Obama on the filibuster

What President Obama said about the filibuster at John Lewis's funeral is a sham and a shame. He called the filibuster a "relic of Jim Crow". His statement implies that the right to filibuster is racist and began during the Jim Crow era. Both implications are false. The filibuster is not racist and did not begin in the Jim Crow era. 

We need careful and thoughtful debate before deciding whether or not to remove the filibuster, not false portrayals of the filibuster as being racist. Ds don't want to remove the filibuster because it is racist. I suspect that they want to remove it to grab power. I suspect that they envision a Biden victory, gaining a majority in the Senate, and keeping control of the House. Then, by removing the filibuster, they could add Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico as states and give themselves another "safe" four seats in future Senates, perhaps "pack" the Supreme Court, and pass any bill no matter how much the Rs attempt to resist. 

Obama's claim that the filibuster is racist differs sharply from recent history. "In 2017 most Senate Democrats signed a letter supporting the filibuster because 'we are steadfastly committed to ensuring that this great American institution continues to serve as the world’s greatest deliberative body.'" Either the Ds then were ignorant or the filibuster's association with racism or willing to overlook the association because it served a greater good. Or maybe the claim is false.

Obama would have been more accurate if he had said that the filibuster was used by Senators to delay civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 60s. However, that segregationists used the filibuster does not make it a relic of Jim Crow. Its use preceded and survives Jim Crow and has been used many more times to delay action on issues not related to Jim Crow. That racists use something does not make the thing racist. That racists used their votes to elect segregationists does not make voting racist.  

The filibuster did not begin during Jim Crow. In fact, the filibuster has been standard practice in the Senate since the founding of the country. Filibuster occurs when someone uses the right to unlimited debate to delay taking a vote on a motion. One of the first to threaten to limit unlimited debate and the ability to filibuster was Henry Clay, hardly a paragon of civil rights and racial equality. 

The Senate adopted a rule, known as cloture, to limit debate in 1917. They agreed a vote of 2/3 of the Senators would end debate. The Senate reduced the number of votes needed to 3/5 in 1975. Subsequently the so-called nuclear option reduced the number to a simple majority for confirming federal judges and, later, for confirming Supreme Court judges.