Welcome back to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host Sarah Isger with Steve Hayes.

And today we are talking to former North Dakota Democratic Senator Heidi Heikamp and the

founder of One Country Project, which does great work, sort of trying to bring Democrats

together, right? What unites the Democratic Party? And we'll be talking about all of that

today. Let's dive right in. Heidi, we are thrilled to have you here. I just want to start

out letting you talk about the sort of best case for keeping the filibuster at this point

and the best case for getting rid of the filibuster at this point. Will you give us sort

of both of your thoughts on that? I mean, the best case for getting rid of it is it's

not working the way it was supposed to work. And by that, I mean, it has literally made

every piece of legislation that moves through this Senate a 60 vote piece of legislation.

And you might say, well, but but some of these things get done without 60 votes. That's

because there's exceptions to the filibuster. Probably the most important exception in recent

times has been reconciliation. And I think as I have said, when you use reconciliation,

what all these members do is they sit off to the side and they like knock on the door

of the leader, please could I get this in reconciliation? Please could I get this bill?

And the public never sees the bill because it's usually voted on at two in the morning

after somebody patched it all together. And so this is not the way to run the railroad.

And so the filibuster has basically leapfrog regular order and regular order, which goes

to the filibuster is not used anymore. And if it is used, it's not used on important

pieces of legislation. So the best case for keeping the filibuster is that it doesn't

foul create an atmosphere where you have to come to consensus and that creates more

certainty for legislation. Let me give you an example. So when I first got to the Senate,

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