| By Clem Guttata
In case you haven't heard yet, Mass. voters delivered a predictable message yesterday. With high unemployment, a bad economy, and no immediate signs of improvement, they punished the incumbent party. (Oh, and it doesn't help to demoralize your base.)
The immediate outcome of this election is the Democratic caucus in the Senate will--sometime in the two weeks or so when Sen. Brown is sworn in--have 59 instead of 60 members.
For most of the history of the Senate, this would be a minor consideration, important only for the most critical of critical votes and--even then--only for the drama of how long it took to break a filibuster.
A few decades back when our Sen. Robert Byrd was Majority Leader, he instituted an innovative change in how the Senate schedules business--he created a dual-track system where the Senate can consider two pieces of legislation at a time. Combined with an unprecedented GOP commitment to obstructionist policies, this has led to a the unintended consequence of every piece of legislation now requires 60 votes in the Senate to pass.
Senate: heal thyself
What happens next is entirely up to the Senate. The 60 vote threshold for the end of debate (cloture) is entirely a matter of tradition--a relatively recent tradition at that. The Senate makes its own rules, it can change its own rules.
If you are not facing scandals, and times are good, then you will be popular no matter what you pass into law. This is about being in power when times are bad.
In order to pass legislation that will start to make the situation in the country better, and thus make themselves more popular, Democrats are going to have to get rid of the filibuster. With the 60-vote Senate, there was never much of a chance to pass the legislation necessary to start the country in the right direction. Now, there is even less of a chance--virtually none, really.
All Democratic leaders are going to have to ask themselves a question: do they want to make the country better, or are concerns over obscure arguments about the need for a "deliberative body" more important to them? Would they rather be able to govern for the next three years, or are they afraid of a few news cycles where Republicans accuse them of not being bipartisan enough?
That is the choice that leading Democrats face right now. Even though we can help organize and apply pressure, this is still fundamentally a choice the Democratic Senate caucus faces, not us.
I hope for the sake of the country--we need bold action to take care of the critical problems facing our country--that the Senate fixes itself and is able to start passing legislation supported by the majority of the country.
To retreat to timidity would be a tragic misread of the election results, one that would not only damage future Democratic electoral changes but--far more importantly--needlessly clip the wings from implementing critical public policy. |
