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**OCTOBER 13, 2020**

Meyerson on TAP

The Filibuster Question: States' Rights or Human Rights?

At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, the young mayor of
Minneapolis, Hubert Humphrey, strode to the podium to make the case for
a minority plank to the party's platform, committing the Democrats to
civil rights legislation. "The time has arrived in America," Humphrey
said, "for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states'
rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human
rights. People-human beings-this is the issue of the 20th century."
To the surprise of many, the Democrats then passed Humphrey's plank.

Even more surprisingly, there are still Democrats more committed to
states' rights than to the human right of equal representation and
majority rule that Earl Warren's Supreme Court affirmed in its
landmark "one person, one vote" decision. If you doubt that, you should
read

**Washington Post**columnist Chuck Lane's argument

for preserving the filibuster in today's

**Post**.

Most Democrats, now looking forward to a Biden presidency and a narrow
majority in the next Senate, realize that Republicans can block
virtually all Democratic legislation by using the filibuster's 60-vote
requirement for passage, and they therefore favor its abolition. Their
argument isn't merely political, it's also rooted in small-d
democratic values: Inherently, the filibuster is a tool to empower a
minority to obstruct majority rule.

Lane, by contrast, seems content with the subordination of majority
rule. "Until now," he begins, "there was broad acceptance of the
Senate's countermajoritarian function," to which the filibuster
contributes. His words "until now" apparently exclude the pre-Civil
War period when more and more Americans in Northern states fumed at the
"slaveocracy" that Southern states wielded in the Senate, or the period
of the 1940s through the early 1960s, when filibustering Southern
senators blocked civil rights legislation (that was the target of
Humphrey's speech). Lane also fails to address that the population
imbalance between the states has grown far in excess of what it was in
1787, when the Senate was created. California now has 70 times the
population of Wyoming, but both are equally represented in the
legislative house that once termed itself "the world's foremost
deliberative body." Under the 60-vote stricture of the filibuster rule,
the Senate is often blocked from any deliberations at all.

Lane points out that Democratic senators from small states-he cites
West Virginia's Joe Manchin and Maine's Angus King (a nominal
independent who caucuses with the Democrats)-still support the
filibuster because it gives small states more bargaining power in the
scramble for federal appropriations. Whether that power matters more to
West Virginians and Mainers than, say, expanding their access to health
care or enacting job-creating public works-Democratic priorities that
filibuster-empowered Republicans will surely block-is, however, highly
doubtful.

Lane also acknowledges that those Republicans, if the filibuster is
preserved, will also surely block legislation conferring statehood on
the District of Columbia. His filibuster defense is an interesting
position to be held by a member of the

**Post**'s editorial board.

Nonetheless, Lane affirms one service the filibuster performs is that
"it helps level the legislative playing field among states of different
sizes, amplifying the leverage of smaller ones." He concludes with a
caution: "The deeper the division" in making the Senate a more
majoritarian body by axing the filibuster, "the more dangerous the
conflict."

Plainly, subordinating states' rights to human rights, which radical
leftist Humphrey termed the issue of the 20th century, doesn't cut the
mustard for Manchin, King, and Lane in the 21st. Shame on them.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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