Whether you call it a "Jim Crow" relic or just partisan obstructionism, the filibuster has lost any functional purpose in the Senate. It has become a tool of bourbon obstructionists like Mitch McConnell. Either a bill has the support of a handful of Senators who are willing to grind the body to a halt, or it does not pass at all. Democrats, especially so-called "centrists" which US Person prefers to think of as DINOs, do not have the courage of their convictions, only the fear of losing their privilege. Changing the rule is not "breaking the place" because the institution is already broken.
The supermajority cloture rule was instituted in 1917 in order to pass wartime legislation. (arming merchant ships) The filibuster was historically used by white supremacists to block civil rights legislation like the anti-lynching law. See history of Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina or Richard Russel of Georgia. One hundred years later, only the context has changed in the Senate. The filibuster in its present, effortless incarnation (it literally can be invoked by email) will be used by the Party of Sedition to block voting rights reform, not to mention gun safety laws, taxing the rich and corporations, expanding Medicare, or other parts of Biden's agenda that they find objectionable. It took a hundred years and a pandemic for the choice to become inescapable--either you vote for democracy and social justice for all, or maintain a racist bulwark erected in the aftermath of the Civil War. To choose that path would be to disrespect the nation's extreme sacrifice to preserve a "more perfect Union". As the stands now the Union is suffering from a filibuster-induced paralysis.
Exposure of the revanchists in the Senate who block social progress is the way forward; once exposed, the procedural rule should be altered to allow the upper chamber to function. Minority consent to move forward is neither necessary nor advantageous to the nation. In fact the rule has been used to place civil rights legislation out of bounds, in return for a dysfunctional chamber. Civil rights bills were doomed, but most other bills could pass with a simple majority. Southern elites realized the same thing Madison and Hamilton knew: supermajority requirements empower a small minority to game the system in their favor.
After the hard fought passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1965, the filibuster was no longer so tightly tethered to maintenance of white supremacy. The number of filibusters and cloture votes by both sides shot up. But McConnell has taken obstruction to new heights, where nothing can pass without a sixty-vote majority. Obstructionists need not even hold the Senate floor against a majority. Paralysis has ensued, as the founders predicted. To Alexander Hamilton, any rule that required a supermajority vote served “to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.” [emphasis added] The filibuster was, and is, a bargain with the devil. As a elderly black lady in Austin, TX once told US Person, aka "ace of spades", "They's the devil!". He cooly replied, "they are a reasonable facsimile, ma'am". So end this Faustian bargain, or would you prefer DC statehood. Mr. Manchin?