How Can Democrats Govern Under These Conditions?

In just a few months, Democrats will have their largest congressional majority since 2009.

But Donald Trump will still be president. And with Stephen Miller by his side as White House chief of staff, there is almost no chance that the president will want to work with that Democratic majority to pass legislation or make any kind of progress over the next two years. The most likely outcome will be a defiant Trump fighting Democratic-led investigations and defying any effort to rein in his authority and discipline his administration.

Most of what Democrats pass will be purely symbolic — less a set of actual laws than a preview of governance under a Democratic president.

Still, passing legislation, I think, will be a good thing. In fact, Democrats should pass as much as they can, even if Trump vetoes every bill they put on his desk.

But there is a problem.

The current rules of the Senate make productivity impossible. As long as the filibuster exists, Democrats will be bogged down in endless negotiations to try to win the minimum of four votes necessary to invoke cloture. Worse, the 60-vote threshold gives every Democrat leverage over the entire agenda. If, for example, John Fetterman does not want to pass a new Voting Rights Act, then a new Voting Rights Act will not get passed. Looking at the Senate landscape, it is hard to see where Democrats would pick up additional support. At no point in the last 20 years have Republicans shown any desire to work with Democrats to pass the party’s priorities.

I have made the case for abolishing the filibuster before. The supermajority requirement for legislation has bogged down and undermined the legislature’s ability to govern, weakening Congress and empowering the presidency and the courts. The filibuster impedes bipartisanship by killing most legislation; why work together when there’s almost no chance that the bill will pass? And Democrats should understand by now that the filibuster does far more to impede their program than it does the Republican agenda, which rests almost entirely on items — tax cuts and judicial confirmations — that can be accomplished with a simple majority vote.

The American people elected Democrats to hold Trump accountable for corruption and despotism, and to govern. Congressional Democrats can do the former of their own accord. But to have any hope for the latter, Senate Democrats need to end, or at least amend, the filibuster. Anything less would squander the opportunity they’ve been given by voters.