Why 60 Won’t Mean Much
Al Franken campaign photo
In a new Daily Beast column, I note that just because there’s sixty votes in the Senate doesn’t mean there’s sixty votes for any given progressive bill:
For example, considerably more people live in the Bronx than live in Montana. But while the Bronx’s 1.4 million people need to share Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand with 18 million other residents of the Empire State, Montana’s cozy crew of 960,000 people has Max Baucus all to themselves. And not only does Baucus’ vote count as much as Schumer’s or Gillibrand’s, he actually has dramatically more power than the senators from New York (or, for that matter, California) because as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, all health-care legislation absolutely must meet with his approval. The fact that Obama only secured the support of 47 percent of Montana’s voters is the kind of thing that must weigh on Baucus’ mind. Similarly with Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad and Obama’s 45 percent of North Dakota’s 641,000 residents.
Nor are Baucus and Conrad alone. Byron Dorgan, Jon Tester, Mark Pryor, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Tim Johnson, Mark Begich, Claire McCaskill, and Ben Nelson are all representing states that went for John McCain last fall. Collectively, the states represented by these fine ladies and gentlemen contain about as many people as New York, but their votes are the difference between a majority and a filibuster-breaking supermajority. Meanwhile, among the senators representing states Obama did carry, several—but most notably Indiana’s Evan Bayh—have made no bones about their willingness to defy the president and the party leadership on key votes. And of course Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman went so far as to endorse McCain in the election and is now opposing a key element of Obama’s health-reform agenda.
As I wrote yesterday, to an extent it should be possible to counteract this trend by bringing pressure to bare on Republicans who represent Obama states, but so far that hasn’t been very effective. And there’s my basic point from over the past year which is that normally big-time substantive reform needs to go along to some extent with reform of the political process. The two are intimately related.
50 Responses to “Why 60 Won’t Mean Much”
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July 2nd, 2009 at 10:04 am
Pressure to bear, not pressure to bare. Jeez, Matt.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:08 am
And don’t forget the delicate health of Senator Kennedy, which means even if all of the above mentioned Senators side with the Obama administration, it is still unlikely that Senator Kennedy will be there to cast the 60th vote.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 am
What do you mean by “reform of the political process”? You mention it a lot but rarely provide any specifics.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:14 am
Matt, this is a terrible idea. I, for one, don’t want to see any of the current GOP caucus without their clothes. Ugh. Old wrinkly people.
And even if they do bare (and I’m not sure most of them can be persuaded to), I don’t see how that will help reform health care in America.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:15 am
Senators, as a class, are egomaniacal assholes. That is the root of much of the Democrats’ opposition to Obama’s policies, not structure or that their states voted for McCain (explain Lieberman then). The Democrats will NEVER change unless people like you, Matt, refrain from voting for or giving them money and let them get their butts beat six ways from Sunday.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:27 am
“Only” 47%? WTF? You mean there would be a radical difference in mood if 1.5% of Montanans had voted for Obama instead of McCain (making the state blue)? The last time a Democrat did that well in Montana was 1960! And Obama was *running* on the public option. An historic 47% of Montanans voted for a guy whose domestic policy hinged on the public plan and it means Baucus is in trouble if he supports it too? What the hell?
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:33 am
I really don’t get the assumption that everyone is making that Democrats who disagree with their party’s agenda will not only vote against their party (which is fine, of course), but will join the opposition in filibustering everything they oppose.
This is just sickening. The Democrats never would have filibustered to stop Bush’s agenda, but they will gladly do so to stop Obama’s.
All we have to do is get Democrats to agree not to filibuster their own party and we win everything. And the blue dogs can still return home saying “I voted against blah blah blah.” Everybody wins.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:33 am
You don’t need 60 votes for any particular progressive bill. You only need 50 + VP Biden. You just need 60 votes to end the expected GOP filibusters on those bills. Bayh, Lincoln, Landrieu, Lieberman, etc. are going to have a lot of explaining to do if they join Republicans to filibuster President Obama’s agenda. Voting no is one thing. Voting to prevent a vote is another thing entirely.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:39 am
smarter than the average bare..
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:42 am
Jason W – “What do you mean by “reform of the political process”? You mention it a lot but rarely provide any specifics.”
What Matt wants is a Constitutional Convention to redesign the American government along European lines. It’s not going to happen and Matt knows it’s not going to happen. But instead of shutting up about it, he keeps wanking away by calling it “reform of the political process”.
Mike
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:44 am
I agree with the other commentators above. The key “reform” would just be to make it the norm again for bills to get a vote in the Senate. And I think Obama and his allies should have enough leverage for that.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:45 am
You also fail to note that most of these Senators are not responding to the will of their electorate at all, but rather to the desires of the corporations that make sure their campaigns are sufficiently funded to withstand any potential challenges.
Progressives also seem to downplay the “no pain, no gain” argument – that a short-term politicial hit in the service of a program that will benefit a large number of Americans will presumably capture their political loyalty for a generation.
I’m tired of the charade that the Blue Dogs are representing the interests of the actual voters in their state. They’re not.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
@7 Rob Mac and @8 Ron E
Totally agree. There are no excuses. The calculus is there for progressives to pass anything they want.
No President in my lifetime has been in a better position than Obama is in right now. Maybe he has some brilliant long term strategy I’m missing, but goddamn, it sure looks like he is wasting the rarest of opportunities.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
Yes this post is hardly Matt’s shining hour.
It is time to restore democracy to the United States Senate. There is a legitimate role for the filibuster, that role is to ensure that debate on vital issues of national importance are not choked off in an institution that does much of its work by unanimous consent with only a handful of Senators on the floor at any given time. You want Senators to have some ability to insist on full discussion and a roll call vote.
But this use of the filibuster on a routine basis to enforce a result that every bill has to satisfy the center-right to right in defiance of majority opinion in the Senate and the country is just wrong. Democratic Senators who won’t support cloture on bills that have support from a President of their Party, Party leadership, and a majority of the caucus need to be punished by loss of Party privileges. Nobody is suggesting this extends to votes on final legislation, just some committement to the principle of majority rules.
For example Ben Nelson should be told that consistently siding with Republicans on cloture votes means losing his position on the Rules Committee. Why should he have any role in structuring the rule for any vote or in overseeing matters of administration of the house if he will not even commit to allowing an up and down vote? And if he persists in playing for the other team leadership should follow up and take away his seat on Appropriations. See how he likes it when he is stuck on the Special Committee for Aging (like most farm states Kansas has a disproportionally large number of elderly.
Unless things are changed we are dangerously close to making the consistent 60th vote in the Senate into his or her own version of Fourth Branch. Time to play hardball. I think it was Kevin who pointed out that if 60 votes is not going to buy you more than 51 why should the Party go all out to support the people at the margin? What are Ben or Mary or Blanche going to do? Switch over and become the junior member of the Caucus of No?
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:56 am
“Reform of the political process” could cover a lot of ground, but the simplest reform would be, as several commenters are saying, to eliminate the right to filibuster and allow legislation to pass by majority vote.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:59 am
No President in my lifetime has been in a better position than Obama is in right now. Maybe he has some brilliant long term strategy I’m missing, but goddamn, it sure looks like he is wasting the rarest of opportunities.
Coleman conceded on Tuesday. Congress is out of session. You might want to wait just a bit before drawing any firm conclusions.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:00 am
First off, Congrats to Franken: http://www.newsy.com/videos/franken_funnyman_or_senator
I think that this will change the conversation a bit too, Republican’s will be more vocal now, and more cutthroat now that swaying public opinion is one of their few sources of power.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:00 am
I wholeheartedly agree with Bruce Webb.
The filibuster at this point has become an unconstitutional hurdle to passing legislation. It is simply ludicrous that every piece of legislation and every nomination requires not a majority, but a supermajority. And that any one senator can hold up the process indefinitely.
Time for the caucus to vote as a bloc for cloture. The filibuster no longer creates space for debate, it simply kills legislation.
If you don’t like the bill, vote against it.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:02 am
Between those mentioned, Specter, Lieberman, etc. I highly doubt we’ll ever see a 60-40 vote on party lines.
If its even remotely controversial, Spec, Lieb, and/or the blue dogs will vote against the Dems. If its some namby-pamby do-nothing bill/vote, then they’ll probably land those “liberal” Republicans from blue states.
Even with 60 votes, you’ll still have people like Nelson claiming the Dems must water down all bills to the point of being useless in order to get the “bi-partisan” support it needs to pass even though it doesn’t actually “need” that anymore.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:03 am
What everyone misses about the current state of the Democratic Party is that is really has become a “big tent” and absorbed a significant portion of the Republican Party as it has gone right. Many of the current crop of Democrats in Congress would have been Republicans 20 or 30 years ago, and would have been the core of the Republican Party. With the Republican Party absorbing the principles of the John Birch Society and the evangelicals, the Democrats have absorbed anyone reasonable. This is why there are almost no “reasonable” Republicans left and why the Democrats are so split.
Eventually, we will have to have a Progressive Party, a centrist party, and probably, unfortunately, a right wing extremist party, caused by a split in the Democratic Party and the shrinking base of the current Republican Party. Where it goes after that is anyone’s guess…
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:10 am
it should be possible to counteract this trend by bringing pressure to bare on Republicans who represent Obama states
How would getting Collins and Snow naked help? And who wants to see it?
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:22 am
The Senate was designed to ensure that small state’s voices are heard – the founders were afraid that small state representatives would be drowned out by big state representatives (The founders, apparently, figured that all the members of state delegations would see things pretty much the same – heh).
So, the 2 Senators per state designation was designed to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
Of course, with the 60 vote cloture rule, the long-run impact has resulted in the Senate majority being subject to the tyranny of the minority.
Which, I believe, is not what the founders intended.
While I liked the power of cloture to help stop the worst crap the Republicans foisted upon us(not that you could often muster 40 Dems to show enough backbone to stand up to the Republicans), it’s clearly an impediment to enacting the legislative agenda of the party that is elected to power.
Like it or not, we had Republicans running the show in the Senate for as long as we did because the American people wanted them to. Buyer’s remorse now, perhaps, but that’s democracy.
We should have supported the “nuclear option” being exercised by the Republicans. It would have paved the way to eliminating cloture altogether.
No more 60 vote supermajority needed to enact legislation. We’d just need to herd enough Democrats together (50+) to get things done.
Heck, we’d probably see a bit more bipartisan support if cloture disappeared because some Republicans would want to get credit for signing onto a bill that was going to be enacted anyway.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:24 am
Matt, the elected senators are not sent to congress to represent the democratic party, the are sent to represent their constituents. If the state of new York wants to pass universal healthcare in new York they don’t need any senators form Montana.
You’re bitching that small states can’t be steamrolled by larger ones….duh?
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:32 am
the problem is we have 3 parties in america: we have the right-wing know nothing party (currently labelled the gop); we have the actual gop (people like ben nelson, joe lieberman, mary landrieu, blanche lincoln, etc.); and we have the actual dems.
the senatorial makeup is roughly 40-15-45 relative to those three parties.
and since, as someone noted up above, those 15 are, in particular, egomaniac assholes, it’s not an easy workaround….
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:36 am
Will someone answer this, no doubt elementary question. With key bills with strong public support, such as the stimulus and most especially health care: don’t Republicans have more to fear from filibuster than Democrats? Wouldn’t Rs commit political suicide blocking stimulus in a depression, or blocking a politically popular public insurance plan?
Likewise, it seems Democrats have more to fear from compromising on key provisions than from filibuster.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:40 am
reaching the number 60 may not mean that much considering the moderates who pull right in the party and those who are too afraid to upset a republican.
However, Franken himself will make a huge difference.
Being famous has it advantages. The press will be watching him and will want his take on issues.
Much like they were when Hillary and Obama began their senate careers.
Franken may want to be taken seriously but, at heart he is a progressive with convictions and a spine.
He may just inject some strength and backbone into the senate and take stands for issues rather then wallowing in mush to please the scary republicans.
This may inspire a few, hopefully, especially if the media is watching and seeing how democrats and even just average folks respond in the positive.
I never thought 60 was a magic number with 30 years of conservative rule and democrats being beaten down for that long. They suffer from battered wife syndrome.
But, I always saw Franken as a possible motivator.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:45 am
DTM
My statement has nothing to with whether there 59 or 60 Democrats in the Senate or whether Congress is in session or not. As I said, I willing concede that Obama may have a long term strategy. I was certainly of that opinion two months ago.
But due to White House passivity the stimulus package was an abortion. Cap and trade, if it passes, will at best be watered down crap. Single-payer was always off the table, which to me is a sign of almost criminal weakness and bad policy, not to mention a pitiful understanding of a basic negotiating principle, bargain from a position of strength.
It seams now that the best the White House is willing to offer on health care is the possibility that a trigger effect might lead to a diluted public option. Whatever. I don’t waste time reading about the health care “debate” anymore. Why bother? It has become meaningless.
As for DADT? No movement. Card check? No mention. Torture. Still happening. Guns? Flooding the market like never before. Continued efforts towards bi-partisanship with insane people? All the rage.
It is still early. I still have some (rapidly eroding) faith. But, I see ominous trends forming. That is all I’m saying.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
by bringing pressure to bare on Republicans
I’d just as soon they left their clothes on, thanks anyhow.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
With key bills with strong public support, such as the stimulus and most especially health care: don’t Republicans have more to fear from filibuster than Democrats? Wouldn’t Rs commit political suicide blocking stimulus in a depression, or blocking a politically popular public insurance plan?
From their perspective, they are caught in a trap: opposing popular measures may be bad, but if the Democrats get credit for a bunch of popular measures, that would also be bad. So they have convinced themselves all this stuff will be unpopular in the long run, and that by opposing it they will come out on the other side the winners.
Personally, I think that is a terrible strategy. If they acted more cooperatively instead, it is true that in the short term the Democrats might benefit, but in the long run the GOP could rebuild their shattered party brand and return to relevance once a new set of issues inevitable arose. And you can identify a few Republicans here or there who understand this, but right now the party base simply won’t allow the party elites to take such an approach. And that dynamic may not change until the Republicans lose a few more elections–or until they get replaced by another party that can actually behave in a politically relevant manner.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
It only takes 51 votes to pass legislation in the Senate.
Any position based on any other premise is a farce.
As are the Senate, the Democratic Party, Obama, and the Federal Government unless serious action starts happening – NOW!
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:57 am
max424, you need to explain how it is that the obama administration is magically supposed to get the likes of ben nelson et al to support a better stimulus bill (as an example). i’d really like to know.
noone, an ideologically unified minority party like the republicans has nothing to fear from filibustering everything, since it doesn’t care about majority status. the only time being the party of no is a problem for the gop is if it ever wants to be the majority again, and that’s some years away, given the insanity of the people who constitute the “leadership,” such as it is.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:57 am
20: but I don’t see any mechanism by which our system evolves to multi-party. Majoritarian electoral rules bifurcate the electorate into two main organized parties.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Max424,
I think you are underestimating the barriers to just getting started on some of these issues, and, as a corollary, overestimating the importance of getting all the details exactly as you would wish at the outset. I also think you are simply wrong in some respects about how the White House is dealing with Congress. But in the end, if you want to find something to be depressed about when stuff comes out of Congress, Congress will rarely disappoint, so if that is your choice so be it.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Welcome to the shit sandwich that is the American political system.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Noone: Canada and Great Britain manage to get half-powerful third parties with a plurality system with the NDP and Liberal Democrats (the Bloc Quebecois also has a bit of power too, but they’re weird because they’re the very epitome of a regional party). The fact that those countries are parliamentary makes a big difference, though. (In principle, the Blue Dogs and Progressives could stay together for the Presidential election but split for Congressional races, but the dynamics of that would be weird.)
That said, the more likely situation for the Democrats splitting is for something like what happened to the Democratic-Republicans in 1824: the Republicans implode entirely and the Blue Dogs split off to fill the void.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Again, some input is welcomed for a poor Canadian unfamiliar with the niceties of Senate politics:
what is the problem with the Democrats using their “super-majority” for cloture of filibusters and then having an up-and-down down vote on issues where some Democrats might register their “no” votes?
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
what is the problem with the Democrats using their “super-majority” for cloture of filibusters and then having an up-and-down down vote on issues where some Democrats might register their “no” votes?
Procedurally, nothing.
Politically, adopting that as a common practice would have some affect on the Senators splitting their votes, an affect somewhat difficult to predict.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
We can still keep our hundred Senators, just weight their vote by population. Still not perfect, but a marginal improvement.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I think 60 does matter a little. When there were only 59 Ds, conservative Democrats could argue that a bill needed Republicans to pass. They could justify starting in a compromise position without seeming to betray their party.
Projecting the message that a filibuster is what Republican obstructionists do to the Democratic majority might deter some Democrats from joining in them. Forging compromises or voting your conscience on the passage of a bill is bipartisanship or independence. Joining with the other party to filibuster is betrayel. People like bipartisanship and independence; they don’t like betrayel.
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
You forgot to mention West Virginia’s two Senators in the article, Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, who represent a state that went for McCain. That changes the tally to 13 Democratic Senators who represent states that went for McCain last fall.
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I’m with those who suggest that there’s a big difference between voting for a bill and voting for cloture – Nelson, for example, will vote against the health care bill, but he will vote for cloture, and I suspect that will be the case with most Democrats. I’m guessing in the future, we’ll see a lot more 60-vote cloture votes and the underlying bills passing with 51-55 votes.
And regarding what happens if the Republicans collapse, I believe I wrote something about that…
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:08 pm
The American system of government simply doesn’t work. We shouldn’t be surprised that we are seeing these problems. We should be amazed that anything good is accomplished at all.
As long as an inherently undemocratic body is part of the federal government, positive changes will be impeded or impossible. This problem will go away when, and only when, the federal government is completely redesigned in such a way that it represents people, and does not represent states or money.
Like it or not, this means a parliamentary system with proportional representation and a complete ban on private campaign contributions. Until we get these things, we will have to rely on the goodwill of idiots and dirtbags like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:26 pm
This is a cross-post of a comment (by me) from a local, Arkansan political blog, and is really aimed mostly at my fellow ‘Natural State’ democrats who read this blog, but the points are basically the same for any other southerner or corn-stater on Matt’s list of Democratic Senatorial road blocks. To the rest of you, thank you for your patience:
Given that the US Senate is the biggest obstacle to meaningful reform on any issue you care to mention in the current political environment, I’ve been paying close attention to the statements coming out of Blanche Lincoln and her office lately. To put it mildly, I’ve found them highly disturbing:
On Health Care Reform, interviews with our senior Senator sound like a continuous series of right-wing/corporate talking points just strung together end-to-end. If I hear her say one more thing about “rationing” or “bureaucrats coming between you and your doctor” (as if those things don’t happen now with Insurance companies under the current system) I’m going to scream and hurl something at my TV or radio.
On desperately-needed Climate-Change legislation, she appears to be one of the major reasons why some observers are declaring the Waxman-Markey bill DOA in the ‘world’s worst deliberative body.’ This in spite of recent studies showing that by 2080 the effects of unchecked climate change will lower the agricultural output of Arkansas and other south-eastern states by anywhere from 15% to upwards of 30%. Needless to say, this would be devastating for a state as agri-intensive as ours, particularly to the farmers whose plight Sen. Lincoln claims to champion.
And that’s not even mentioning her regressive position on the Employee Free Choice Act.
To make a long story short, Blanche needs a primary opponent in the worst way. Without a credible threat from her left, her re-election strategy is, logically, to tack to the right in order to be in the safest position for the general election. Unfortunately for Arkansans and for the country as a whole, this triangulation strategy, aimed at the fall of 2010, means that she is a greater obstacle to vital reform legislation under consideration this year.
Any ideas for a credible, progressive challenger?
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
[...] Here, in the process of explaining why 60 Senate votes isn’t enough for the (D) party, Matthew brings up a longtime bugaboo of his, the nature of the government of the United States of America as set up by its Constitution, which he doesn’t like. (In particular – he doesn’t like that pesky, silly, 200+ year tradition of the Senate not being proportional to population) [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:24 pm
The Republicans’ expanded use of the filibuster/cloture takes us dangerously close to what’s happening in California, where the 2/3 requirement for raising taxes but not spending (or amending the state constitution for that matter) has brought the state to the brink of collapse.
If Democratic Senators openly go along with Republican filibusters, they should be primaried out of existence. Failing that, Democratic voters in those states should refuse to vote for them. If the GOP is going to filibuster everything, and they enable it in the next year and a half, better to make sure they get the blame for obstructionism, and to get rid of all the Blue Dogs.
In the meantime, I will hold out hopes for the nuclear option, mwahahahaha…
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Sixty is only important because of the filibuster, and Democratic Senators helping to filibuster their own president’s agenda is quite different from merely voting against said agenda. I think we’ll see many instances in which the Blue Dogs vote for cloture, but against final passage.
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:44 pm
I say we do it Lynndie England-style. Stack the bastards in a pyramid.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Political reform? Matt ain’t wrong.
Presidential politics? Just change the Electoral College to match the representation of the House of Representatives, in order to reduce the over-representation of small states.
Filibuster? Bernie Saunders is right on this one. For now, get 60 votes for cloture, and take the damn vote. In the future? I don’t know. Maybe actually make the old arrogant farts DO a filibuster?
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:12 pm
If both Matt and his critics are right – that the Senate structurally favors smaller states and disadvantages the most populous states, but that at the same time a process of major constitutional overhaul is unthinkable – then surely the answer lies in adding Puerto Rico as a state, splitting California into two or three states, and combining the Dakotas. These three steps would radically transform American politics without working outside the Constitutional system.
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:18 am
vwcat you are the epidome of why I would never vote democrat-”beaten wife syndrome”-for the love of all that’s holy, shut up