At the end of 2010, Bernie Sanders gave us one of the most impressive filibusters in modern history. Current Senate rules don’t require speeches at all for filibusters, but in a throwback to old-fashioned Mr. Smith Goes to Washington–style talking filibusters, Bernie delivered an eight-and-a-half-hour monologue to protest the extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts. It was a pivotal moment in the emergence of a new pole in American politics to the left of Democratic Party liberalism.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Sanders refused to support overturning the filibuster during his two subsequent runs for president. In 2020, he argued that his core proposals could be passed despite the filibuster by using the budget-reconciliation workaround. In the final stretch of his second campaign, under pressure from liberals who were outflanking him on the issue, he finally adjusted his position.

Even then, though, he was only willing to say that if priorities like expanding voting required ending the filibuster, “then that is what we must do.” Six years later, he seems reluctant to go beyond this kind of cautious, subjunctive framing.