Book Review: Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy by Adam Jentleson
This is the best explanation I’ve seen yet for how the US Senate has become so dysfunctional and undemocratic. Jentleson covers Senate history from its being as intended by Madison and the other founders, through its intentional corruption by John C. Calhoun and then 20th Century white supremacists such as Richard Russell, to today where Mitch McConnell has fully transformed the Senate into Calhoun’s dream of superminority obstructionism. Jentleson takes the reader on a fascinating ride through documented repeated subversion of the intention of the Constitutional founders. This book provides a clear eyed view of how the Senate rarely if ever serves the will of the people.
At the center of Senate dysfunction is the filibuster—a word that did not exist in the time of the Constitutional Convention. The filibuster and its associated rules were and are primarily used by conservatives for obstructionist purposes, standing athwart history, yelling Stop—and most good for the people has indeed been stopped. A major difference in our own time is that there is little pretense to anything principled in this obstruction. McConnell’s hypocrisy about slowing or accelerating court nominees depending on whether they suit the purposes of his handlers provides a glaring example of larger and deeper corruption in the Senate.
There are several causes for the broken state of the Senate, among them (there is no polite way to say it) conservative senators being held captive by a loud minority with the mindset of Wealthy, White, Anti-choice Conservatives—for which Jentleson uses the shorthand of WWAC—who in turn are manipulated by obscene amounts of dark money unleashed by the Citizens United decision, which is deployed by billionaires in a successful bid to retain their extreme wealth and influence irrespective of the damage this does to society. Any senators that step out of line become the target of this dark money network, which uses deceptive emotional hooks to enrage the WWAC-mindset super minority against them.
Jentleson concludes the book with some practical steps that may be taken to return the Senate to a functional state that existed before Aaron Burr caused removal of the previous question motion. But first there needs to be 51 votes to remove the filibuster—until then we will continue to have a WWAC Senate.
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