It’s going to be hard to say this without sounding like a sore loser, but the filibuster really should just go. I’m almost positive all the complaining now about it is loser-itis. However, it’s not just that for me. I say this because, as ominous as it sounds, it’s looking more and more likely that the Democrats, in their incredible ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, may hand the majority back over to the Republicans with some cookies and a nice fruit basket in just under a year. At that point, the filibuster will surely benefit the current-majority-soon-minority, right?

Except, as a rule, it does nothing to help anybody. Much has been made in the discussion about it on how it was used to try a block on civil rights legislation in the 60s. It’s also been noted that there’s an ever-increasing frequency of its use. In this past congress, before they lost the guarantee, Democrats knocked down more filibusters than had been attempted in the first 80 years of the 20th century. As I said, all these facts come from posts replete with sore-loser syndrome, and thus I don’t have a good bead on the count that the Democrats tried when they were out of power, but it was probably a whole hell of a lot.

“But its frequency and its past history shouldn’t cloud what it’s capable of now,” I hear the devil’s advocate replying. The problem with that idea is that it’s not capable of much of anything good. When the country was founded and people didn’t send members of Congress with predefined notions of what they would and would not support, and issues of the day really did receive debate on the floor, it made some convoluted sense to allow a combo breaker. But now, all it exists for is to provide the majority party with a severe case of legislative blue balls.

For the civics-disinclined, the Senate is composed of 2 senators from each state, plus the Vice President when necessary. Each state, regardless of its size geographically or socially, receives equal representation. That already should set off warning bells of disproportionate power assigned to smaller numbers of people. With the filibuster in place, preventing legislation can be permanently blocked by representatives elected by 31.5 million Americans, or just over 10% of the current estimated population. Don’t believe me? Bust out a calculator and do the math. That’s an extreme case, but it’s nothing when you consider that the legislation is, in all reality, blocked by only 40 Americans, or 0.00000013% of us.

Just how many ego-swelling power trips do Senators need, anyway?