Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Big democracy reforms can't happen unless the Senate fixes its huge anti-democratic flaw

Sen. Krysten Sinema

Krysten Sinema is one of two Democrats standing in the way of long-overdue Senate reforms, writes Golden.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Golden is the author of "Unlock Congress" (Why Not Books, 2015) and a senior fellow at the Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy. He is a member of The Fulcrum's editorial advisory board.


It's almost dead. And when we finally kill it off for good, it will be an epic day for our country.

I'm not talking about the Republican Party. Its survival will be up to its voters, or former voters.

And I'm not talking about the political death of the defendant whom the Senate just acquitted. Now that the trial is over, there's even more reason to ignore him.

I'm referring to the biggest blockage in our government, the one defect that has been holding us back from fixing the rest of the system's problems. For our system is rigged — just not in the ways you've become accustomed to hearing about from the world's loudest perch.

So, you may ask: What is it? When are you gonna name the thing?

First let me describe it — and the other big fixes it's holding up. If I were to take nearly the entire diagnosis in my book and distill it into 75 words, it would boil down to this:

American voters are ill-served and unfairly represented in Congress because of an electoral system that does two things. It allows officeholders to rig legislative races through the partisan drawing of maps ("gerrymandering") and by prohibiting candidates from running in general elections as independents after they've lost a primary. And it encourages officeholders to raise billions to keep their seats, resulting in behavior and decision-making that is probably corrupt and unrepresentative of the majority of Americans' preferences.

Now, before we get to the big "kill," two great developments have come to pass in the years since I started writing about this stuff.

First, reformers across the country have earned big wins to improve our system. A real movement has been quietly growing — from anti-corruption measures to money disclosure requirements to independent districting commissions and other fixes. One of the leading advocates of this charge, RepresentUs, is actually making reform cool.

Second, the For The People Act has been introduced again in Congress. It's called HR 1 in the House and S 1 in the Senate. The bill proposes two solutions straight out of my book, and would also confront voting rights. It's provisions include:

  • Requiring states to convene independent commissions to draw congressional maps.
  • Requiring disclosure of "dark money" contributions, setting up a small-donor matching system to empower candidates without wealthy networks, and strengthening the Federal Election Commission's oversight of so-called super PACs.
  • Enacting new reforms to remove barriers to voting and mandating paper ballots so that elections can be audited to ensure accuracy.

Now, I can make Boy Scout arguments all day for improving our democracy, but the fact is there are clear political consequences from HR 1 passing — and the GOP knows it. Perhaps none would be bigger than reducing Republicans' current power to gerrymander districts in order to win back the House — which would happen even if the national vote was split down the middle.

Yet for the first time in 12 years, Democrats now have political control on Capitol Hill and in the White House. All things being equal, this is their moment.

But all things are not equal. And now it's time to melodramatically unveil that monstrous blockage that must be killed -- the dam preventing our government from doing the big things most of us want. It's a pair of dumb Senate rules born accidentally 215 years ago, requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation — instead of the simple majority specifically outlined in our Constitution.

These rules are called "filibuster" and "cloture." And they both need to die.

Simply put, the Democrats now hold 50 seats in the Senate, not enough to pass S 1 and upgrade our representative democracy so long as the GOP stands unified against it. Without 60 votes, that bill will never be more than a piece of paper.

When I first made my case to kill the filibuster, it was not popularly shared. Senators waxed lovingly of the "bipartisanship" the rules produced and extolled the rights of the minority. I wasn't buying it. Constitutional scholar Emmet Bondurant and I perforated the senators' smokescreen on this site a year ago .

In 2017, GOP Leader Mitch McConnell reversed years of his own statements and got the Senate to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, allowing President Trump to add three polarizing conservative justices. It was entirely predictable. McConnell plays hardball, and it's how he installed a new ideological majority on the bench that will live for decades.

Now will the Democrats do the same? Will they "go nuclear" and kill the filibuster on the one remaining thing it can thwart — the passage of laws?

We don't know. But we do know it's possible. Over the last year, some of the party's biggest stars have come aboard and publicly spoken out in favor of nuking it: Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Stacey Abrams, Pete Buttigieg and a fast-growing list of national opinion leaders.

They all make the same argument: We cannot buckle to GOP obstruction forever. Enough.

Standing in the way of the filibuster's final death are two Democratic senators from more conservative states, West Virginia's Joe Manchin and Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema. They have vowed not to vote for its elimination for the next two years. Yet pressure has a way of moving politicians.

Perhaps Obama said it best in last year's eulogy for John Lewis, who fought for voting rights his entire life and helped to shape HR 1. As Obama talked about the imperative of outlawing gerrymandering and restoring voting protections that have been gutted, he declared:

"If all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that's what we should do."

Amen.

Are you listening, senators? Do you want to get big things done? You have the power to make it happen. All you have to do is use it.

Read More

Hand holding a little house with an orange roof. Conceptual image.

What domestic violence survivors in public housing need are more flexible options - and they need them now.

Getty Images, Catherine Falls Commercial

Make Housing More Secure, Not Less: Domestic Violence Survivors Need Safety

She called me while she walked her dog because it was the only time she could use the phone without being monitored by her husband. Reaching out to me as a program manager for domestic survivors in a major U.S. city, she wanted to see what her options were and where she and her seven-year-old son could go.

I went over the resources in the community for domestic violence survivors, which were few. The 35-year-old mother told me she had been in and out of domestic violence shelters over the years and could not stand to destabilize her son and herself yet again. She was living now in Section 8 housing.

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. Refines Military Strategy in Africa As Development Programs Face Cuts

Royal Moroccan Armed Forces service members and U.S. Army Soldiers hold an African Lion banner during a Moroccan F-16 flyover at the closing day of African Lion 2025 (AL25) at Tantan, Morocco, May 23, 2025.

By Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Mallett/U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa

U.S. Refines Military Strategy in Africa As Development Programs Face Cuts

WASHINGTON – Both the Trump administration and its critics agree the U.S. risks losing influence in Africa to rivals like China and Russia. But while the administration argues its commercially driven foreign policy will reverse the trend, critics warn that retreating from development and diplomacy could deepen the problem.

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. plans to consolidate embassies, scale back USAID operations, and pivot towards a security and commercial driven approach on the continent. While U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) defense officials insist their core missions within Africa will remain intact, civilian experts and lawmakers argue that abandoning diplomatic and development tools opens the door for strategic competitors to fill the void and fails to take into account what would best benefit African countries.

Keep ReadingShow less
We Can Save Our Earth: Environment Opportunities 2025
a group of windmills in the sky above the clouds

We Can Save Our Earth: Environment Opportunities 2025

On May 8th, 2025, the Network for Responsible Public Policy (NFRPP) convened a session to discuss the future of the transition to clean energy in the face of some stiff headwinds caused by the new US administration led by Donald Trump. The panel included Dale Bryk, Director of State and Regional Policy at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program and a Senior Fellow at the Regional Plan Association, and Dan Sosland, President of the Acadia Center. The discussion was moderated by Richard Eidlin, National Policy Director for Business for America.

 
 


Keep ReadingShow less
Against the Present: The Future of Feminism Is Now
silhouette of personr
Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash

Against the Present: The Future of Feminism Is Now

Democracy in America is being driven into the shadows. Anyone in doubt need only pause to reflect on the events of June, when the military parade of the autocrat-in-chief in DC coincided with a manhunt for an assassin of lawmakers in Minnesota. Lawmakers who had stood up for reproductive freedom, as well as other progressive issues.

Let us say their names. Melissa Hortman. John Hoffman. They died by gun violence for what they believed in, and as a result of what they had worked for as elected officials. The gunman who robbed us of them also killed Hortman’s husband, Mark Hortman.

Keep ReadingShow less