Magic Numbers
Ezra Klein writes that “can win one of the more stubborn states on the list — like Kentucky, Mississippi, or Georgia — they’ve hit the holy grail of 60 votes in the Senate — a filibuster proof majority. And many think it possible.”
I’m not sure it’s right to think of 60 as a “holy grail” in this sense. You need sixty votes on any particular issue. It’s not like the 51 votes you need to organize the Senate where it’s just a one time thing. And if you think about concrete issues, it’s less clear that 60 Democrats, as such, is the magic number for progressive legislation. There are several Republicans, for example, who are more likely to vote for a decent climate change bill than is Mary Landrieux. And Arlen Specter voted for cloture on EFCA. On most issues, Senatorial opinion divides mostly along party lines, but it’s pretty rare to see a pure party line topic. Consequently, it seems to me that 60 Senators for one party basically just exists along a continuum with 59 Senators and 61 Senators in just the same way that 56 or 53 does.
Meanwhile, it’s still the case that the filibuster rule is a bad rule and should be done away with.
46 Responses to “Magic Numbers”
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October 9th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
It’ll be interesting to see what the caucus does with Lieberman, if they’re up in the 59-60 range.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I think you’ve forgotten what happened in 1993-1994, when moderate Republican Senators were persuaded to act in lockstep with their caucus to block any major reforms, and then blame Democrats for not doing anything. 60 seats would make that strategy unworkable.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Valid points, but it is easier to force a Democrat who opposes a particular legislation to vote Yea on cloture while voting Nay on the bill. If the less progressive senator is in the Democratic caucus, then the Democratic leadership can point to its control over committee assignments and other goodies in order to at least get a vote on the bill. Thus, it is easier to pass progressive legislation if you have 51 progressive votes and 60 Democratic votes than if you have 55 progressive votes but only 56 Democratic votes.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
The real magic number is 52. That’s what it will take to control the Senate without Lieberman. Of course, 61 would be nice. But given that the democrats never vote straight party line, I’d agree that filibuster proof majority isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
The point is valid, but party discipline is an important factor. Notice every single Democrat, even a bunch who would presumably vote against EFCA, voted in favor of cloture. And how de we know that Specter didn’t vote only when it became apparent that the motion would fail? (Recall that Harry Reid once singled Specter out as a moderate “only when you don’t need him.”)
The Jeffords scenario could also come into play if Lieberman switches; in exchange for seniority in the Democratic caucus, Jeffords was bound to vote as Daschle instructed him to on procedural issues. If Lieberman makes the same deal with McConnell (or whoever replaces him [Kyl?]), that’s one vote for cloture on things like EFCA that is completely taken off the table.
We also don’t know what Kennedy’s attendance capabilities will be either.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
um, no, the filibuster must, MUST not be eliminated. and neither should the vice presidency. these are silly suggestions.
I think the number of 60 for the Senate would do a lot to dictate how the media protrays the situation overall. if its reached, the Senate will be discussed and analyzed in a different manner than if not. and you have to anticipate the coming insane increase in partisanship after Obama is sworn in. the rancor, hatred and refusal to cooperate that Clinton found himself mired in after a year or so will be nothing compared to what Obama will face. Repugs will try to crush every little thing he does, and the sheer partisanship of it all may drive a Landrieux to vote on the D side of things more as a show of some kind of solidarity. there will be nothing to be gained by voting with the R’s, whereas there have been things to gain these past 8 years.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I don’t care how many Republicans you get when the total that you have is 59. Just like I don’t care how many Democrats you lose when you get 60.
The key is how often did you get to 60 or 61 and who were the Republicans who were with you. Or, how often you get to 59 and who were the Democrats who were against you.
I don’t follow this too closely but I can’t remember a single time where you had 60 or 61 votes. It seems that if the bill is going to pass then the Republicans often wote for the popular bill.
I know we have had a lot of 59 vote cloture moves. Aside from Lieberman on the war, how often did a single Democrat vote with the Republicans when they would have been the 60th vote.
Look, I really don’t care how you vote when the vote is 72-27. I care how you vote when the other 99 are split 59-40.
Does anyone know how often and who were the people who switched sides when it counted???
October 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
It’s ‘Landrieu’ without an x, FYI. (and you don’t need the ‘is’ in that sentence, but I digress…)
And there is a way to buy Mary’s vote on climate change: coastal restoration for Louisiana’s wetlands. Did you know we lose a football field of wetlands every hour? And that if we had the wetlands we’ve lost over the past 75 years (1000 years worth of loss, btw), New Orleans wouldn’t need any levees? That qualifies as a major crisis. Not like anyone outside of Louisiana gives a rats ass, which is the problem.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I would feel more comfortable with 98 Democratic Senators, but I’ll take 60 or 61.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Lieberman’s out, even if it’s 55+Bernie. He’ll probably quit the Senate, too, so that Jodi Rell appoints a Republican to replace him.
The substantive point is right: anything in the 55-56 range gives more moderate Senate Republicans the freedom to buck the leadership on a per-issue basis in return for a piece of the legislative pie, even if some of the freshman Dems are basically centrist/corporatist in character. It also reduces the capacity of the minority to play silly buggers over demanding 60-vote thresholds. McConnell may not survive; if he does, he may be replaced, and while sheer obstructionism might keep the base happy, there are plenty of ways ways for a majority leader with a more comfortable margin can punch back at a recalcitrant minority.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
“I don’t follow this too closely but I can’t remember a single time where you had 60 or 61 votes.”
The medicare extension a few months ago only got 59 votes and was thus considered defeated. It passed a month later when Kennedy (who was absent the first time) showed up unexpectedly and, seeing that it would then pass, several Republicans switched to be on the “right side” of a passing vote. I think it ended up with 69. I imagine that kind of thing happens a lot: they know where the votes are beforehand, and people vote no if it will help kill it but don’t make unpopular votes if it’s going to pass anyway.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
The magic number isn’t 60, it’s 202-224-3542. That’s Harry Reid’s phone number. If he would deign to make Republicans actually filibuster, rather than just say they might, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Lieberman is toast. The Dems don’t want him and won’t need him any more; and if he switches parties then he’ll be in the minority and will lose his chairmanship anyway. He’s irrelevant. And Senator McCain will also be irrelevant: with a solid Dem majority and a hefty mandate for Obama, it should be easy to get a couple of votes from reasonable Repubs like Hagel, Lugar, Snowe, Collins, and Specter, without indulging McCain’s grandstanding.
Getting to 60 would be nice, but I think 57-58, together with over 50% in the popular vote, will be plenty to get things done.
And while some people are nervous about 2010 and beyond, I’m feeling pretty confident. Now that Obama and Dean have figured out a way to mobilize millions of Dem volunteers, we
should crush the Repubs on GOTV; and the demographic trends are only going to get worse for the party of old white men.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
The filibuster should be eliminated and we should start referring to it, Frank Luntz-style, as the “nonconstitutional filibuster rule.” Get it into people’s heads that this wasn’t handed down to us by the Holy (Founding) Fathers, but something we could change in an instant if we wanted.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I agree with Matt on the filibuster.
This said, I’d imagine that Obama and Reid will sit down with the Senate Democratic caucus sometime after the election and make a deal. They’ll say, if you don’t want to vote our way on big initiatives, we won’t punish you, just so long as we can get a majority and you don’t join in a Republican filibuster. Because, ultimately, if Ben Nelson votes for universal health care, his conservative constituents in Nebraska might not be happy, and he might open the door to a new challenger. But if there are 51 solid votes, and Ben votes no but also votes for cloture it seems like the best of all worlds for everyone. Plus, attacking Nelson on such a maneuver would be pretty complicated from where I sit.
In any event, if the Republicans lose big time this year, they might decide to be obstructionist and stuff Obama’s agenda. But if this year is the rout that it looks to be, you might start to see moderate voices assuming control. Perhaps we’ll even see an RLC in the works. If the Republicans try to obstruct Obama’s agenda and still lose seats in 2010 the conservative movement will be over, and Crist will be the nominee in 2012.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Repubs like Hagel, Lugar
Two points:
1. Hagel is gone. He’s retiring and the race is not close. A freshman Republican senator-for-life is not going to fuck up his entire career by bucking leadership and winding up with shit assignments.
2. Lugar may not be very odious, and he’s closer to Democrats in foreign policy, but he’s a down-the-line conservative. Dude fillibustered labor legislation back when you actually had to talk for hours to do it. He’s also like 80 years old and probably in his last term (re-elected in 2006). He’s not switching over on anything that would be close. (Same could’ve been said for Hagel if it mattered to).
October 9th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Should the economic crisis worsen in, say, spring 2009, maybe that would give Dems the excuse they need to craft a “nuclear option” of their own and end the filibuster.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
The Kentucky Democratic candidate for senator was a Republican until recently. To me it looks like he figured it would be easier to defeat McConnell in the general election than in the Republican primary. He’d be a Democrat for caucusing purposes, but I sure wouldn’t count on him for progressive legislation or for busting filibusters.
He’s statistically tied with McConnell now, but it’s 3 weeks until the election and McConnell hasn’t been saturating the air waves as he could easily do.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Like others above, I think there is a certain importance to 60 in your own caucus, because it allows you to put more pressure on possible defectors from your caucus, and conversely it lowers the pressure on defectors from the other caucus. That said, I also agree that getting to something like 58 would likely result in a working coalition anyway.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I would like to see the anonymous hold rule eliminated. I think it is ridiculous that a Senator can place a hold on legislation at all, but to allow them to do so anonymously is just stupid.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
I’m pretty much OK with the notion that to actually change the law, with all the awesome force this entails, on a contested issue a 3/5 majority may be appropriate.
The problem is that the Republicans have used it for EVERYTHING. Does anyone have stats on how this Congress is shaping up, veto-wise, in historical perspective?
October 9th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
It will matter mostly on judicial appointments.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
97 is the magic number.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
The filibuster does not need to be eliminated–it needs to be enforced!
The problem we’ve got today is that Senators only have to _threaten_ a filibuster in order to kill a bill. This is all very collegial and dignified, but it means that a popular bill can be killed quietly, with no price paid by the obstructionists.
Make them get out on the Senate floor and read the phone book all night if they want to stop a bill. Let C-SPAN show that kind of monkey-business 24 hours a day.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I’m pretty much OK with the notion that to actually change the law, with all the awesome force this entails, on a contested issue a 3/5 majority may be appropriate.
I’m with this, except that right now, it is essentially only being respected by one side. The “nuclear” option (like any nuclear weapon) was effective without actually being deployed – they managed to get the Dems to relent their majorities by simply threatening to remove that power.
I have no doubt that, when the tables again turn, the situation will resolve itself such that the Dems, again, will submit to the threat. Which means that if we respect the filibuster now, we’re creating a very lopsided environment.
If the filibuster is to be respected, at least it must be reinforced. Either legislate it so that it can’t be brushed away in the future, or do away with it altogether.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
As far as I can tell, Republicans have figured out that the path to power is sticking together, and democrats haven’t. Or, whatever the reason, democrats tend to be more divided within their own party when it comes to senate votes then republicans do.
The result, to effectively get to a filibuster-proof majority there really only need to be about 55 republicans, as they can always count on pickups from the democrats being significantly greater then defections from their own party.
On the other hand, the opposite applies for democrats, where even getting to 65 democrats in the senate frequently won’t be enough to make a bill filibuster proof.
Oddly, it does not seem like a lot of the big political brains have figured this out yet.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I really don’t see the point MY makes at all. One of the most interesting features of the past two years is how much these supposedly moderate Senate Republicans have not only opposed the majority’s legislation but signed on for an unprecedented wave of obstructionism. In other words: in the past two years, party *has* mattered a whole lot on these cloture votes. Specter voted for cloture on EFCA–but he was the only Republican who did, and cloture lost by 9 votes, so it’s not like the GOP even needed people like Collins and Gordon Smith on board. And Gordon Smith who is trying hard to sell his moderate and liberal bona fides to the voters in Oregon, has been marching right along with the GOP filibusters on almost every issue. Maybe I’m missing some of the campaign stuff that’s out there, but I’m shocked that this isn’t being used against Republicans in these tough races. At any rate it’s precisely what’s remarkable about that last two years that MY’s point hasn’t mattered very often.
“If he would deign to make Republicans actually filibuster, rather than just say they might, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”
Yeah that would be cool–hold up all the business of the Senate, not just a single bill! They tried making them actually filibuster a few times, it did nothing except create a spectacle and prove the resolve the GOP caucus. It’s all kind of pointless anyway when the legislation is doomed to be vetoed. I’d like to see more publicity of the obstructionism, but actually making the other side filibuster is not the only or the best way to do it.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
The filibuster is an important protection for the minority party. Dems won’t always be in the majority.
I think 60 is significant because it will help Reid enforce party loyalty. If he can get 60 votes on all Democratic legislation, then all Democratic senators are going to get at least some legislation important to them.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
i think the best thing to do with the filibuster is to do away with the multi-track business scheme they came up with to make filibustering so painless. make it so that if you want to filibuster something, you actually have to get up there and talk about it forever and stall the entire us govt. that should be a large enough impediment that it’s only used when shit is dangerously close to the fan.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Meanwhile, it’s still the case that the filibuster rule is a bad rule and should be done away with.
It would take 67 votes to change the rule. Even if things go our way next month, it would take a very good 2010 as well to get us there.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
“If the filibuster is to be respected, at least it must be reinforced.”
I’m not sure how you do that. The way the “nuclear option” works is this
1) A cloture vote is held, and 51 senators vote in favor. This means that the motion fails, because 60 votes are required.
2) Cheney, presiding over the Senate, would state falsely that a simple majority was required for a cloture motion to pass. (Curiously, in all discussion I’ve seen on this topic on conservative sites, I haven’t seen a single person who doubted that Cheney would be willing to lie about this. Apparently not even conservatives believe the clamtrap that the Republican party is the party of moral values.)
3) A Senator appeals the ruling.
4) The same 51 Senators who voted for cloture vote to uphold the ruling of the chair.
Step 4 could be avoided by saying that appeals of a ruling of the chair should be decided by some group other than the Senate, but the question is who? Letting the judicial system decide would raise separation of powers concerns, and I think it would be too slow to be practical.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Veenstra: “If he would deign to make Republicans actually filibuster, rather than just say they might, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”
Colatina: “Yeah that would be cool–hold up all the business of the Senate, not just a single bill! They tried making them actually filibuster a few times, it did nothing except create a spectacle and prove the resolve the GOP caucus. It’s all kind of pointless anyway when the legislation is doomed to be vetoed. I’d like to see more publicity of the obstructionism, but actually making the other side filibuster is not the only or the best way to do it.”
Colatina, I hate to burst your bubble, but the Dems haven’t forced a GOP filibuster once in the current Congress. You may be referring to that stunt Reid pulled with the all-nighter early last summer – but the GOP hadn’t yet blocked cloture on the bill that was on the floor, so there was no filibuster to force. (I still haven’t figured out the point of that stunt.)
With respect to holding up the entire Senate’s business, can you seriously tell me that they can’t afford to sacrifice a few days to force the GOP’s hand?
With respect to the veto, the whole point of blocking cloture is to kill legislation without fingerprints. Vetos are public. (Cloture bills are, too, but the press does a bad job of connecting Senators’ votes on cloture with the responsibility for defeating a piece of legislation, hence the lack of fingerprints.) Besides, we’re really talking about next year, when it appears we’ll have a Dem President.
And if there’s a more effective way to publicize the minority’s obstruction than forcing them to filibuster, I’m all ears.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
How many seats does it take to eliminate the fillibuster?
October 9th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
While I agree with Colatina that forcing the actual filibuster isn’t the only way to highlight Republican obstructionism, I have to agree more with low-tech cyclist that the complete failure of Reid and Senate Dems to do so was a huge missed opportunity.
My pick for the moment to have that fight was with Jim Webb’s ‘dwell-time’ amendment to the defense bill in 2007 (requiring troops get as much time back home as their deployments before being redeployed). It would have forced some painful choices on Republicans, and even if vetoed would have been a win: a clear, unambiguous FU to the troops from Republicans.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
A-ha! Doing away with the cloture-filibuster rule is one thing that would trigger a filibuster along party lines! Of course, then we’d still have to convince Reid to do something that might be considered bold or “divisive”…
October 9th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Since the 1990s Democrats have had significant majorities in the California legislature and with a few minor exceptions all they can think to do with them is pass ever more draconian laws against smokers and drivers talking on phones.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
re: With respect to the veto, the whole point of blocking cloture is to kill legislation without fingerprints. Vetos are public.
The GOP would have been smarter to let Bush do the dirty work. He isn’t running again, and he’s already about as popular as diarrhea. This is one case where standing together means they all hang together.
October 10th, 2008 at 1:04 am
“The filibuster is an important protection for the minority party.”
We should not care about whether minority parties are protected. We should care about whether citizens who are members of electoral minorities are protected. And the Senate in general, and specifically the filibuster in the Senate, hasn’t protected them all that well. In fact the latter was used to deny minorities rights even when Senate majorities favored civil rights.
So let’s be a bit critical of the basic social studies defense of the filibuster. We have checks in our system which protect minorities. The filibuster isn’t one of them.
We could change the rule to allow individual senators or a 40 vote minority to delay legislation for some period of time, perhaps up to a year. That would preserve in some form the principle of freedom to speak and the principle of consensus in the Senate and it would prevent the majority from ramming things through like they can in the House. But it would take away the absolute veto that a 41 vote minority has now.
That 41 vote minority–because of unequal senate representation and concentration of conservatives in low-population states–can represent 25% or less of the American people. Those people aren’t any more an endangered minority than any other randomly selected 25%.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:43 am
dems & reps often vote lockstep in cloture votes, and i think youd be hard pressed to find a dem willing to block procedural votes from leadership. even mary landrieu or the other blue dogs. lieberman, maybe. that guy’s atoning for lots, or so he says…
also, ezra’s not claiming a field day here; he’s just saying the dems would have a veto-proof majority, which is entirely and wholly true. i think taking him to task over this is parsing a bit too much.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:03 am
rule changes typically require 2/3 of the senator present, but the nuclear option is a slight of (procedural) hand that would effectively require only 50(+1) votes. it’s actually really interesting, procedurally. check out wikipedia on the nuclear option.
also, everyone who’s said that reid is stupid for not forcing actual filibusters is right on. and it is equally absurd that the media hasn’t called more attention to just how much obstructionism has been happening in the senate. not long ago, all you needed was 50 votes.
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