The Senate: A Historical Perspective on Governance and Partisanship

The fight over the filibuster brings up some deeper questions that we as a country are facing. How do we make space for disagreement without ending up at a stalemate? Can we use the tools given to us by previous generations without turning them into weapons? And how do we decide which parts of our system should be changed – and when it's time to change? The filibuster can hold legislation hostage, stop bills from ever reaching the Senate floor, and lead to hours-long speeches in Congress, but it can be hard to understand what a filibuster actually is, why we have it, and how it impacts the country. In this episode, we look at how the ongoing battle over the filibuster's future is in some ways a battle over its past.

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