This is a good point:

The reason we don’t have a DREAM act is the Senate, where a 41 vote minority stopped it, because the Senate is now the place where states like Wyoming, Utah and Kentucky use the filibuster to rule the rest of us. I’ll outsource the details of the argument against the 60-vote-majority Senate to Steven L Taylor who has a good piece on just how un-democratic it has become (and don’t miss him destroying Doug Mataconis’ dumb arguments in the comments), since they’re obvious and well-accepted.

I know the reason Democrats don’t want to reform the Senate rules are a mixed bag of fear of a Republican President, slow acceptance of the current political environment, and Robert Byrd-like veneration of outmoded tradition. But we’ll have an elected King in a few years if we don’t get rid of the filibuster and win back a House majority so we can get something done.

I actually think the biggest reasons why Democrats are the way they are on the filibuster is because (a) they don’t know about it or don’t understand quite how it works, and (b) because center-right Democrats correctly believe it works to their advantage no matter what the climate, and they can stop reform from happening based on their numbers. If the GOP has 55 Senate seats, then Ben Nelson and his ilk get to play kingmaker. Same when the Dems do. The worst possible situation for them was when Democrats had 60 votes, because they were at the center of attention for once. And, frankly, they choked. But none of this is new.

Executive orders like this are, let’s be honest, yet another attempt to make a fundamentally unworkable constitutional structure manageable. I don’t think it’s out of line to suggest that a large government that regulates numerous markets, engages (whether we like it or not) in numerous foreign adventures, sets social policy as well as tons of other things needs to move just a bit faster than it did in 1787, when it pretty much just delivered the mail and fielded ambassadors. But we still have Madison’s basic structure, so for decades, governing by loophole has (necessarily) become the default. It goes back and forth: on the one hand, the filibuster is completely unconstitutional and renders Congress unworkable when used to such an enormous extent. So, we get ever-more expansive executive orders and recess appointments far outside what the Framers would have imagined. For a while we had porous political parties that ensured against any one political faction gaining the upper hand, and then things got polarized. It’s not even entirely a matter of The Constitution, so much as that the changes that have been made to that structure without Amendments (starting, arguably, with the Supreme Court giving itself the power to review laws and strike them down) have created a system that doesn’t work, and whose breakdown is accelerating. I find it hard to get angry at the president for implementing a proposal that 55 senators voted for–it should have been the law of the land according to the actual Constitution, and now it is. But, if Obama gets a second term and Republicans gain the Senate, we’ll likely see them try to put a stop to any new environmental regulations. Hell, they don’t even need a majority, since Joe Manchin is about as bullish on fossil fuels as any of them. Given that the EPA is legally required to put them out, the people voted for his Administration, etc., we’ll have yet another new challenge to the orderly running of the system. How would Obama deal with that? Declare the votes null and void? Ignore the new rules? Or would there be some kind of jiu-jitsu solution that again pushes the boundaries to new terrain? Probably the latter. But there will come a point where the business of governing will just become so arcane that nobody will understand it but the lawyers.

My solution? New constitution. Given where we are, I don’t think there’s another way.