This is all strikingly … normal. During the Republican trifecta of the Trump administration’s first two years, Democratic filibuster power led Republicans to shy away from pursuing much that would require 60 Senate votes, though some bills did reach the president’s desk through regular order, including bipartisan legislation regarding criminal justice reform, vocational education funding and opioid addiction treatment. The reconciliation process gave Trump his biggest legislative success, tax reform, and his biggest legislative humiliation, the failed attempt to repeal Obamacare.

As I wrote here five years ago, Barack Obama had a better record of signing bipartisan bills than many remember, especially during his two years with a Democratic trifecta when economic stimulus, financial reform, criminal justice reform, food safety regulations and “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal all passed. Of course, there were filibusters during that period, including on immigration reform and pay equity bills. And Democrats flinched in 2010 from bringing legislation to the floor repealing the tax cuts implemented by Obama’s Republican predecessor — knowing it would meet a GOP-led filibuster most likely joined by some Democrats. (Obama would later pass bipartisan tax reform at the end of 2012.)

Perhaps the most effective use of Democratic filibuster power in the past 20 years was in 2005, when 42 members of the Senate Democratic caucus signed a letter rejecting President George W. Bush’s plan to partially privatize Social Security. Republicans saw the writing on the wall and never brought such a proposal to the Senate floor for a vote. Democrats never needed to actually filibuster, only to flex their filibustering muscles.