Discipline and Filibuster
Bill Press writes that “Senate rules require only 51 votes to pass legislation, not 60″ and that a little old-fashioned party discipline could turn things around:
As for those wayward senators like Nelson or Landrieu, there’s only one thing Democrats are lacking: discipline. This may be a whole new concept for Democrats, who are not used to marching in lockstep. But if Barack Obama and Harry Reid are willing to play hardball by withholding committee assignments, White House invitations, campaign contributions, and endorsements, they’ll be surprised how soon Democrats will get in line.
J.P. Green replies that “Regardless of party discipline, most of these senators have substantial moderate/conservative constituencies to answer to.” This is true, but I think it’s also why the filibuster point is critical. If the issue were really that Ben Nelson has a deep-seated desire to advance a progressive legislative agenda but worries about how it’ll play back home in Nebraska, it would be easy enough for him to decide that the key priorities on which Barack Obama won a national mandate last November all deserve an up or down vote. If he ultimately chose to vote “no” on legislation that he thinks Nebraska voters won’t support, that would be that. You don’t need Nelson’s vote to get to 50.
At the end of the day, though, you don’t erect procedural roadblocks to legislation because you’re playing to public sentiment back home. You use procedural roadblocks when you really don’t want something to pass.
36 Responses to “Discipline and Filibuster”
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July 6th, 2009 at 11:01 am
At the end of the day, though, you don’t erect procedural roadblocks to legislation because you’re playing to public sentiment back home. You use procedural roadblocks when you really don’t want something to pass.
This is pretty sophomoric. Getting re-elected is priority #1 for most members of Congress, and that includes with respect to procedural votes, or anything else.
That said, I think if you make it a common practice to vote for cloture as a party but then allow individuals members to vote against the bill, that should give them enough political cover.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Exactly. They can vote, VOTE their conscience on the bill. But lockstep must be maintained for cloture. Thus: democratic process restored. I really don’t see why this is even at issue, it’s so blatantly straightforward. Just. Vote. For. Cloture.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Closer to the truth. Whatever J.P Green may think, most of the public opposition to public healthcare is astroturf (and I say that as someone who is opposed to public healthcare). True ideological opposition, as opposed to people who are getting scared by Harry and Louise style advertising, is maybe 15-20% of the electorate. The notion that some Democratic senator is blocking reform because of truculent constituents is a fig leaf for the uglier truth that some of them are trying to get a better deal for the corporate interests they really represent.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:15 am
“if Barack Obama and Harry Reid are willing to play hardball”…
Sure. Right. Whatever.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:17 am
I really don’t see why this is even at issue . . .
Well, of course we don’t know yet that it is an issue. As I understand it, Franken will be sworn in Tuesday. We’ll just have to see whether or not there is a problem with Democrats joining GOP filibusters after that point.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:20 am
At the end of the day, though, you don’t erect procedural roadblocks to legislation because you’re playing to public sentiment back home.
I’m not sure this is true, but it might be, and it seems like something that could be researched. In those rare close primary battles, are sitting senators challenged on cloture votes or the the vote on the merits?
July 6th, 2009 at 11:20 am
This is where Reid earns his pay. News stories have focused on cloture votes because that is where the drama occurs. Change the dynamic like Eric says. Only one vote is covered, make it the vote on the bill.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I’ll just make a quick note that, yet again, what you’ve got here is someone tossing out some idealistic advice (maintain party discipline!) who either doesn’t know much about the politics of the Senate, or does, and is just trying to make a provacative point even though they know it’s nonsense. To wit, “Reid and Obama” don’t control any re-election money, and incumbent Senators use very little party money in relative terms anyway, the Lieberman fiasco should have disabused everyone of the notion that the Majority Leader has the authority to strip you of committee assignments unilaterally, and I don’t really think anyone is going to see their vote flipped by not being invited to the White House.
In general, I agree with the vast majority of the sentiment, but it would be much nicer if progressive commentary about intra-caucus politics in the Senate didn’t have the substantive quality of neoconservative kvetching about Obama’s “weak response” to the Iranian election.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:23 am
It would be nice to have 61. That way you could make an example of someone by kicking them out of the party for joining in a Republican filibuster. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work with 60.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:25 am
At the end of the day, though, you don’t erect procedural roadblocks to legislation because you’re playing to public sentiment back home. You use procedural roadblocks when you really don’t want something to pass.
Pace DTM, I don’t think MY is being sophomoric here.
I remember a certain Sen. from CT who always scored as relatively liberal on various surveys of his votes, but who, behind the scenes, used various procedural tactics to thwart the progressive agenda.
He, for whatever reasons, wanted to appear relatively liberal to “represent” his Northeastern State even though everybody who actually followed politics knew he was a DINO.
And with all due concern about corporate influence, etc., if we had LBJ rather than Harry Reid, we’d have progressive legislation coming from the Senate — or else LBJ would piss (literally) on the trousers of certain Senators.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:25 am
This is pretty sophomoric. Getting re-elected is priority #1 for most members of Congress, and that includes with respect to procedural votes, or anything else.
I think you’re both missing the big picture. Getting re-elected is priority #1; this includes both keeping your approval rating high with the folks back home and hoovering up as much campaign cash as possible.
The role of “procedural roadblocks” is to protect you from having to cast a vote that would unpopular back home. So if most of the voters want public health insurance, but your generous friends at WellPoint don’t, then your best move is to gut the legislation in committee and produce something that claims to be “health care reform” but is actually a mandate for people to buy insurance from companies like WellPoint that doesn’t provide any new public sector competition.
The catch is that the filibuster really is more than just a “procedural roadblock”. A cloture vote shows up in the Roll Call and gets used against you. Voting for cloture and then voting against the bill is a charade and everyone knows it “he was for it before he was against it… etc.
So any Democratic Senator who votes against a bill either in the Cloture vote or the final vote either THINKS (rightly or wrongly) that the voters in his home state will punish him for the decision, or (more likely) he KNOWS that his corporate donors will punish him and KNOWS that Harry Reid won’t… and has concluded that he’s willing to arm himself with campaign cash and take his chances with the voters.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:27 am
8: You have valid points, but you’re still missing the big picture. The distribution of power in Washington is highly dependent on the way the powerbrokers play the game. If you’re a Republican politician, you toe the line. If you’re a Dem, you don’t. There are reasons why that is true. Some of it is media framing. Some of it for external reasons. But a lot of it is political culture that could be changed if the biggest powerbrokers did a better job of aggregating their power. Reid, it seems, is a huge dipshit who is highly unlikely to ever do this. But you could imagine Obama and Pelosi trying to move things in this direction.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Of course, it’s also possible that a Democratic Senator is actually a rich conservative who opposes a bill on general principle and thinks he can count on conservative support to get re-elected if his own fairly small party base deserts him. File under Bayh, Evan.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:32 am
DAS: Perhaps, but that trick only works if people don’t pay attention to the procedural moves. When the vote for cloture ends up being in the eyes of the media THE vote with the actual vote being a mere technicality, then it is for all practical purposes the vote itself. Perhaps people have short enough memories that in 2012 (when, say, Ben Nelson is up for reelection) all this will be forgotten and it will be spun the other way, but perhaps not.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:34 am
It has to be the donors. You couldn’t possibly move enough voters by condemning an incumbent senator’s cloture vote from (1 to 5) years prior. I have never seen it.
(On the other hand, I’m a resident of DC and don’t see many campaign ads for senators.)
July 6th, 2009 at 11:36 am
LaFollette Progressive,
I agree that maximizing their chances of getting relected requires a complex calculation for Senators, one that includes campaign donations and other such considerations. Nonetheless, I think that just further emphasizes that procedural votes are not, as Matt argues, just a matter of whether or not the given member of Congress personally wants a bill to pass.
By the way, I disagree with your claim that “[v]oting for cloture and then voting against the bill is a charade and everyone knows it.” This has happened with some frequency in the past, and recently the Republicans did a lot of work in promoting the idea of a measure “deserving an up and down vote”. So I think it would be quite easy to firmly establish in the public’s mind the distinction between a cloture vote and a vote on the bill itself.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:40 am
It has to be the donors. You couldn’t possibly move enough voters by condemning an incumbent senator’s cloture vote from (1 to 5) years prior. I have never seen it.
I’d put it the other way around. Senators who need large numbers of independents and decent numbers of cross-over voters in order to get re-elected can use procedural maneuvers to promote their brand as bipartisan-inclined moderates. In other words, these people get a potential benefit from stories about party activists being upset with their obstructionist behavior.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:41 am
You use procedural roadblocks when you really don’t want something to pass.
And when your former colleagues and staffers are part of the problem. $1.4m a day being spent by the rent-seeking parasites. If you see Dick Gephardt, spit in his face for me.
Problem of evil, isn’t it? Spineless or heartless: take your pick.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:45 am
“if Barack Obama and Harry Reid are willing to play hardball”…
Furthermore, if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle.
By all accounts Harry Reid appears to be a very nice man. Perhaps he’s even the ideal grandfatherly type. But he’s a disappointingly ineffective politician, unwilling to do what’s necessary if it involves applying meaningful pressure. In fact if my hazy post-4th memory serves me correctly he pretty much openly admitted that fact last week. Reid’s not up to the job. I don’t know if Durbin is either, but it’s about time we found out.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:52 am
I’ve always thought Bill Press should’ve got a medal of freedom or something for his voice-in-the-wildnessness during the run-up to Iraq for his old MSNBC show Buchanan and Press
July 6th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
By the way, a recent CQ analysis found that Obama had a 36 out of 37 success rate in the Senate on votes where he staked out a clear position (the exception was the Gitmo closing vote). Senate Democrats in particular are voting for him 92% of the time (Senate Republicans 56%).
Now of course it is worth noting that Obama gets to pick his battles, so this isn’t a pure test of his ability to impose his will on the Senate. Nonetheless, it does give some evidence in support of the notion that if Obama really put his foot down when it came to Democrats joining Republican filibusters, he might be largely successful.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
At the end of the day, though, you don’t erect procedural roadblocks to legislation because you’re playing to public sentiment back home.
This is a shallow analysis. It all depends on expected reelection margins.
A senator like Nelson is well aware that the various big money interest groups aren’t stupid. They want progressive legislation stopped, and they’re not likely to be fooled by the ruse of voting-for-cloture-then-voting-no-on-the-bill-itself.
In other words, it’s perfectly plausible that a Democratic senator from a conservative state in some instances might just as soon vote for a liberal bill on the merits, but is nonetheless well aware that appearing lukewarm in his efforts to block progressive legislation will quickly prompt reactionary forces to do everything in their power to defeat him. In a conservative state where Republicans usually mount very vigorous challenges even to well-entrenched Democratic incumbents, having the jaws of big business locked on your reelection campaign’s throat could well mean losing your job. (Of course, this excuse really does look especially lame if conservative Democratic Senator so-and-so usually wins by eighteen points). It’s really all about margins.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I think you’re both missing the big picture. Getting re-elected is priority #1; this includes both keeping your approval rating high with the folks back home and hoovering up as much campaign cash as possible.
True, but critically it’s also all about– and this is what puzzlingly tends to be overlooked — keeping the cash, and issue ads, and push polling — on your side and not your opponent’s.
I strongly suspect most senators could win reelection rather easily on shoe string budgets if their opponents similarly had access only to shoe string budgets. The real problem is when you’re facing a challenger who’s got the strong backing of powerful economic interests who are pissed off at you. Having such forces working “independently” against your reelection is just as dangerous as when they donate directly to your opponent’s campaign.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
“J.P. Green replies that “Regardless of party discipline, most of these senators have substantial moderate/conservative constituencies to answer to.”
In reality, this means they don’t back gay marriage, not that they don’t back substantial moves towards universal health care. I’m tired of being told that being from these certain states means you don’t support certain initiatives because you’re supposed to be “conservative.” People in their states largely support these economic justice initiatives and are more conservative on social issues. And the “moderate” position is the one of most Obama initiatives anyway.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
In other words, these people get a potential benefit from stories about party activists being upset with their obstructionist behavior.
Another good point. In Nebraska it pays to be seen as someone likely to enrage Ted Kennedy or the Sierra Club.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
So I think it would be quite easy to firmly establish in the public’s mind the distinction between a cloture vote and a vote on the bill itself.
This would be the same public whose mind, at least large swaths thereof, had trouble understanding how Senator Kerry could have voted for the war funding before voting against it? Yeah, okay then.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I think the case with many of these Senators like Ben Nelson is that a postion for “public option” is popular back home (I will point to Nelsons freak out and waffling over the commercials that were getting run against him), but his bread is buttered by the (unpopular) insurance industry. The 10 votes between filibuster and “uperdown vote” are the magical sweet spot that allows him to milk both constituencies via inaction.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
A few years ago, when they were in the majority (but did not have enough votes to force cloture), Republicans were all talking about how the filibuster was an anti-American, undemocratic tool that should never be used. They threatened that, if Democrats dared use it, the Republican majority would exercise the ‘nuclear option,’ and change the rules of the Senate to do away with the 60-vote requirement for cloture. [This is not so far-fetched as the requirement was previously arbitrarily changed from 67 votes to 60.]
Then, Democrats, who have been afraid to stand up on their own hind legs since McGovern lost, immediately cooperated with the Republicans, and virtually all of Bush’s malign policies were passed on straight up-and-down votes.
Now, with Republicans in the minority, they have decided that if they can’t pass their own malign policies, they can at least cynically employ the filibuster threat to prevent spineless Democrats from prevailing. If you can’t rule, then destroy the other party’s ability to rule and, eventually, the public will get sick of them and put you back in charge.
If the Democrats were to evolve beyond invertibrate phyla and grow spines, they could do one of two things. They could call the Republicans’ bluff on each filibuster threat, forcing the Republicans to actually stand at the podium and filibuster day after day, making asses of themselves. And then the Dems could have a field day pointing out each day how the Republicans are undermining our very form of government and blocking all of the policies the people voted for in 2008.
Or, the Dems can really show some spine and eliminate the rule requiring a super-majority and then Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman can be traded to the Republicans as a consolation prize.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
This would be the same public whose mind, at least large swaths thereof, had trouble understanding how Senator Kerry could have voted for the war funding before voting against it?
That was an entirely self-inflicted wound. People wouldn’t have cared if someone had merely looked at Kerry’s voting record on the various supplemental bills and accused Kerry of voting both for and against the funding. But Kerry screwed up when he said himself that “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” That allowed people to use his own terrible framing against him, and that is why it became a story.
So, if the Democrats as a matter of course don’t join GOP filibusters but do sometimes vote against bills, I think it will quickly become the case that the vote on the bill itself is considered the “real” vote. And as long as no Democrat actually claims to have voted both against and for the relevant bills, that shouldn’t trigger the Kerry problem.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
“Then, Democrats, who have been afraid to stand up on their own hind legs since McGovern lost, immediately cooperated with the Republicans, and virtually all of Bush’s malign policies were passed on straight up-and-down votes.”
Which ones?
July 6th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
“8: You have valid points, but you’re still missing the big picture. The distribution of power in Washington is highly dependent on the way the powerbrokers play the game. If you’re a Republican politician, you toe the line. If you’re a Dem, you don’t. There are reasons why that is true. Some of it is media framing. Some of it for external reasons. But a lot of it is political culture that could be changed if the biggest powerbrokers did a better job of aggregating their power. Reid, it seems, is a huge dipshit who is highly unlikely to ever do this. But you could imagine Obama and Pelosi trying to move things in this direction.”
I think that really misses the point. For one thing, Pelosi is already the anti-Reid, but that’s largely because the Senate is the anti-House. Pelosi has a Democratic caucus of 255 members, all on two year terms. They spend their time in and out of town, rarely interact with other members unless they’re on the same committee or have both been around a long time, and their votes are only one out of 255 on intra-caucus issues. As such, they don’t really have much of a relationship with other members, or any individual pull on decisions, so they’re much more prone to defer to leadership. The Senate Democratic caucus, by contrast, only has 60 members, all of whom are elected to 6 year terms that lead to more relationships with other members, as well as being more insulated from electoral pressure. Add to that the larger weight your vote has on the entire chamber, making it easier for you to raise interest money and with less of a need for party money, and you really just don’t have much room to pressure Senators, who are more likely to stake out their own position, independent of what the leadership wants in intra-caucus matters (see Lieberman’s seniority vote). But there isn’t really anything Reid to do to change this particular dynamic, and it just seems to me that all of this analysis that Reid needs to “get tough” just isn’t dealing with the reality of intra-Senate structure and politics.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Basically, if we don’t get a decent result on healthcare it’s because Harry Reid is a pussy and can’t get stuff done.
He was a reasonable leader in opposition, but not very good in the majority.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
If Progressives were willing to derail a few careers, they could get things done. As long as they are absolutely unwilling to ever refuse to vote for a Democrat, they are powerless.
Take out a Harry Reid or a Ben Nelson by refusing to support him in the general, and then people will no longer give you the absolute bare minimum. You’re too nice, and too docile, nothing ever gets done.
And I do love how MattY conflates ‘constituencies’. While that term is used as jargon to also include lobbyists and business interests, most people hear ‘constituents’ and take it to mean ‘voter’. Words mean what most people think they mean, not what they mean in dictionary.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
“He was a reasonable leader in opposition, but not very good in the majority.”
I’m curious; Reid has had a 51 seat majority with a Republican President in the 110th Congress, and a majority that was effectively 56 members strong with a unified opposition on most questions for most of the 111th. What, exactly, would you have done differently to achieve significantly different results?
July 6th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
What’s the most effective way ordinary citizens have to get rid of Reid? Try to primary his ass? Give up a seat in the Senate by not donating to the DSCC but rather to individual candidates, to make sure the DSCC has less money to give Reid? Or contact our Senators and tell them we think Reid’s a wanker and that they should support a challenge by pretty much anyone else for the leadership?
July 7th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Quite an astute observation I’d say. It does seem that the filibuster has been institutionalized by the Senate as a way to thwart a significant majority. Kind of like California but at a national level with the same politics in play.