In a work for fans of How Democracies Die and even Master of the Senate, Jentleson makes clear that, without a reevaluation of Senate practices-starting with ending the filibuster-we face the prospect of permanent minority rule in America. The current GOP has merely used the methods pioneered by its predecessors, though to newly extreme ends. As Jentleson shows, since the 1950s, a free-flowing body of relative equals has devolved into a rigidly hierarchical, polarized institution, with both Democrats and Republicans to blame. How did we get to this point? In Kill Switch, Adam Jentleson argues that shifting demographics alone cannot explain how Mitch McConnell harnessed the Senate and turned it into a powerful weapon of minority rule. Every major decision governing our diverse, majority-female, and increasingly liberal country bears the stamp of the US Senate, yet the Senate allows an almost exclusively white, predominantly male, and radically conservative minority of the American electorate to impose its will on the rest of us. But as Ezra Klein put it in a podcast, Jentleson is also an insider who has seen how the Senate actually works. Certainly, this means that Jentleson leans left. An insider's account of how politicians representing a radical minority of Americans are using the greatest deliberative body in the world to hijack our democracy. The author of the excellent KILL SWITCH is Adam Jentleson, who was deputy chief of staff for Harry Reid when Reid was the Senate majority leader.
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