Something that gets easily forgotten is the 60 vote senate has never really been a thing. As recently as the start of my career in 2003, a major Medicare reform bill passed with a bare majority because filibustering a conference report wasn’t done.

Then in 2005, Democrats started filibustering circuit court judges which hadn’t previously been a thing.

Republicans threatened to change the rules and successfully forced a compromise. Then in 2007-2009 the GOP started filibustering basically everything.

But those were just filibusters of message bills that Bush could’ve vetoed anyway. It didn’t “matter.”

In 2009-2012 we had the brief heyday of the 60 Votes For Everything Senate and then Republicans started to overreach by refusing to confirm anyone at all for certain key jobs.

McConnell made it clear that *nobody* would be confirmed to run the CFPB, the NLRB, or for a seat on the DC Circuit. So Reid went nuclear but preserved the filibuster for SCOTUS.

Then when Dems tried to use the SCOTUS filibuster in 2017, McConnell changed the rules again.

Now we may get another set of rule changes.

My point is just that filibuster erosion since 2014 isn’t the decline of a longstanding norm, the Universal 60 Vote Senate lasted for less than a decade — a period not coincidentally marked by incredibly bad macroeconomic management.

tl;dr less than 20 years ago it was possible for a controversial non-reconciliation bill to pass with fewer than 60 votes and it will be possible again sooner or later — the 60 Vote Senate doesn’t work and doesn’t make sense