It’s a scenario that has played out repeatedly for decades in the Senate: A narrow majority, intent on getting its way on legislation it prioritizes, is held back by the filibuster, and threatens to break it and change Senate rules, but proves unable to do so. It happened over tax reform in the George W. Bush years, the Affordable Care Act’s “public option” in the Barack Obama years, election reform and abortion in the Joe Biden years, and now a voter-ID law that President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans would like to advance.
Each time, a key part of the argument that the Senate majority makes to itself is that the other party will surely blow up the filibuster when it next gets a chance, so refusing to do it now would be a kind of unilateral disarmament. Yet in each case, at least so far, that other party has not pulled the trigger when its own time in the majority came.
