In the noir classic The Maltese Falcon, gumshoe Sam Spade hunts down the eponymous statue only to discover a more nebulous evil behind it, one he’s powerless to dislodge. If Democrats beat Trump in the next election, they’ll find Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell lurking in the background, ready to turn their promises of change into gridlock that depresses their voters, feeds the alienation of our era, and paves the way to the White House for a more polished Trump, someone who can marshal the same malevolent forces with fewer rough edges.

Even if 2020 brings a blue tsunami that sweeps away McConnell himself, his strategy of obstruction will survive to paralyze a new Democratic administration, just like it did President Barack Obama. Beating Trump won’t be enough, regardless of the size of the victory. To deliver on their promises, Democrats need to both take back the Senate and reform it to prevent Republicans from wielding a slim minority to gridlock the entire government.

Taking back the Senate is tough but doable. There are enough pickup opportunities but no easy races, so Democrats need all hands on deck.

Congressman Beto O’Rourke said he’s sticking with the presidential race, and the Texas Democratic senate primary is full of strong candidates—like Air Force vet M. J. Hegar, Houston council member Amanda Edwards, and progressive community leader Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez—to unseat John Cornyn, whose approval rating is an anemic 37 percent. Still, O’Rourke has unique assets: universal name recognition and the proven ability to raise enormous sums of grassroots money in a state where the cost of running a statewide campaign can be prohibitively high. Some candidates are indelibly linked to place, and it’s hard to shake the impression O’Rourke’s strength seems to ebb and flow based on his proximity to El Paso.

In Montana, Governor Steve Bullock is probably the only Democrat with a fighting chance to beat incumbent Republican Senator Steve Daines. Polling under one percent and failing to make the latest debate stage, Bullock’s presidential campaign was over before it began. He has a better chance at helping Democrats take back the Senate and enact historic change there than being anything other than forgotten in the presidential race.

Part of the reason O’Rourke and Bullock are running for president instead of senator is that there’s not much appeal to working in a dysfunctional institution. But reform would turn it into a place capable of passing big things again. It’s an incentive, but it’s also necessary: The simple reality is that to get anything done, Democrats will need to reform the Senate to end the ability of the party out of power to force everything—from routine business to major legislation—to secure 60 votes in order to clear a once-obscure procedural hurdle.

This is the tool McConnell wielded against Obama as a weapon of mass obstruction. He calculated that Republicans could obstruct relentlessly, play on the media’s “both sides” instincts to defray blame, and then be rewarded when the public blamed the party in power for gridlock. To that end, McConnell obliterated all records for deploying the 60-vote threshold, using it as many times in Obama’s first term as in the previous 20 years combined.

McConnell obliterated all records for deploying the 60-vote threshold, using it as many times in Obama’s first term as in the previous 20 years combined.

Recently, the supermajority threshold has become synonymous with the filibuster, a term that evokes ghosts of the Founders and scenes of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, his suit rumpled and papers flailing, talking himself blue on the Senate floor. But the Mr. Smith–style talking filibuster and the supermajority threshold are two different things. The supermajority threshold stems from an obscure rule that was introduced in 1917. Rarely invoked for the first half century of its existence, it started to mutate in the 1970s as post–civil rights realignment fed partisan tensions, control of the majority was up for grabs more frequently, and senators looked for more creative ways to make the other side look bad. Unlike in the movie, senators don’t have to hold the floor to invoke the 60-vote threshold. They don’t have to debate or explain their position publicly, or try to persuade anyone of anything. They don’t have to talk at all—they can literally phone in their objection to the Senate cloakroom, then sit back and watch the gears of governance grind to a halt.