the old bulls that the only way they could counter Eisenhower’s popularity and avoid being relegated to permanent minority status was to elevate some of their young stars, like Hubert Humphrey and Mike Mansfield, onto the key committees, where they could gain a national platform and serve as compelling spokespeople for the party. Russell backed the move, and the combination of his support and Johnson’s persuasive powers convinced the committee chairs to let Johnson play a role in doling out committee assignments.

> Early in his tenure as leader, Johnson moved to assert control over the floor schedule and inject himself into senators’ decision-making process. His vehicle was the Democratic Policy Committee, a sleepy backwater that Johnson reimagined as a way to centralize information in the leader’s office—and information was power.

> With his connections to Texas oil barons, Johnson had an enormous reservoir of funds he could distribute at will, at a time when there were few restrictions on political donations. Johnson would dispatch staffers around the country to pick up deliveries of cash, or money would make its way to him in envelopes handed over from lobbyists like Tommy Corcoran, also known as Tommy the Cork. Johnson would then apportion it to senators as he saw fit.

> even after Johnson finished remaking the role of Senate leader into a position worthy of the name, it still had little formal power. In the House, the Speaker controls the all-powerful Rules Committee, which sets the terms for every bill that comes to the floor, from how long debate will last to when and under exactly what conditions the vote will take place. To this day, the Senate majority leader enjoys no such structural control.

> Johnson was miserable in the Kennedy administration, openly despised by the president’s brother Bobby, and finding his Hill Country style an awkward fit in Camelot. “Power is where power goes,” Johnson liked to say, but that was not proving to be true. … he tried maintaining control of the Senate. He asked Mansfield to change the traditional rules governing the Democratic Party caucus to allow him, a member of the executive branch, to preside over the caucus, including sitting in on their closed-door strategy sessions. The deferential Mansfield agreed. When the caucus convened in its private session to elect new leaders, Johnson presided over the election of Mansfield as majority leader. And then he simply didn’t leave. Nor did he cede the leader’s chair to Mansfield. The members of the caucus were shocked, and a polite senatorial revolt ensued

> Until 1980, Democratic control of Congress seemed like a fact of life. Starting in 1955, Democrats held unbroken control of the Senate for twenty-six years. The story was similar in the House, but more extreme: between 1933 and 1995 Democrats controlled the House for all but four years. With control of the majority out of sight, and plenty of points of ideological connection across the aisle, Republican senators also tended to assume Democratic control was impossible to dislodge, and focused more on exerting their influence on policy than trying to take back the majority.

> The process gets its name from the chart that keeps track of what amendments are pending. It’s a piece of paper kept by clerks in the cloakroom, and the chart looks like a tree; the branches are the lines where the amendments are written in. There are a limited number of branches available on any given bill (about eleven). Filling the tree means putting the bill the leader wants the Senate to consider in one slot and placeholders in all the others. The cloakroom keeps these shell amendments close at hand for the leader to slot in when needed. Because leaders have the right of first recognition and get to speak first on any bill, it’s very difficult to stop them from filling the tree, and once it’s filled, it is extremely hard to undo. In his time as leader, Reid shattered the record for filling the tree, using the tool far more than any other leader.

> Reid took control far beyond where even Johnson had been able to push it, and it changed the institution. What had once been a wide-open floor where senators could usually secure whatever votes they sought had become a place where every single vote ran through the leader.

> Reagan’s nomination of Bork was an odd choice. The year before Reagan nominated him, Democrats had gained eight seats in the 1986 midterm elections and retaken control of the Senate. While it was common for the president of one party to ask a Senate controlled by the other party to confirm a Supreme Court nominee, the president usually nodded to political reality by picking a nominee the other party could live with. Asking a Democratic Senate to confirm a radical conservative like Bork was courting trouble, and Reagan got it. … Conservatives’ outrage over Bork’s defeat led to the emergence of one of the most influential institutions of the last four decades: the Federalist Society. The Society was founded in 1982 at Yale Law School, with Bork as its faculty adviser. The Federalist Society’s members saw themselves as “scrappy outsiders who were waging a lonely struggle against the pervasive liberalism of America’s law schools,”

> While he lost his presidential bid to then–Texas governor George W. Bush, McCain’s campaign had elevated his corruption message, and it stuck. Backed by that momentum, he led Senate reformers to finally break McConnell’s filibuster in 2002 and the Senate passed McCain-Feingold, formally known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, by a vote of 60 to 40. President Bush reluctantly signed it into law. Undaunted, McConnell promptly took the law to court—literally. The lawsuit, McConnell v. FEC, went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which ruled for McCain in a 5-to-4 decision, upholding the major aspects of McCain-Feingold and explicitly rebuking the narrow definition of corruption advocated by McConnell. “Plaintiffs conceive of corruption too narrowly,” the majority opinion concluded. “Congress’ legitimate interest extends beyond preventing simple cash-for-votes corruption to curbing undue influence on an office-holder’s judgment, and the appearance of such influence.”

> Using Gold and Gupta’s rationale, Republicans argued that it would be firmly in line with Senate tradition to overturn Rule 22 and end debate with a majority vote—in other words, to go nuclear

> John Roberts sailed through on a 78-to-22 vote. A few months later, Bush nominated the hard-right Samuel Alito. When Democrats threatened to filibuster, Republicans threatened—again—to go nuclear. Democrats backed off, and Alito was confirmed, 58 to 42. The deal looks even worse zoomed out: all of Bush’s far-right nominees were confirmed, but the filibuster was left intact for Republicans to use against President Obama—which they did to devastating effect. That obstruction has already been discussed, but here it is worth noting the enormous political capital that five years of constant obstruction cost Obama before Democrats finally went nuclear in 2013

> by the 1970s leaders were overwhelmed. The tracking system allowed the Senate to process other business during a filibuster by creating separate legislative tracks where other business could move along while one track remained blocked by a filibuster. Because the Senate was able to move on to other issues, a filibuster didn’t attract as much attention as it used to. However, it still blocked the bill it was aimed at

> In 1975, in response to a marathon series of filibusters by Senator James Allen—the segregationist Democrat who had taught Helms how to filibuster—reformers lowered the cloture threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths, or the sixty votes

> The silent filibuster is also a result of leaders coming to rely on what are known as “unanimous consent” agreements, or UCs. … Facing enormous workloads and reliant on UCs, leaders got in the habit of canvassing their caucuses ahead of time to see if anyone objected to a bill or nomination they were considering bringing to the floor. Again, this had a benefit to the leader: it was an early-warning system that alerted them to a senator’s intent to filibuster. But again, it damaged the institution: to deter a leader from moving forward, all a senator had to do was signal their intent to filibuster. This is what is now known as placing a “hold.”

> An early series of regulatory rollbacks was executed using the Congressional Review Act, which established a special category of time-limited legislation that is immune to filibusters (the CRA is not of much use to progressives, since it’s only particularly useful for undoing laws and regulations); the CRA bills passed on simple-majority votes. Republicans’ tax reform bill passed through another special procedure called budget reconciliation, which is also immune to filibusters

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was every bit as informative and infuriating as I expected it would be.

[Stewart Sternberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This should be a book read by every Freshman in college. Dense politics, carefully researched, and slightly partisan.

The book gives us an historical recounting of how the Senate developed into the hot mess it has become. From Calhoun and the slavers to Johnson and Russell, to Reid and McConnell.

A functioning government is essential for a republic. Kill the filibuster.

[Christian Morse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Lays out in fascinating detail the history of the Senate filibuster’s corroding effects on “the world’s most deliberative body.”

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The absolute, without-a-doubt, most important book any American could read right now for the moment we're in. I learned so much.

[Jim Razinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jentleson hits the proverbial nail on the head and identifies the source of the cancer:

The tool that white supremacist senators honed in the Jim Crow era to defy the majority is the filibuster, as we know it today. [...] From John Calhoun, the antebellum father of nullification who argued, on the Senate floor, that slavery was a “positive good,” to Richard Russell, the post–World War II puppet master of the Senate who swore that “any southern white man worth a pinch of salt would give his all to maintain white supremacy,” to Mitch McConnell in our own time, who declared that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” southern senators invented the filibuster, strengthened it, and developed alternative histories to justify it.

Alternative histories to justify it. Yeah. They're good at that. "Benjamin Franklin wrote that a system where 'the minority overpowers the majority' would be 'contrary to the Common Practice of Assemblies in all Countries and Ages.'” And yet, here we are.

Recommended by my friend, this is not a long book but may take a bit longer than expected if you drill down the notes and sources, and if you, like me, take breaks to let the mind heal. If you think for yourself, this will infuriate you. If, however, you like to watch a certain “News” Channel and get all tuckered out not thinking… well, it’s likely to make you mad as well because the senators you probably support are deeply complicit in the dysfunction of the Senate. Not completely to blame, of course, but largely responsible. It’s not just the Senate; the parties’ demographics played a significant part. (Note: What was once “Democrat” in the South now prominently aligns with Republican, so it is not the party, but the players).

[I]n 1968, Nixon returned to American political life with a very different approach, using Democrats’ support for the civil rights bills Johnson passed as president to draw racist white voters—those for whom studies showed that maintaining racial hierarchy was an acute motivating factor in their political choices—away from Democrats and into the GOP. Nixon’s strategy worked, and the conservatism Republican senators represent today, laced with racist undertones (and under Trump, overtones), is its legacy.

Overtones. Understatement, that.
It may be tempting to cry oversimplification, but the indicators are all there: “According to a 2019 New York Times analysis of data collected by the Manifesto Project, a group that tracks party-policy positions around the globe, the modern Republican Party is more extreme than Britain’s Independence Party and France’s National Rally party, both of which are far-right populist parties that verge on neofascism. ” And far-right… far anything, left or right, to be fair … is ripe for totalitarianism. Still, that isn’t quite an applicable spectral division… far right adherents seem to be more cohesive, with dogmas attracting “predominantly white, anti-choice conservatives serving wealthy interests” (Jentleson’s analysis), while far lefts seem chaotically diverse at best. And while the southern senators have been largely responsible for the minority rule of the filibuster, the power of the Majority Leadership came out of Lyndon Johnson's machinations, and Reid's grip, handing McConnell an easy tool for extreme obstructionism and destruction. While he minority leader and deliberately blocking the democratic republican process of debate on a background-checks bill, “[McConnell ...] found time to introduce a resolution celebrating the recent March Madness triumph of the University of Louisville men’s basketball team (he’s a big fan). But on the leading proposal for the federal government’s policy response to the massacre of twenty first-graders, the leader of the opposition contributed a grand total of two minutes of floor debate.
McConnell’s performance was the rule, not the exception, as most members of the minority followed his lead. In a debate that stretched over a week, the forty-five senators who opposed the background-checks bill spoke for a grand total of two hours and twenty-four minutes. All but a few minutes’ worth of this “debate” came in the form of prepared speeches, read to a mostly empty chamber.

Madison's vision of majority rule was undermined in his lifetime:

In 1834, less than two years before he passed away at his home in Montpelier, Virginia, Madison engaged the topic once more, writing, “We must recur to the monitory reflection that no Government of human device, and human administration can be perfect; that that which is the least imperfect is therefore the best.” The “abuses of all other governments have led to the preference of Republican Government,” as “the best of all governments because the least imperfect.” Madison concluded, “The vital principle of Republican Government is the lex majoris partis, the will of the majority.”

[author's italics]

Jentleson lays the background and then

The story of the Senate through the 1960s was, in large part, the story of a white supremacist minority’s struggle to acquire veto power through the filibuster. Once they did, it was hard to use, and was only consistently deployed to maintain the oppression of black Americans—since that alone provided sufficient motivation. The second half of this book brings in the story of the Senate today, showing what happened when the filibuster was streamlined so that it could be used against any (and in recent years, every) issue, by leaders wielding unprecedented top-down control, awash in dark money, in a country more polarized than ever before.

And that polarization manifested as pure spite obstruction with the election of President Obama

More often than not, Republicans had a clever rationale for why they were blocking a given nominee, and sometimes daily news coverage strained to capture the scale of the obstruction. But it is clear that by any measure, the level of obstruction Obama faced was historic and unprecedented. All other presidents combined had endured a total of eighty-two filibusters against their nominees. But from 2009 to 2013, President Obama alone faced eighty-six.

All other presidents combined... Freaking obstructionists.

The modern Senate can be boiled down to McConnell's obstruction. And he had help. For his first senate campaign

With his prospects looking grim, McConnell decided to put himself in the hands of Roger Ailes. At the time, Ailes was a TV consultant, making ads for Republican candidates. McConnell wanted an ad that would shake up the race, he told Ailes, and suggested positive ones that would introduce him to voters. Ailes shot them down. “Do you want to look nice, or do you want to take out your opponent and win this thing?” Ailes asked. “I want to do what it takes,” McConnell replied.

Vile. Later, before the tragedy of what would be the results of the 2016 election, McConnell said “I want the American people to be comfortable with the fact that the Republican House and Senate is a responsible, right-of-center, governing majority.” Now that is laughable. On healthcare, he directed that no Republicans support the bill so as to prevent any claim to "bipartisan" - "In what was once the 'world’s greatest deliberative body,' a complex policy issue governing 15 percent of America’s economy was boiled down to a binary political calculation. 'If he [Obama] was for it,' as former Republican senator George Voinovich said, 'we had to be against it.'"

Jentleson says in his conclusion, How to Save the Senate

McConnell did not transform the Senate himself. He had the foresight to open the floodgates to corporate cash, and to use the blockade of Garland to unify the Tea Party base with the GOP establishment. He pioneered the blanket deployment of the filibuster, far beyond anything contemplated by previous leaders. But McConnell followed generations of white supremacist southern obstructionists who had come before him. Ever since John Calhoun set foot in the Senate, they had fought against Madison’s vision of a majority-rule institution, forging new ways to impose their will on a country where progress threatened their power. Under McConnell, the Senate was finally remade in Calhoun’s vision of minority rule. The only question that remains is whether it can be saved.[...]
The filibuster does not just block bills from both sides. It makes white conservatives’ structural advantages, and their ability to impose their will on our diverse majority, self-protecting. To fix our democracy, and to rectify the many injustices within our system today, the first step must be to curtail the filibuster. Senate reform—and democracy reform—starts with filibuster reform.
[...]But the promise of reconciliation is a mirage. Reconciliation is a fasttrack made available by the Budget Control Act of 1974. To use the track, legislation needs to have a demonstrable fiscal impact, and the Senate Parliamentarian judges whether bills comply with reconciliation’s strict rules. The advantage of reconciliation, and its attraction to reformers, is that all provisions that comply with its rules can be brought up for a majority vote.

I do not see this being corrected in my lifetime. More's the pity.

One last note, something else relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme, another quote rubbed me raw: “In total, seventy-one senators voted to invoke cloture. “A lynch mob,” Russell spat on the Senate floor. Later, Senator John Stennis of Mississippi, another ardent white supremacist, wrote to Russell, trying to console him with the reminder that “except for you and your fine leadership,” a strong civil rights bill would have passed long ago”. The Navy named a carrier after Stennis. That's disturbing.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my ongoing effort to better understand the mindbogglingly dysfunctional institution that passes for a government system in the US, this was a very helpful and enlightening read indeed. This clear, detailed account traces the historical development of the filibuster, how it is being used to derail legislative efforts and obstruct the supposed function of the Senate, and what measures should be undertaken to fix this issue. Now if only people could actually get their act together and follow those very sensible suggestions...

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Book

Very enlightening book about the history of the filibuster and how the Democratic Party could reform it. Unfortunately the methods suggested are being used currently and with two senators resisting. It’s very frustrating and concerning.

[Josh Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Depressing, but well researched, it left me wanting more. I was excited to read a “short” history book after the multiple 800+ page books I read in 2020 and the start of 2021. But I wanted more. More on specific stories that got passing mention, more on now this just continues to happen, etc. Don’t get me wrong, it really good. But there is more I would have read. Still, infuriating. 7.5/10

[G · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well-written way to make yourself very depressed!

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished: 11.02.2021
Genre: non-fiction
Rating: A++++
Conclusion:
Why the Republicans have remained in power so long?
....filibuster!
Time to #EducateYourself!

My Thoughts

[Paul Froehlich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Which form of government is preferable -- rule by the majority or by the minority? Most Americans would say the former, so long as there were protections for minority rights. Most contemporary Republicans, however, prefer the later -- and they get it. As Adam Jentleson puts it, "Minority rule is a defining feature of our era."

The fact is that GOP presidential candidates have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections. Though Republicans controlled the Senate for ten years since 2000, Senate Democrats have represented a majority of the American population every year. One indicator of this anti-democratic streak came in 2020 when the GOP cancelled Republican presidential primaries and caucuses in 22 states. Another indicator is Republican eagerness to enact legislation at the state level making it harder to vote.

The filibuster is the quintessential tool of minority rule. It allows 41 senators to block the wishes of 59 colleagues, the president, and the majority of Americans. In the current era, Republicans are the filibuster's chief defenders. They operate the kill switch to prevent progressive legislation from passing.

Jentleson is the former deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid. His book describes in detail the history of the filibuster, and how it has been used.

Though defenders cite tradition, the filibuster is not authorized by the COTUS. Instead, it evolved over two centuries into the tool it is today. One constant is that the filibuster is primarily weilded by white conservatives. Jentleson puts it this way:

"From its inception to today, the filibuster has mainly served to empower a minority of predominantly white conservatives to override our democratic system when they found themselves outnumbered, blocking progress that threatened their power, their way of life, and the priorities of their wealthy benefactors, from the slaveholders of the nineteenth century to the conservative billionaires of today."

Jentleson makes a strong case that the Framers intended majority rule to prevail in the Senate, with a few explicit exceptions, such as the two-thirds vote to convict on impeachment.

"The Framers were realists who wrote the Constitution in the shadow of the Articles of Confederation, the disastrously ineffective system of government that allowed a minority of members of Congress to block the majority from acting. They had seen firsthand that allowing a minority to block the majority did not promote deliberation. Instead, they warned that it would create an irresistible temptation for (what Hamilton called) a 'pertinacious minority' to sabotage the majority, leading to 'contemptible compromises of the public good' and eroding majority rule, which they widely regarded as the 'first principle' of the democracy they created."

Majority rule does not determine what passes in the Senate nowadays. Jentleson gives as an example a vote in 2012 on a bill to require universal background checks before buying a gun. The bill had bipartisan support and 90 percent approval in the polls. It got 55 votes. The majority was defeated by 45 senators who represented 38 percent of the population. In short, the minority rules.

Isn't that how a "republic" is supposed to work? The Framers understand democracy to mean direct democracy as in Athens. They understood republic to mean what we call a democracy today, where people elect representatives who make the laws.

James Madison, known as the Father of the Constitution, called majority rule “the republican principle.” He wrote, “In Republics, where the people govern themselves, and where, of course, the majority govern...The vital principle of Republican Government is the lex majoris partis, the will of the majority.”

Thomas Jefferson believed that majority rule was “founded in common law as well as common right” and “is the natural law of every assembly of men.” TJ wrote to Madison: “It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.”

The first constitution of the United States was the Articles of Confederation. It contained a fatal flaw, namely that support from two-thirds of the states was required to pass tax and spending legislation. The result was gridlock. Consequently, the Framers were determined not to repeat the mistake of a supermajority requirement. At the Con-Con, proposals by southern delegates for supermajority votes for regular legislation were defeated.

In Federalist #22, Hamiton rejected the arguments for a supermajority rule, Madison did likewise in Federalist #58. If a minority was allowed to block a majority, Madison writes, then “in all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority.”

Minority rule is exactly what filibuster fans favor, even though it is contrary to original intent. Senators representing as little as 11 percent of the population can obstruct the will of colleagues representing 89 percent of Americans.

Since the filibuster is not in the COTUS, where did it come from? To make a long story short, the filibuster came into existence in the nineteenth century, "as part of white supremacists’ mission to preserve slavery, and then their efforts to strengthen it during the early twentieth century to maintain Jim Crow. (Then) the modern, post–civil rights Senate began applying the filibuster to a broadening range of bills and issues, and married the old vision of minority rule with new, rigid leadership structures."

Details are in the book about the roles of John C. Calhoun and Richard Russell in creating the filibuster. The good news is that unlike some other political problems, fixing the filibuster does not require amending the COTUS. Weakening or abolishing the filibuster takes only 51 votes.

It was weakened in 2013 after an historic and unprecedented number of presidential nominees had been blocked by GOP filibusters.There had been 82 Obama nominees blocked, compared to a total of 86 nominees for all previous presidents. Consequently, Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the so-called nuclear option and changed Senate rules to exempt nominees, except for the SCOTUS, from the filibuster.

Negative partisanship combined with the filibuster gives conservatives a distinct advantage. Unlike Democrats, Republicans aren't trying to pass sweeping new programs for health care or other things. Under the current filibuster, the GOP can still achieve its top three priorities: approval of tax cuts, approval of conservative judicial nominees, and the ability to prevent Democratic social programs from passing.

For Democrats, the filibuster is a lose, lose proposition When in the minority, they can't stop GOP tax cuts and judicial nominees. When in the majority, they can't enact social programs. Finding 41 votes to block legislation is much easier than finding 60 votes to pass it. Advantage GOP..

President Obama rightly called the filibuster a “Jim Crow relic.” It clearly delayed passage of civil rights legislation for many years, and prevented an anti-lynching law for generations. It preserved the Electoral College in 1969, and continues to primarily benefit white conservatives.

The plan for reform is simple: Restore the requirement for actual debate to replace the anonymous hold. This gives the minority every opportunity to state its case. Then amend the rules to provide a cloture vote after a certain number of days, using a simple majority.

Hamilton and Madison were right in opposing a supermajority requirement. The argument that it promotes compromise does not apply in our era of hyper-polarization and negative partisanship. The country would benefit from a productive, functioning Senate. ###

[Gerry Connolly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kill Switch is Adam Jentlesson’s engrossing case to eliminate the filibuster in the US Senate. Arising out of John C Calhoun’s successful efforts to block anti-slavery legislation the filibuster evolved in the early 20th century with the adoption of Rule 22 which requires a supermajority for cloture to even proceed to consideration of a bill. The Founders (see Madison and Hamilton) expected simple majority rule to prevail but reactionaries fine tuned the filibuster and wielded it to gut progressive policy from debate or passage into law. Mitch McConnell became the filibuster’s chief proponent employing it hundreds of times against Obama and the Democratic majority. Time to end this archaic and anti-democratic tool that has harmed America.

[Luke Stacks · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book's goal is to get mild moderates on board with shelving the filibuster, to mainstream the cause and make it seem normal, and I think it might at least help with that effort. But Jentleson also hurts his goal in a few ways.

1. His descriptions of the Senate body as a whole, and the main movers and shakers, such as Calhoun, Russell, Johnson, and McConnell, make a much stronger case for abolishing the Senate full stop, without meaning to. A related issue: removing the filibuster does not eliminate the main problem with the Senate, which is that its members are evil. The filibuster is a symptom. If you want the Senate to not act in vile ways, you must remove the vile Senators, instead of just hoping to outvote them.

2. He makes a case for simple majority rule based on the founders' ideas, which weren't that great for a lot of people. It's not a philosophical argument, it's an argument from authority.

3. He assumes norms that many people have discarded, such as Obama=good and obstructing your enemies when they have power=bad. After all, most people on the left do not want Republican bills to succeed, and are pretty fine with obstruction in that case!

4. He wastes so much space on a complete chronological survey of the Senate that he doesn't really devote space for discussion of the exact procedural mechanism--the holds--that are the actual main problem preventing the office from functioning. Contrast the (1) page devoted to holds with the entire chapters devoted to older rules such as the "previous question" motion or Rule 22.

[Diogenes Grief · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Senate is so broken that it is easy to write it off as irredeemable. We are now at the endpoint of a process that started over 150 years ago. In the nineteenth century, obstructionist minorities invented the filibuster to give themselves the power to defy the majority. In the twentieth century, under the banner of ‘unlimited debate,’ southerners made the filibuster into a supermajority hurdle. In the postwar period and into the twenty-first century, Lyndon Johnson and Harry Reid created leadership structures capable of making the formerly leaderless institution march in lockstep behind a leader’s agenda. And in recent years, Mitch McConnell paired those tools of control with the filibuster to give a reactionary, WWAC [wealthy, white, anti-choice conservatives] minority veto power over everything the majority attempts to accomplish. In our era of polarization and negative partisanship, conservatives can use McConnell’s playbook in perpetuity with no fear of political consequences, and every expectation of reward. The outlook for the Senate, and for our democracy, is grim” (pp. 269-70).

Capital Hill insider Adam Jentleson gives the reader a bit more depth and detail into how the Legislative branch of the United States has become what it’s become over the last 150 years, but most especially over the past 40 years—a militantly tribalistic tit-for-tat kindergarten pandering to special interests through negative partisanship, but this book (and its 120 pages of endnotes) doesn’t give me the confidence that the system can be fixed. I’m a Nobody, and naturally time will tell. Most of you reading this already know the system is horribly corrupted; otherwise, you’re praying at the altar of Fox News, or Breitbart, or InfoWars, or One America, or the alternate-reality game of QAnon, or some other shameless propaganda machine for either filthy rich libertarians, or easily brainwashed plebs. At the time of this writing, according to The Brennan Center for Justice (https://www.brennancenter.org/), there are currently 165 voter restriction bills proposed in 33 states since after NOV 2020. The GOP is doubling down on the game with overt discrimination laws that impact the poor and “people of color” most of all. As Charles M. Blow declared in his manifesto The Devil You Know, the ending of systemic racism begins at the local level, the state level, and our congressional leaders. Jentleson illustrates how the Senate has become the “kill switch” on so much progressive movement. The For the People Act will help curtail draconian state laws while “the Left” mobilizes the marginalized to stand up and rail against their oppression, ousting the bought-out bigots and overwhelming the “redneck” vote clinging to their unread bibles and well-oiled assault rifles.

“According to a 2019 New York Times analysis of data collected by the Manifesto Project, a group that tracks party-policy positions around the globe, the modern Republican Party is more extreme than Britain’s Independence Party and France’s National Rally party, both of which are far-right populist parties that verge on neofascism. Ideological polarization has been asymmetric, with the Republican Party moving much farther right than the Democratic Party has moved to the left; the same study found that the Democratic Party still aligns closely with mainstream liberal parties” (p. 152).

Of course this couldn’t happen without large rivers of opaque money pouring in after Citizens United, and ranks of selfish, racist ideologues marching through such “think tanks” as the John Birch Society and the Federalist Society, the Tea Party being bankrolled by Koch Industries, and of course the rise of demagogic Trump who, supported by so many duplicitous sycophants, toyed with clown-car authoritarianism. When Jentleson says the future of this country is grim, I painfully agree. Trumpism isn’t going away quietly, and the delusional GOP has been undermined by its own power-mad mania, desperately grasping for any scheme that will keep them in power. The entire political system needs restructuring. Jentleson gives his advice, which seems naively optimistic (a parliamentary system of open debate?), so I’ll jump aboard his train of thought and offer my own wish list:

Eliminate the Electoral College System (one citizen, one ballot, one vote—majority wins); make Election Day a federal holiday; create a simple, secure, and uniform voting system that every citizen has access to (digital means can work); have an accountability system in place for Congressional corruption and define corruption in lawful terms, with just punishments to include imprisonment; have every 18-year-old register to vote, like the Draft but obviously for everyone; grant statehood to D.C., Puerto Rico, and American Samoa while we’re at it; reorganize the congressional system to better reflect the population (not just 2 senators per state); overturn Citizens United and limit how much money goes into elections; have congressional bills be simple, one-topic requests, not convoluted tomes packed with pork, waste, and graft; if we’re REALLY wishing here I’d also say eliminate political parties altogether and let’s vote on individuals based on his/her resume, tax records, and bank statements—not the mindless manure that slithers through their lips and whatever catchy slogans they concoct (congressional folks spend HALF THEIR TIME working on the next election cycle—how about they work 90% on their f-ing jobs legislating?; it looks like almost $14 BILLION was spent on the 2020 elections—what if that money was better served going into K-12 education, or a stronger, cheaper healthcare system, or a college-for-all concept? . . . ugh, I’m free-falling down a bottomless rabbit-hole. Grim.

Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker highlights the likely schism impacting the GOP and illustrating the ephemeral nature of political parties overall (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...). Sam Levine of The Guardian gives a good telling of Jim Crow 2.0 right now (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...). Nothing is guaranteed in this era, the seesaw will swing Right again, and we cannot relent in the combat to come.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not going to write a long review of this one because I am sure I will find that there are better reviews among Goodreads experts (in fact I will be curious to see what the negative reviews report), but let me say a few things. This book talks about the ways that a minority in the Senate can resist majority rule. A lot of it is about the filibuster. But what really makes this shine is that it is split into two parts, one historical, talking about topics like the "previous question" motion, and, later, Senate Rule 22. Anyone who cares about American governance should read this first part, which gets us up to the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights era, and Johnson's consolidation of leadership power. It starts with the Framers and especially Madison, and works like a sledgehammer to take apart claims that Madison somehow did not believe in straight-up majority rule, drawing the obvious conclusion that efforts in the Senate to provide power to legislative minorities (other than simply offering their arguments) are essentially against the spirit of the Constitution, driven by the desire to protect the privileges of race and wealth. Then the second part takes us through Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. I have little doubt that a fair-minded reader will come to the conclusion that Reid's further streamlining of control was not in the spirit of the Framers, and that McConnell's innovations are, essentially, perverse. Along the way we are reminded of the grotesquerie of Citizens United and McCain's heroism in his vote against the dismantling of Obamacare. Part II is loaded with Senatorial gossip (for instance, McConnell's 1999 humiliation of McCain, which likely contributed to McCain's ACA vote), and comes close to muckracking: Good stuff.

Jentleson is a really good writer. Part I is about as lively as institutional history can be. Part II: Well, I read the newspapers assiduously during the last 20 years, but the author's guidance through this period reads like a novel. I had forgotten how perverse Senate hypocrisies have been and are.

The book ends with a conclusion that outlines ways to reverse the anti-democratic structures in the Senate. I find it hard to believe that any Congressional Democrat, and many Republicans, will not rush to support killing the filibuster after reading Jentleson's elegant volume.

[Alex Gruenenfelder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that changed my view of the filibuster. I had seen it as an obstructionist tool wielded by both sides, one that could prove problematic but was overall not a necessary talking point. This book, which proposes an end to the filibuster and numerous other Senate reforms, puts forward a case based on history and facts of why we must fix the Senate now.

There is clearly a bias to this book, so I'll start this review by addressing it. The author is a Democrat who worked for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but he believes this book is about democracy itself and I would agree with him. (And, as he explains, the semantic twist of republic versus democracy is meaningless here.) However, he is more than willing to criticize his own party, attacking the insane power wielded by Democratic leaders in the Senate and the regressive history of the party. While this book would not be popular with the GOP, I do believe it will sit well with the average voter of whatever political background.

The history of the Senate is often the history of racism, giving credence to the idea that the filibuster was pioneered as a tool of segregationists. There was once some bipartisan opposition to the filibuster too, but the dismantling of this by Senate Republicans representing a minority of the population is a big part of this book. Common beliefs and myths about the Senate are ripped apart by the author, sometimes even surprising political junkies like myself. There's a lot of information to get through in this comprehensive work, but I found myself on the edge of my seat the whole time.

While a lot of the history of the "Jim Crow relics" of the filibuster can be depressing, I find this book to be optimistic. The author is not a nihilist or a Senate abolitionist, and believes there are a number of common-sense reforms to fix it. If you want to dive deeply into how Congress really works, learning about the history and the current dysfunction, I highly recommend this book.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive breakdown of how exactly the United States Senate became a black hole sucking up the last vestiges of of our democratic culture, written by a former Senate insider. One of the things I enjoyed most about the book is how, for all the bromides spewed out by walking corpses such as Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley about the "sanctity" of the traditions of "the world's greatest deliberative body", the chamber is actually quite dynamic, with procedures such as the filibuster going through multiple, radical changes-often within one decade. The book's central case, that the combination of increasing polarization, the elimination of meaningful campaign finance regulation, the centralization of power in the Senate Majority leader's office, and the rabid expansion of the use of the filibuster by Senate Republicans has turned the senate into the "Kill Switch" of American Democracy is basically irrefutable.

My only real quibble with the book is that is doesn't really delve into-or consider beyond a few paragraphs dismissing its impact-what is, to my mind, the single greatest antidemocratic feature of the Senate-the malapportionment that is giving two seats to each state, ensuring an inexcusable overrepresentation of white, rural conservatives in the more powerful chamber of our bicameral legislature that no filibuster reform can solve. For American democracy to ever live up to its promises, it will eventually have to do away with the Senate entirely, most likely through a "House of Lords"-style defanging. Jentleson's a bit too in love with the chamber to seriously consider the idea, but the solutions offered at the book's end would certainly improve the situation, and as a diagnostic of the mechanisms by which the Senate strangles this country's democratic aspirations, Kill Switch more than earns its price of admission.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Jentleson explains in Kill Switch how the use of the filibuster has evolved to paralyze the legislative process in the Senate. The filibuster in principle is not the problem; it is the use of the filibuster as an obstruction tactic and the supermajority required by Rule 22 to approve cloture that prevents legislation from moving forward.

The book begins with the history of the filibuster. For me the first part was a slog because I am more interested in modern history, but in retrospect it was necessary to refute those who wish to misconstrue the intentions of the Framers. Later chapters outline the evolution of cloture rules and the decline of bipartisinship in the senate due to the increasing power given to party leaders and loosening rules regarding conflicts of interest. Although clearly left-leaning, the author does try to be fair and points to his former boss and mentor Harry Reid's role in the former.

Things really go off the rails once Mitch McConnell gets involved. This was my favorite part of the book - I always enjoy reading about how awful he is.

It was refreshing to find that the author does offer several rule changes that could get the Senate out of the gridlock it has been in recent years. So many non-fiction books outlike problems but don't propose solutions, so I was happy that this one does.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This very readable history of the filibuster makes a strong case to end or abolish this undemocratic practice that enshrines the obstructionist tendencies of the Senate minority and contributes significantly to the gridlock in Washington DC. The filibuster was never part of the original US Constitution. In fact, following the experience of gridlock under the Articles of Confederation, where a 60% super-majority was required to pass legislation, Madison and Hamilton made it clear that, while broad consensus is desirable when it can be achieved, majority rule is essential to allow a representative government to function effectively. First introduced by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, and refined over the decades, the filibuster has always been the favored tool of slave-holders and segregationists to hold black Americans in thrall. In the 21st Century, the more onerous requirements related to holding continuous debate on the Senate floor have been removed, and now every piece of legislation that comes before the Senate can be side-tracked by the request of a single Senator to place a hold on the bill that requires the votes of a super-majority (currently 60 votes) to pass - without any debate at all! In today's Senate, where a razor-thin Democratic majority is striving to pass legislation approved by sizable majorities of American voters and save democracy from cynicism and autocracy, the filibuster has finally become an anachronism we can no longer afford.

[Jakub Dovcik · Rating 5 out of 5]

While it might be billed as the history of the filibuster, this book is a rather complex history of the Senate and the consolidation of power into the hands of individuals and minorities, that led to the current disfunction. Through biography of the key figures in the senate history, like Calhoun, Webster, LBJ, Russell, and very importantly also Harry Reid, it narrates the ways in which the "world's greatest deliberative body" without strict hierarchies, full of great speeches and debates, became the place where most bills go to die. While the filibuster, 'a Jim Crow relic' and a result of almost a hundred years of Southern attempts to block any attempts on civil rights legislation, plays a major role, there are other aspects of the current Senate ecosystem that contribute to the disfunction and Jentleson does an amazing job explaining them and their developments.

An enjoyable read, this book provides a lot of background to the standard 'history of US politics, especially things related to campaign funding, the development of the power structures within the Senate that determine everything from committee appointments to what bills and amendments actually get debated.

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating, well researched, and brilliantly written book that traces the changes within the Senate from the very beginning. Bringing to light the key senators who flew in the face of tradition, decorum, and public service to devote themselves instead to self promotion and preservation at all costs of white supremacy to land us in the current state of gridlock and agendas that center solely around ensuring as little change or progress as possible rather than the promotion of any constructive or creative solutions to the problems facing this nation. I lost track of how many times I was flabbergasted and then disgusted by the blatant ambition to gain power for no reason other than holding power. Lost in all of the machinations is the majority will of the people of this country as the micro-minority holds a death grip on the tools that were never intended to subvert majority rule. This should be a must read for every one in this country. I especially appreciate the author ending the book with feasible solutions to the toxic partisanship and gridlock that are the exact opposite of what the founding fathers intended when forming this branch of the government.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Explains how the US Congress has become so gridlocked and ineffective, and how it can be fixed. The historical parts will probably make non-history/US politics buffs' eyes glaze over, but the author shows how the founding fathers intended the Senate to be majority-rule, and how a minority of Southern white supremacists developed the filibuster to block civil rights legislation. Now Senate traditions have streamlined the filibuster into a simple and easy way for a minority to make any bill require a 60-vote supermajority. Combined with gerrymandering and a strategy in which making the government fail is a win, the minority can just block everything and entrench their power indefinitely. The filibuster is not in the Constitution or the original intent of the founders though, and it would only take 51 votes and political will to change the Senate's rules and make it functional again.

[Darin Bratsman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author served as chief of staff to Harry Reid and certainly knows his stuff. The book sometimes got bogged down in wonky details but for the most part is a really interesting and insightful telling of how the Senate became the mostly dysfunctional body that exists today. The authors focus is on the filibuster and how it cripples the Senate's ability to enact laws, as foreseen by the founders. I found it very interesting to consider how the filibuster is better for Republicans since it allows them to obstruct and maintain the status quo against the party focused on driving change. Definitely a worthwhile read although I came away from the book even more disillusioned with our current state of government and a stronger dislike of Mitch McConnell.