Senator Angus King, a former supporter of the filibuster now sees it as an extortion tool enabling minority governance.
The undemocratic filibuster
Senator King had the most prescient statement that should cauterize in our brains.
“Let me give you one piece of math, Rachel, that I think you’ll find surprising,” Senator Angus King said. “You can get 41 votes out of the current Senate which was enough to block any legislation. And if you take the states that those 41 Senators represent add all the population together you get 24 percent of the American people. So the situation we’re in now is that 24% of the American people have an effective veto over anything that 76% of the American people think is important public policy/ I don’t think that squares with Democratic Theory. Those numbers are staggering and we cannot continue to allow that .”
