Email Address Adam Jentleson. Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. Liveright, 2021. Democrats had their sixty votes for a mere 212 days. From July 7, 2009, when Al Franken of Minnesota was finally sworn into office after winning by 312 votes, until February 4, 2010, when Scott Brown of Massachusetts took his seat after a shock win in a special election, the party had a sufficient majority to invoke cloture under the US Senate’s Rule 22 and close debate on legislation without needing votes from the other side. The last time either party had held sixty seats was in 1979. Given partisan sorting by geography and increased straight-ticket voting, Democrats will never pull it off again in any of our political lifetimes.