[lumost]

This is where the insanity really started. It used to require 8-20 senators to physically filibuster to actually kill a bill. On a major bill, the small number of senators also risked reputational harm from the sound bites of them reading their phone books.

Now anyone can start a filibuster, it largely goes unrecorded - and pressure for party unity prevents it from being killed.

[MichaelZuo]

So it sounds like it's an even smaller minority rule now?

[sanderjd]

Yep, during the Obama administration, Sen. Ted Cruz famously shut down the government for awhile, nearly by himself, pissing everybody on both sides off, except for the small number of people who vote in Republican primaries, who ate it up.

[listenallyall]

In an effort to provide balance, I'll point out that months before Cruz's stunt, Wendy Davis, a Texas state senator, filibustered for about 11 hours to prevent a vote on an abortion bill.

> people who vote in Republican primaries, who ate it up.

To the best of my knowledge nobody made a movie about Cruz's speech. Davis's speech, on the other hand, became the subject of a documentary debuting at SXSW:

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/austin/news/2022/03/09/docu...

[sanderjd]

I honestly don't understand what point you're making.

[lumost]

You could have a single senator block the entire senate from delivering anything. The only back stop on this is whether a party would kick out a miss behaving senator or primary them.

[lazide]

Eh kinda - it’s that way because everyone wants the rules to be that way.

A large enough majority can just change the rules. It isn’t that hard to actually do.

But they prefer it this way.