Listening to a @jbouie livechat about the filibuster right now and it's made it clear: the filibuster (and particularly reconciliation as a workaround) hasn't just bottled up progressive legislation, but it's warped the entire constitutional system in subtle-but-fundamental ways.

Reconciliation is the only way to get a law through Congress most of the time, and most of Congress's authorities, to regulate or pass social legislation, are inaccessible in reconciliation.

So the role of Congress has shifted. Instead of the broad national legislature envisioned by Article I - a body to rule over the whole country and direct its government - Congress has become, in most cases, an agency for management of the federal budget.

The existence of reconciliation as an exception to the filibuster is essential to this shift. If reconciliation didn't exist, Congress would be sidelined almost completely, paralyzed, and what would likely happen is that frustrated majorities would just end the practice entirely.

But because of reconciliation, there's actually a pathway to legislating - it's just bound by a strict set of rules that actually dramatically alter the scope of how Congress can act. Thus most of Congress's work gets channeled through those limits, narrowing its practical power.