Matt Yglesias

Know Your Branches

I think this from Chris Bowers brings a much-needed perspective to the oft-cranky discussions of the Obama administration at Open Left:

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Senate, rather than the Obama administration, is the biggest obstacle to progressive governance right now. If we were dealing with only the House and the Obama administration, there would be a noticeably more progressive government in America. From health care reconciliation, to 100% auction cap and trade, to a larger stimulus package, to bailout reform, to bankruptcy “cramdown” reform, and even to executive compensation, the Senate has moved to the right of both the House and the Obama administration. As such, it is the Senate, and not the Obama administration, against whom we should be directing more of our distrust and pressure.

Just imagine what we would have accomplished in terms of legislation without the Senate over the past few months. The stimulus would have had a hundred billion more in spending, 100% auctions would be on their way, hundreds of billions for new health care would be on its way, bankruptcy “cramdown” would be law, EFCA would be law, executive compensation limits would be far more severe, and on and on and on. However, if we had the Senate but there was no President, the legislative accomplishments would have been pretty much the same.

I think it’s crucially important to be aware of where the responsibility for disappointments lies. There are some important areas where the Obama administration really is the key actor. They are the ones taking positions on executive power that are at odds with what many people were hoping for from a new administration. And if you want to talk about strategy toward Afghanistan, the Obama administration takes full responsibility for whatever good or bad is coming out of that. But on basic domestic policy legislation, the essence of the matter is that the median member of the House of Representatives is more progressive than the median Senator and a lot more progressive than the sixtieth Senator you need to break a filibuster. Mark Pryor and Susan Collins are trying to unleash some torrent of liberal legislation that Obama is holding back.

The Problem of the Senate

It’s often said that Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter “failed” in efforts to achieve major progressive structural reforms during their moments of opportunity in 1993-94 and 1977-78. But as Jonathan Chait persuasively argues this is more a situation where the opportunity for progressive change was deliberately squandered by congressional Democrats; especially Senate Democrats who work with the perverse structure of the world’s worst legislature to stifle change. Depressingly, Chait is able to mount a great deal of evidence that some of the same stuff is happening today to Barack Obama’s agenda.

On a related note, people sometimes have a model in their head whereby the typical moderate congressional Democrat is a solid-gold progressive who really wants to do great things for America but feels constrained by politics. That’s probably true of some of them. But one really shouldn’t assume that it’s uniformly true. After all, a Senator who wants to do the right thing on, say, climate change but worries that a strong cap-and-trade bill would be a tough political sell in his state ought to be eager to see cap-and-trade done through reconciliation. That way you can vote “no” like you think you have to, without the “no” vote killing the bill. And that’s hardly the only example. There’s tons of below-the-radar procedural stuff that a legislator whose “real” views are further-left than he thinks he can get away with could be doing. And I don’t actually see a ton of Senate Democrats trying to push those envelopes. But that’s something to think about when you’re eying a particular legislator and wondering where he or she really stands.

Bob Menendez Holds Climate Policy Hostage to Cuba Embargo

Someone was telling me about this yesterday and I didn’t quite get what I was being told, but Senator Robert Menendez is holding up two of Barack Obama’s key climate/science appointees, John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco, over an unrelated Cuba policy dispute:

The delay — which could end quickly if Menendez dropped his objection or Senate leaders pushed for a floor vote that would require 60 votes to pass — has alarmed environmentalists and scientific experts who strongly back Holdren and Lubchenco.

“Climate change damages our oceans more every day we fail to act,” said Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist for the advocacy group Oceana. “We need these two supremely qualified individuals on the job yesterday.”

Kate Sheppard notes that just last year Menendez thought climate change was “incredibly important.” But apparently not as important as defending America’s insane Cuba policy status quo.

Meanwhile, I would note that even more than the filibuster, the “hold” process in the Senate is an absurd procedural bottleneck that could and should be done away with. People sometimes wonder what the hold rule is, and nobody even really knows. When I was an intern in Chuck Schumer’s office the idea of putting a hold on someone came up, and the office had to scramble to figure out what it means. Turns out that it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just an insane convention that Senate leaders agree to uphold and that Senators as a whole conspire to put in place. But it’s ridiculous. Irrespective of the details of one’s views on Holdren or Cuba it clearly does not serve the general interest to let random appointees be held up by random Senators for no real reason. All it does, ultimately, is feed the egomania and power-lust that seems to afflict every single senator. But it’s time for some members of the body to put their substantive policy commitments ahead of their wacky perks of office and start pushing for the kind of substantial procedural reforms that will make it possible for the Senate to tackle major issues in a serious way.

Relatedly, it’s annoying to read things about how it “would require 60 votes to pass” a resolution confirming these nominees. If you look through United States history, plenty of bills and plenty of nominees have been passed with more than 49 but fewer than 60 votes. Similarly, in the pre-seventies era of the 67-person cloture vote plenty of bills passed with fewer than 67 votes. Throughout the nineteenth century it required unanimity to break a filibuster, but that didn’t mean that bills all passes unanimously. It also “requires” 60 votes to pass things if we accept the premise that the filibuster should be used routinely. That has not, however, been the historical understanding of the filibuster. The speed with which Washington has accepted the idea of a routine supermajority requirement is a little bit frightening as it was just a few years ago that this started to be put into place.

Oregonian: Merkley Wins

Gordon Smith hasn’t conceded yet, but the local media is calling the Oregon Senate race for Merkley.

Worth noting that a seat like this one is worth more to the Democratic Party than a seat like Kay Hagan’s. The Oregon race has turned out to be much closer because Smith has a reputation for independence, moderation, and hard work while Elizabeth Dole had none of those things. But a reasonably talented North Carolina Republican should be able to give Hagan a run for her money no matter what she does, whereas a Senator Merkley will be quite safe as long as he stays out of trouble.

Time for a Change

2010 Arizona Senate trial heat Napolitano 53%, McCain 45%. Early polling has little value, but this kind of early weakness is the hallmark of a beatable candidate. Of course my assumption is that McCain won’t actually be running for re-election.

One to Watch

The Franken-Coleman race in Minnesota should have us all on the edge of our seats not only because the polling is so close but because the public polling shows such a large third-party vote. Over ten percent of Minnesotans (and in some surveys closer to twenty) are currently telling pollsters they’ll vote for Barkley, but the historical pattern is for third party voters to fade away at the last minute once it becomes clear that their man is stuck hopelessly in third. Will that happen? If it does, which way will his supporters break?

Hoarding the Money

Tom Edsall reports on Democratic Senators sitting on big warchests that could be used in a last-minute election push:

The DSCC’s $11.3 million in receipts from all the Democratic Senators stand in contrast to the $18.6 million raised from the 51 top Democratic House donors to the Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) — 64.6 percent more than from the same number of members of the upper chamber. The total raised from Democratic House members by the DCCC — headed by Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) — $38.8 million, is more than triple the amount raised by the DSCC from Senators.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who is not up for election until 2012 and who has $6.68 million cash on hand, gave a total of $115,000 to the DSCC. Indiana’s Evan Bayh, who has $11.3 million on hand and is up in 2010, gave $15,000. Barbara Boxer who has an even $4 million in the bank in preparation for her re-election bid in 2010, donated $30,000.

In fact, if every Democratic Senator who is not up for re-election this year, or who is sure to win on November 4, gave just 10 percent of their cash-on-hand to the DSCC, it would total $10 million for the closing week — a substantial sum for of television time in key target states.

It seems to me that that kind of money could easily be the difference between winning and losing races in Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, etc.

Newspapers Heart Hagan

Of all of this year’s Senate races, the one that’s most taken me by surprise is the Dole-Hagan race in North Carolina. Right out of the starting get, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, and New Hampshire were understood to be solid pickup opportunities. And Oregon and Minnesota (along with Maine, which now looks very safe for the GOP) are classic instances of going after GOP incumbents in solid blue states in a bad year for Republicans. Then there’s Alaska where obviously Ted Stevens’ legal problems were going to create problems with him. And then you’ve got some longshot races in Kentucky and Georgia. But Hagan doesn’t fit those models and her race isn’t a longshot at this point — she’s clearly favored. It’s a turn of events that’s really taken DC by surprise.

I’m not sure exactly how to account for it, but her impressive string of newspaper endorsements does seem noteworthy. Conventional wisdom has it that these endorsements don’t matter, but part of that is probably because most newspaper endorsements are pretty predictable. Something like the Washington Post, which always endorses the Democratic presidential nominee, endorsing the Democratic presidential nominee despite having tilted somewhat more to the right in recent years passes for noteworthy. But the solidity with which Hagan has picked up endorsements — every paper in the state that’s endorsed so far — suggests something well-beyond picking up the predictable sources of support. And one can see how that kind of thing could be a big boost to a candidate who didn’t start out with great statewide name recognition or a strong financial backing.

Senator Who?

Not saying these folks are all going to win, but odds are that out of the set {Mark Begich, Ronnie Musgrove, Kay Hagan, Jim Martin} there are going to be some new Senators come January. Does anyone know anything about these people? I’ve poked around their websites and there’s some interesting stuff there, but it’s a limited source of information — any good profiles? I feel like Al Franken and Mark Warner have been covered to death, and I know Jeanne Shaheen’s record from New Hampshire, but these other characters . . . nothing.

Hagan and Transit

Like Atrios, I haven’t really paid any attention to the North Carolina Senate race and thus don’t know anything about it beyond the fact that Democratic challenger Kay Hagan seems to have an improbably good chance of winning. So I thought I might poke around at her website, and she turns out to be . . . a mass transit advocate just like me like and Atrios. Her energy plan devotes substantial space to the idea that increased investments in mass transit infrastructure will boost economic growth while also helping to clean up the environment.

An economic downturn is the best time to start working on the big new infrastructure projects that, among other things, will partially determine the contours of future growth when the next upswing begins. It’d be really nice for the country to be smart about this stuff if, as seems likely to me, we have a renewed push for economic stimulus early next year.