Sen. John Fetterman announced in an op-ed Monday that he no longer supports ending the legislative filibuster, showing yet another break from the left-wing of the Democratic Party.
The Pennsylvania Democrat ran his 2022 Senate campaign on the promise to end the legislative filibuster to help enact his party’s priorities, including a sweeping voting-rights bill and measures to help working families.
But Mr. Fetterman wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Monday that he and other Democrats who wanted to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for advancing legislation were “horribly wrong.”
“Halfway through my first term, I now recognize how important the filibuster is and the state our country would be in without it,” he said.
Mr. Fetterman said his prior position was based on the notion that Republicans would never find common ground on legislation Democrats were proposing.
Now, he says he agrees with the assessment of former West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III – a Democrat whom he and others vilified at the time – that partisans’ calls to scrap the filibuster are “extreme election-year politics that put party power over everything else.”
“I thought Democrats were not being ruthless the way Republicans were, and we needed to be on that level if we were going to relieve the anger that voters were feeling,” Mr. Fetterman said. “Upon reflection, the pursuit of those short-term wins clouded the bigger picture and lasting impact of a Senate without the filibuster — a Senate that ignored the voices of the minority and everyday people.”
Mr. Fetterman’s shift in position on the filibuster is notable, given President Trump’s belief that Senate Republicans should nuke the filibuster before Democrats have the chance.
“Whichever Party Terminates the Filibuster FIRST will be the Party that survives and thrives,” Mr. Trump posted on social media Monday. “If the Dumocrats win this race, however, America will rapidly become nothing more than a Third World Nation!”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune responded that “Republicans are not getting rid of the legislative filibuster.”
The South Dakota Republican said that Trump administration officials met with a group of roughly 20 of the patry’s senators earlier this year to pitch ending the filibuster and 15 said they would oppose such a move.
“This is not an open question. It’s just a fact,” he said, noting Mr. Trump would have to flip a majority of those senators.
Mr. Fetterman said the filibuster has been a “critical line of defense” against Mr. Trump’s “chaotic” policies.
“If Americans are horrified now, imagine what could be law today if Democrats had eliminated the filibuster,” he said. “We’d have the Save America Act [an election-integrity proposal] by now, which I do not support. We could have extreme policies such as nationwide abortion restrictions, backpedaling on LGBT rights, repeal of birthright citizenship and limited voting rights across the country.”
The senator said despite his frustrations with Republicans at times, he has come to learn that having to work across the aisle is “one of the best features of the Senate,” not a bug.
“We have a great democracy that is imperfect, but it requires working together,” Mr. Fetterman said. “If we don’t do that willingly, the filibuster will force us to. That’s the way it should be.”
