For centuries, the Senate was a deliberative body where tough issues were debated. Senators could speak at length and propose amendments, and then the Senate would vote. However, the filibuster, once a rare act of defiance, has become a tool for routine gridlock.
Watch our webinar on author Mike Zamore’s new book, “Filibustered!: How to Fix the Broken Senate and Save America,” in which Senator Jeff Merkley and Zamore share the insider’s story of the Senate’s historic functionality and its decline into gridlock due to the filibuster.
In a compelling and powerfully argued book, Senator Jeff Merkley and his longtime chief of staff tell the insiders’ story of how the Senate used to work and how the filibuster came to cripple the self-styled “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” with paralyzing gridlock. And they make the surprising case that restoring a modified version of the old-style, talking filibuster may just be our democracy’s path back from the brink.
Filibustered! combines a marvelous romp through key moments in filibuster history—from the first filibuster in 1841 through Southern Dixiecrat filibusters of civil rights legislation, up through Mitch McConnell’s transformation of the filibuster into a routine tool of perennial gridlock—with firsthand accounts of recent high-profile legislative fights, and a compelling argument that the key to the Senate’s future may be found in its past.
