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    Why Possibly Changing The Filibuster Brings Threats Of Political 'Nuclear' War

    The procedure has evolved at many points in history, clearing break throughs on civil rights and a recent GOP judicial spree. Those issues show why the two parties see changing it now as existential.
    by Mara Liasson Mar 29, 2021 5 minutes
    Jimmy Stewart's 1939 performance in <em>Mr. Smith Goes To Washington</em> helped form the popular perception of a Senate filibuster, with a lawmaker talking for hours on end. It hasn't been like that for decades, but President Biden supports returning to that style.

    To a growing number of Democrats, the filibuster is a giant barrier to everything they want to accomplish. At the funeral last year for congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis, former President Barack Obama listed some of them: ending partisan gerrymandering, making Election Day a national holiday, as well as statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

    "And 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," Obama said, instantly resetting the debate over the Senate procedure that allows a minority party with 41 votes to stop most legislation.

    Obama defined the debate over the filibuster as an existential question for the future of American democracy. Now that Democrats have

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