Frankly, I think the “stunning loss” the Dems suffered in MA could…could…be a good thing.
It seems that it is now in vogue for folks on the left to attack the filibuster rules in the Senate as unconstitutional and blahblahblah. Personally, I love the filibuster. For those Dems that want to kill it, remember, we’ll be the minority party again someday.
What I don’t love about the filibuster is how it’s used by Harry Reid and, indirectly, President Obama. If they have a piece of legislation and cannot get 60 votes they don’t bring it to the floor. They negotiate and water it down and bribe enough moderates to get their 60 votes which, I think, in most cases leads to a dramatically sub-optimal legislative outcome. I don’t blame the Republicans, nor am I pissed at the Blue Dogs. If all I had to do was threaten a filibuster to kill a piece of legislation or to get myself on the pork train, I’d do it.
What’s maddening about Mr. Reid is, given his long tenure in the Senate, he knows filibusters are rare and they are extremely difficult to pull off. You have to get enough Senators willing to rotate 24/7 to keep it going long enough to get the other side to give up. It’s really, really hard to do.
Imagine a filibuster on the stimulus plan. Imagine enough Blue Dogs and Conservatives actively holding up legislation that would have a real, material, and immediate positive impact on their constituents. This isn’t quietly voting against something…it’s actively telling the people who voted for you to go suck wind. Imagine those folks on the fence who wouldn’t filibuster but for various reasons don’t want to vote for the stimulus getting hammered by consituents with real life horror stories of how the Great Recession was killing ‘em. What do you think the likelihood is that they’d vote for cloture? Quite high, I should think.
The problem isn’t the filibuster. The problem is that the mere threat of one forces all meaningful legislation to have a super-majority. That’s not a process or a structure problem…that’s a failure of leadership and courage by Reid and Obama.
No longer having a guaranteed 60 votes may well force them to force Republicans to make good on their filibuster threats. How would you like to be a Republican in an election year and be either directly guilty of or indirectly supportive of bringing legislation, like healthcare, that a majority of Americans want (according to pools, anyway) to a state of complete gridlock? I’m pretty sure the Dems could use that as one hell of a campaign issue. It’s time for Obama and Reid to take off the kid gloves and force the obstructionists to actually obstruct as opposed to theoretically obstruct. And let them live with the consequences.