RaveVlog

Lisa Desjardins:

Judy, it's called the filibuster, the right of senators to derail votes, in theory, with infinite debate. And it's why there is a 60-vote threshold for most Senate bills.

Long speeches have always been part of the Senate, but requiring a supermajority vote to end them, that came in 1917. And it has defined the modern Senate. It has changed some, with a lower threshold and 161, at least, work-arounds in its first 100 years.

Today, all 50 Senate Democrats agree on voting rights reforms, but they do not agree on whether to change the Senate's rules to pass them.

For more on the debate over the filibuster, we turn to Adam Jentleson, the executive director of Battle Born Collective, a progressive communications firm, and former adviser to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Brian Darling, senior adviser to Navigators Global, a conservative communications firm, and former adviser to Republican Senator Rand Paul.

Gentlemen, thank you.

Let me just jump right into this important debate.

Adam, why should the filibuster change?

Adam Jentleson, Former Harry Reid Deputy Chief of Staff: Well, the filibuster, Lisa, as you said has changed a lot over the years.

And in today's Senate, it has gone from what most Americans think of when they think of the filibuster, when they think of perhaps Jimmy Stewart standing on the Senate floor giving a long speech, into a more refined tool of obstruction that simply allows a minority of senators who may represent as little as a quarter of the population to block the majority from acting on centrist commonsense policies.

So, if the filibuster ever served a useful purpose, it has mutated far beyond what the framers ever envisioned and become a tool purely for obstruction. And I think that's what you're seeing in the Senate today. And that is why it needs to either be reformed dramatically or gotten rid of altogether.

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