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The filibuster will be killed by the next Dem trifecta https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/07/the-filibuster-will-be-killed-by-the-next-dem-trifecta
Obama's eulogy today laid out how it's going to happen. The first initiative of a Dem trifecta in 2021 will be a comprehensive voting rights act named after John Lewis. Obviously, it would not be able to get any Republican support.
The John Lewis Voting Rights Restoration Act of 2021 would be the perfect vehicle for killing the filibuster, substantively and politically and that's what will happen.
If they don't start with voting rights, they will start with a major COVID-19 relief bill, and it would play out the same way. It can't be written to be made acceptable to Republicans with a Dem in the White House and not passing it isn't an option.
And while the quickest way to demonstrate savvy on this site is to assert that Dems will never play hardball, a more institutionally conservative Dem caucus went nuclear to stop a blockade of the D.C. Circuit. Passing voting rights or COVID relief legislation are more compelling
A critical thing to understand is that under current norms of polarization moderate Dem senators would have much *more* power with a 50-vote than a 60-vote threshold. They'll be major players without the filibuster. With it, Joe Manchin and Elizabeth Warren are equally powerless.
That's why even some moderates are beginning to understand that the filibuster needs to go. They only have power of the Senate can pass bills. https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/06/the-filibuster-as-we-know-it-will-not-survive-a-dem-trifecta-in-2021
Another sometimes overlooked point is that the filibuster survived 2010 because McConnell WASN'T able to practice total obstruction. ACA passed in the 60-vote window, and ARRA and Dodd-Frank got just enough Republican votes. The felt need to eliminate the filibuster wasn't there.
But even if McConnell WANTED to let some watered-down bills pass to save the filibuster in 2021, he couldn't because there are (save the barely Republican Murkowski) no moderates left, and the Dem majority will be much smaller.
The choice will be "do nothing" or "eliminate the filibuster [whether de facto or de jure]," and Obama's comments today are the strongest signal yet that it will be the latter.
