It seems people have a short memory in the aftermath of ObamaCare. Obama won the Presidency with coattails bringing a near super-majority to both chambers of Congress. Speaker Pelosi pushed a "public option" healthcare bill through the House, a back-door scheme to nationalize healthcare (who can compete against a provider which can go trillions into debt?) This scheme caused problems for more moderate Dems from competitive states, e.g., AR, LA, NE, FL.) At one point, the Senate Dems held a filibuster-proof 60 Senate seats. Dem leadership ignored the 40 Senate Republicans and the moderate Dems used their votes to negotiate sweetheart concessions such as the "Louisiana Purchase", "Cornhusker Kickback" and "Gator-Aid"; this became more important when the special election for late Ted Kennedy's (D-MA) seat resulted in an unlikely victory for Scott Brown (R), who ran as the filibuster sustaining #41. The Senate leadership had no intent in reopening negotiations with Republicans. This required the more progressive House Dems to vote for the Senate's odious sausage-making bill, or else Brown's vote could scuttle bill reconciliation. Pelosi used the circumstances to negotiate a quid pro quo using filibuster-proof budget reconciliation for Senate concessions.
Only a partisan could consider ObamaCare good public policy; even with many moderate Dem Congressmen allowed not to vote for it, voters returned control of the House to the GOP and Obama would eventually also lose the Senate.
Partisan Dems, who were in the minority for years in the interim and readily took advantage of the Senate filibuster, are heavily pressing extremely narrow Congressional majorities (including VP Harris a tie-breaking vote in a split Senate) to run up the legislative score before this fall's midterms. They have been frustrated by a conservative majority on SCOTUS and have been threatening to pack the court; they also resent the fact of the filibuster has stymied most of Biden's partisan agenda. Never mind the fact that both of these are double-edged swords that could backfire if and when they return to the minority. They, in fact, started this, e.g., modifying the rules to push through Obama judicial nominees, and were dismayed by Trump's pushing through SCOTUS nominees under similar rules.
Barry Obama and his equally hypocritical partisan cohorts like Majority Leader Schumer have been dismissive of the filibuster, pointing it's not articulated in the Constitution and explicitly linking it to the Jim Crow South which staved off civil rights reforms enforcing the fifteenth amendment. But in reality the very structure of the government has been designed to check upon the tyranny of the majority: the very existence of the Senate vs. a unicameral legislature, the Presidential veto, and SCOTUS to protect constitutional rights from legislative violations. But political hacks like Obama ignore Senate traditions underlying the filibuster dating from the very first Congress when a Pennsylvania senator (Maclay} spoke of Virginians staving off votes on a bill by talking away the time. And every legislator thinks his pet legislative priority is morally compelling. Let's point out the Dems, in very recent history, have used the filibuster to kill a bill/provisions or force concessions, e.g., to secure unemployment relief in COVID-19 legislation, to stop border wall funding and sanctuary city penalties.
Given the reluctance of demonized moderate Dems Sinema and Manchin, all too aware of changing filibuster rules being a double-edged sword applied against the Dems in their next tenure in the minority, possibly next year, Dems seem to be trying carving out an exception for so-called voting rights reform. (I don't want to go into a separate discussion here, but the xo-called reform seems to be more about federal attempts to micromanage state election policies than race-based restrictions to ballot access, which I regard as unconstitutional.) The slippery slope of filibuster carveouts is arbitrary; the Republicans can and will use the precedent for their own legislative priorities when once again in the majority. It isa backdoor to ending the filibuster, and Sinema and Manchin are not persuaded. They realize that the proper way to handle voting reform is to vest the Republicans in the process through legislative compromise, not to shove a partisan bill down the GOP's throats with a thin majority.
As a libertarian who believes in the principle of Subsidiarity, I am naturally skeptical of national legislation. The end of the filibuster could add to the uncertainty and volatility of public policy as laws could be reversed with the change of Congressional leadership. We need to preserve the filibuster.
