Kill the filibuster? Sounds more like election campaign noise than government policy.

The filibuster, a parliamentary practice in the U.S. Senate that allows members of a minority to block the will of the majority, has existed in one form or another long before you were born.

Will it outlive us all? Given the sluggishness of our federal government, there is a good chance of that happening, even in these times of increasing partisanship. But will it be broken down piece by piece into something smaller and less powerful? This is already happening.

Vice President Kamala Harris reignited the long-running debate over the filibuster on Tuesday during a radio interview in Wisconsin when she proposed eliminating the practice, which requires 60 of the Senate’s 100 members to agree to end debate in order for a given bill to pass a vote.

Harris narrowly limited her position to abortion rights and proposed expanding the abortion protections provided under Roe v. Wade insisted that it be reinstated as federal law until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned this five-decade-old precedent two years ago.

Abortion is a powerful motivator for voters in the November election, as the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, has boasted about appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe. So Harris is raising the stakes in this debate, which will help keep the debate going nationally.

But Harris was tight-lipped on the filibuster, offering support to protect her when she wasn’t trying to kill her.

What does Kamala Harris really want to do with the filibuster?

Harris didn’t provide many details during her radio interview about how she would use the filibuster to restore the rights she lost after overturning Roe. Her campaign later told me that her intentions with the filibuster were “specifically” about abortion rights, rather than a broader interest in ending the practice.

This kind of drive-by campaigning — Hey, here’s my plan as president, I’ll tell you the details later — has become a rhetorical crutch for both Harris and Trump in this election.

The filibuster is supported by centrists and conservatives in the Senate. Democrats have a slim majority in that chamber, but the electoral map shows strong signs that Republicans could regain control in November.

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U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, a right-wing Republican from Arkansas, slammed Harris on Tuesday with a social media post that said, “She will say anything to get elected.”

He brought receipts and attached a bipartisan letter from April 2017 signed by 61 members of the Senate — 32 Democrats, 28 Republicans and one independent — calling for protecting the filibuster.

Harris, then a freshman senator from California, signed that letter calling on Senate leadership to “maintain existing rules, practices and traditions” regarding when to debate and vote.

The Republicans controlled the Senate at the time. The filibuster is looking increasingly attractive to the political party that is not in control.

Harris has previously suggested eliminating the filibuster

Harris, during her first run for president in 2019, proposed abolishing the filibuster to pass an environmental protection package called the Green New Deal. However, her election campaign does not want to reveal whether that is still her position.

There is a history of carve-outs in the filibuster. Democrats didn’t exactly like how this turned out.

In theory, filibuster means that a senator continues to speak against legislation to prevent it from being voted on, which became known in the mid-19th century as “talking a bill to death.” In 1917, the Senate needed a two-thirds majority to end a filibuster. This was changed in 1975 to a three-fifths majority – i.e. 60 votes. Now all senators have to do is threaten to continue talking to trigger a filibuster.

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In 2013, Democrats were frustrated that then-President Barack Obama’s Senate appointments were stymied by Republicans in the minority using a carve-out now known as the “nuclear option” to place executive and judicial branch nominations below at the level of the Supreme Court.

Republicans, who were in the majority in 2017, extended this to Supreme Court nominations.

This allowed Neil Gorsuch to stand for the confirmation vote the same year after Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch was one of three Trump nominees who then overturned Roe.

It’s a tradition in Congress to change how the filibuster works

The Senate’s rules are based on the rules voted for by at least 51 senators. Daniel Weiner, director of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center For Justice, told me the filibuster has been “modified dozens of times” over the years.

“It’s important to remember that the filibuster was never a static set of rules,” Weiner said. “It is constantly evolving and changing. So a new round of change wouldn’t be particularly radical.”

But Justin Buchler, a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, said it would be “tremendously stupid” for Democrats to kill the filibuster now because Republicans would use it against them later.

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He argued that Republicans forced Democrats to use the “nuclear option” in 2013 so they could expand it four years later while their political opponents took the blame. This is what happened in public.

Since the 1980, 1984 and 1988 elections, no party has held the White House three times in a row. So if Harris wins this year, Republicans have a good chance of retaking the presidency in 2028 and potentially taking control of Congress. If the filibuster is eliminated, any gains Democrats make between now and 2028 could be reversed once Republicans regain control.

“You can’t make a weapon and then expect it will never be used against you,” Buchler said.

Harris is playing politics with the filibuster. Things could end badly for them.

If Harris is just playing politics here and declaring an end to the filibuster to reinforce her message about abortion rights, she could be playing a dangerous game. Buchler said she will face “tremendous pressure from the activist base” to make good on her promises if Democrats control the House and Senate next year.

Trump has enjoyed the pushback Harris received from some moderates who said she should leave the filibuster alone.

But Trump, in his single term, has talked and complained about the filibuster whenever it hindered his ambitions. He wanted it dead the way Harris now says she wants it.

At the moment, abolishing the filibuster sounds like campaign chatter to further galvanize the Democratic base against abortion. If Harris wins in November, we’ll find out if that was just bluster or if she’s willing to risk killing the filibuster, which Republicans would later relish in exploiting while taking the blame on her.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Harris suggested killing the filibuster. I asked why