In the Democratic National Convention hall, in side events in hotel ballrooms and conference centers, and on the campaign trail, lawmakers and candidates are promising big change.

They have promised to codify Roe v. Wade and end the assault on reproductive rights. They have promised to end gerrymandering and voter suppression in a pair of consequential voting-rights bills: the For the People Act and the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act. They want to address affordable housing, child care, paid family and medical leave, and child poverty; they want to transform the tax code; and so on.

To accomplish all of this, or at least to make it unencumbered by artificial constraints and rules and processes, they need to end the circumstance whereby a minority of members in the US Senate get a veto over everything the chamber does. At the heart of the entire agenda that this convention’s pitch is predicated upon is the imperative to reform the filibuster.