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If Friday’s 54-35 vote—the vote where the side with 18 more votes lost—hasn't proven the need to change Senate rules, nothing will. Because that just wasn't the side with an 18-vote majority losing, it was what Republicans were voting against. They were voting against an investigation into an attempted coup against them. They were voting against an inquiry to find out what happened and possibly how to keep it from happening again; an inquiry into how to preserve the institution in which they serve against violent overthrow. And they won on Friday, by losing.
Even Sen. Joe Manchin has to look at that and be utterly chilled. We can't speculate on how Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is reacting, because she's disappeared since skipping Friday's vote. Her office said that they'd get a statement in the Congressional Record stating she would have voted for the commission, but nobody has been able to actually get an explanation from Sinema or her staff for where she was and why she missed the vote.
Manchin and Sinema aside, though, it's now incumbent upon every Senate Democrat to do something about the fact that they can lose when they have an 18-vote majority. That means challenging every cloture vote, the procedural vote that require 60 votes to allow a bill onto the floor, that loses even when it has a majority.
Everything about Friday's vote was the worst, including the fact that nine Republicans literally had to do nothing to filibuster—talk about a painless filibuster, they didn't even have to show up for work! That can't be allowed to stand. Not anymore. At the very least, every Senate Democrat who wants to get rid of the filibuster should commit to raising a stink about these votes.
The next time they lose on a cloture vote with a majority, they need to fight. One needs to stand up and appeal the ruling of the chair who declares the vote didn't pass. As David Waldman tweeted that would be "a baby step toward a 'talking filibuster.' We’ll call it the 'Yes, you actually at least have to stay here and vote' filibuster."
Who knows, you may end up actually changing a rule that way. They would have passed that bill if the rule had been a 3/5 majority of those present and voting. And been bipartisan while they were at it! If nothing else, this would prove again and again how absolutely absurd it is that the Senate minority can make absolutely nothing happen by doing absolutely nothing. It would demonstrate just how patently ridiculous a thing the Senate has become.
The danger to our nation seems not to have moved them enough to do it, not yet anyway. That might be changing after what happened in Texas over the weekend, when Republicans passed an egregious voter suppression bill and state House Democrats took extraordinary measures—they walked out to deny a quorum—to fight it and win a temporary victory. And they called on Congress to fix it.
President Joe Biden even called out Texas in remarks on Monday. "It's part of an assault on democracy that we've seen far too often this year—and often disproportionately targeting Black and Brown Americans. It's wrong and un-American. In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote," he said.
Biden needs to tell it to Manchin and Sinema and the rest of the Senate Democrats who are as of yet unsure as to whether to get rid of the filibuster. And he needs to do it now because Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is readying for that fight. He promised before the Senate left on Friday that when they return on June 7, democracy is going to be on the floor. Among other measures, he's going to bring up S. 1, the "For the People Act," a sweeping voting rights bill.
He warned his colleagues in a letter of what was to come, and explained why he's doing it. "We have also seen the limits of bipartisanship and the resurgence of Republican obstructionism. […] Senate Democrats are doing everything we can to move legislation in a bipartisan way when and where the opportunity exists," Schumer wrote. "The June work period will be extremely challenging. I want to be clear that the next few weeks will be hard and will test our resolve as a Congress and a conference."
If he needs to buttress that message, he can have the 100 scholars of democracy who are calling for the elimination of the filibuster talk to them. These scholars are sounding the alarm about how close to the precipice our democracy is. Literally. "Our entire democracy is now at risk," their statement reads. "History will judge what we do at this moment."
"We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary—including suspending the filibuster—in order to pass national voting and election administration standards," they write. "We wanted to create a strong statement from a wide range of scholars, including many who have studied democratic backsliding, to make it clear that democracy in America is genuinely under threat," Lee Drutman, senior fellow at New America and a leading organizer of the letter, told the Washington Post's Greg Sargent. "The playbook that the Republican Party is executing at the state and national levels is very much consistent with actions taken by illiberal, anti-democratic, anti-pluralist parties in other democracies that have slipped away from free and fair elections."
The clarion call should certainly appeal to those supposed institutionalists, Manchin and Sinema, who are insisting it's the preservation of the Senate that they're upholding in their obstinance.
"Democracy rests on certain elemental institutional and normative conditions," the scholars write. "Elections must be neutrally and fairly administered. They must be free of manipulation. Every citizen who is qualified must have an equal right to vote, unhindered by obstruction. And when they lose elections, political parties and their candidates and supporters must be willing to accept defeat and acknowledge the legitimacy of the outcome."
That's in large part what the vote on Friday was about—the refusal of 147 Republican members of the House and Senate—who refused to accept defeat and accept the outcome, fueling the flames of the Big Lie.
Schumer seems ready to press the issue. He needs every single Democrat who is not Manchin or Sinema with him. That includes President Biden. It's time for that bully pulpit to be put to best use.
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