I don’t understand the filibuster debate for Democrats right now. If I was a Senate Democrat, I would not enjoy being in the minority, but the current configuration of forces means I’m in the position of minimal responsibility as I would have minimal negoatiating leverage if there is a bill advancing through the chamber with between 51 and 66 votes in support.
TPM reports Senate Democrats have not through the current situation’s logic yet:
There’s also the question of Republican legislation which will have a much easier time making its way from one chamber to the next. Democrats maintain that they will not practice the regular filibustering Senate Republicans did when they were in the minority and instead say it will happen only when Senate GOPers take up radical Tea Party legislation….
The minimal neccessary conditions for a bill to become law is agreement between a majority in the house, a majority in the Senate and the President. If the President, who is a to the left of the 6th least liberal Senate and well to the left of any Senate Republican agrees to a deal, then there is not a minimal blocking coalition in the Senate of 40 Democrats who can stay firm for long.
If there is a disagreement between the House Republicans and the President, then the minimum winning coalition is all House Republicans plus 45 or 46 House Democrats and all Senate Republicans plus 13 Senate Democrats.
Senate Democrats have minimal incentives to block Obama’s executive appointments. There are very few circumstances where Senate Democrats can assemble and hold together 41 members on legislation that otherwise would have House Republican agreement and Obama’s agreement and not have 60 votes in the Senate. The agreement zone precludes Senate Democrats from being too influential. The only scenario where this might come into play is where there are significant cleavages in party coalitions such as the Transpacific Partnership or other trade deals, but even then, I have a hard time seeing 41 Democratic Senators holding together for more than a day or two in that scenario.
If this analysis holds, then we should expect the incentive to be for Senate Democrats to be released to vote their best interests and count on a busy veto pen to kill the worst.
mainmati
I agree. It is absolutely guaranteed that the Goopers will be in chaos in both the HOR and the Senate. The Democrats should focus on keeping the many, many, oversight (witchhunt) committees in check and pointing out to the rest of the country that the GOP cannot govern and is only interested in destruction.
trollhattan
Why am I atop a horse on the open range in D.C. and where did all these cats come from?
CaffinatedOne
They have no reason to filibuster aside from say, being seen to actually stand for something. Just letting everything past so Obama can veto it doesn’t really help them define themselves against republicans.
Paul in KY
IMO, all legislation from them will be of the ‘radical tea-party’ variety. It might not appear that way at first glance, but a thourough reading of it & thinking of the most absurd ramifications would, I think, show the true colours of their legislation.
? Martin
@CaffinatedOne: The 2016 senate landscape is pretty interesting:
DEMOCRATS
Michael Bennet (Colorado)
Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut)
Barbara Boxer (California) retiring in 2016
Patrick Leahy (Vermont)
Barbara Mikulski (Maryland)
Patty Murray (Washington)
Harry Reid (Nevada)
Brian Schatz (Hawaii)
Charles Schumer (New York)
Ron Wyden (Oregon)
REPUBLICANS
Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire)
Roy Blunt (Missouri)
John Boozman (Arkansas)
Richard Burr (North Carolina)
Dan Coats (Indiana)
Mike Crapo (Idaho)
Chuck Grassley (Iowa)
John Hoeven (North Dakota)
Johnny Isakson (Georgia)
Ron Johnson (Wisconsin)
Mark Kirk (Illinois)
James Lankford (Oklahoma)
Mike Lee (Utah)
John McCain (Arizona)
Jerry Moran (Kansas)
Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)
Rand Paul (Kentucky)
Rob Portman (Ohio)
Marco Rubio (Florida)
Tim Scott (South Carolina)
Richard Shelby (Alabama)
John Thune (South Dakota)
Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania)
David Vitter (Louisiana)
Remember, all of these guys were elected in the 2010 midterms which heavily favored Republicans. Dems do much better in presidential years, so the GOP is going to have to work to keep many of those seats. I’m not sure Dems in the Senate need to do much here. I don’t think voters are going to tag them based on what they stop vs what Obama stops, so why not just let Obama do it and be vocal about it? Sure, on some signature bills within your state, you step up, but the others? Let the bills pass and watch the vetos fail to be overturned. Easy.
Cacti
O/T but had to share
Outgoing Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says federal employee pensions should be eliminated.
Meanwhile, this pig will be cashing in his gold-plated CSRS pension that will pay him 74% of his high 3 years average annual salary for his 39 years in federal service.
The balls on these people.
Richard Mayhew
@CaffinatedOne: Let’s look at the Democratic caucus — you have Manchin who is representing a state that is rapidly trending Teabagger where personal popularity may or may not help him in 2018 (it did not help Landrieu or Pryor this year), Donelley (D-In) and McCaskill (D-Mo) who are in slightly better political situations than Landrieu/Pryor but not by much, Tester and Huselkamp who need to run in an off-year electorate next time around — there are plenty of people who have reason to defect on most bills to get the Republicans to 58 to 61 votes if they can count on a veto pen to save their policy preference while capturing political value of voting against the damn fucking hippies. And that assumes a mismatch between policy and political preferences, there are enough cases where revealed policy and political preferences line up where a vote with the GOP is the ‘honest’ vote
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Richard Mayhew:
“Sheath” is the noun; “sheathe” is the verb.
This one doesn’t count against your score, Richard, because it’s relatively obscure. LOL.
Doug r
Considering all the pissing and moaning that’s been going on over here it would seem that cutting down on filibusters would be a good idea.
Baud
@Cacti:
A real profile in courage there.
trollhattan
@Cacti:
Balls so large they should be quite easy to boot hard enough to end up north of their livers.
CONGRATULATIONS!
FUCK THIS.
Bullies take your lunch money until you punch them in the face. I want Dems to filibuster EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF LEGISLATION, INCLUDING NAMING POST OFFICES, until 2016. If not, they can do without my money until they decide to come to a gun fight with a fucking gun, instead a wallet full of protection money.
ETA: Surrendercrats. They’re earning the name.
Linnaeus
@Cacti:
No shit. Can’t say that I’m all that surprised. Of course our would-be neofeudal lords deserve what they get.
Iowa Old Lady
Cripes. My new House member joined Crazy Steve King in voting again Boehner. That’s what my district has come to.
Richard Mayhew
@CONGRATULATIONS!: so you want theatrics and not results….
The Democratic Caucus has a hard time maintaining party unity because the primary electorate base is far more diverse than the GOP primary electorate base, and the marginal member of the Democratic Senate Caucus represents some very Red territory. The incentives to go ball to the walls obstructionist when there is no need to do so don’t line up for Manchin, Donnelly, McCaskill, Tester, Huelskamp etc. They just don’t as they don’t fear losing a Dem primary anywhere near as much as they fear losing a general election, and that is a completely rational decision on an individual basis.
KG
Boxer’s retirement is interesting. Speeds up the game for the next generation of California politicians. I think most were looking at 2018 when the governorship would be up and most expected DiFi to step down. Newsom and Harris are the obvious candidates for Boxer’s seat, but if DiFi doesn’t run again in 2018, that’s going to possibly open up a campaign for someone else.
NotMax
Their best interests? Nope, that’s pure bushwa. The touchstone to strive toward is our best interests.
azlib
I generally agree with Richard’s analysis. From a game theoretic perspective it makes a lot of sense. I am not sure why anyone is fretting about this, since it is all inside baseball and the general electorate does not really care one way or the other. You do not run on a platform of whether you support the fillibuster or not.
KG
@NotMax: is your best interest seeing a Democratic majority in the Senate? Because if so, that means you need Democratic Senators from purple and even red states – that means they are sometimes going to have to vote against things you like and for things you don’t like. Because getting reelected by their actual, real world electorate is in their best interests, which, again, if you’re interested in seeing a Democratic majority, is in your best interest.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Richard Mayhew: A Republican led House and Senate is going to produce nothing but results I’m unwilling to accept in any way, shape, or form. So what exactly is the problem with letting the GOP know right from the get-go that what they propose is unacceptable?
Do you wonder why the media and an ever-increasing swath of the public worships the GOP and treats Dems with nothing but disrespect? This is why. Refusal to fight for their beliefs.
ETA: I might also add that sticking Obama with the entire burden of stopping the GOP agenda is unfair at best.
Richard Mayhew
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Is Obama running for re-election in 2016? Nope, and his popularity is far more closely tied to economic growth than that of a red state Democratic Senator.
Anything that can get Obama’s signature will get 60 votes or more in the Senate
Anything that can’t get Obama’s signature won’t get 67 votes in the Senate
Apply that to 98% of the non-confirmation votes, and it won’t matter. Messaging matters, but not too much when politics are getting more and more nationalized.
trollhattan
@Iowa Old Lady:
You should find out when Iowa was annexed by Missouri. Am having a hard time understanding the state of my birf the last decade or so..
West of the Cascades
One reason for filibustering: the increasing habit of Congress to do no legislating and wait until the end of the year to do “omnibus” must-pass legislation that is full of all sorts of extraneous, unnecessary, truly harmful crap in the form of riders. A Democratic filibuster allows them leverage to keep some of the worst riders out.
And, possibly more importantly, it bogs down the process (in a way that the public doesn’t see) so that it’s not a constant stream of bad bills getting passed by both houses and sent to President Obama to veto … which would give the Republicans a screeching point that “nothing gets done it’s Obama’s fault MUST ELECT JEB BUSH” to use at the next election. Much better to filibuster and then Democrats have the “Republicans can’t even pass legislation MUST ELECT MOAR DEMOCRATS.”
jl
@KG: I don’t understand the politics of the filibuster well enough to say anything about it. I guess best to split up the burden of stopping bad legislation between Senate Dem filibusters and Obama in way that sets the party of up best for 2016.
But one bit of good news I heard was that GOP lost more ground in California in midterms, which was the Mother of All GOP Midterms, to hear the media talk about it. I think the Dems are one or two seats shy of supermajority in both chambers of the state leg. But that was as much due to loss of some Democratic seats before election (due to indictments and a resignation) and a vacancy in the Senate as the election results.
NonyNony
@West of the Cascades:
You think that would work?
I’d assume it would be “Democrats are filibustering everything, so MUST ELECT MOAR REPUBLICANS TO STOP THEM” would be the more likely message.
Democrats are not Republicans. Things that work for Republicans will not work for Democrats. I would predict that if Democrats copied the Republican “filibuster everything that moves” “strategy” for the next two years the result would be more unelected Democrats. Because Democratic voters tend to want politicians who do positive things, not just obstruct. Republican voters believe that gubbmint is evil and most of what it does it shouldn’t be doing, so they’re very happy to see obstruction.
kindness
Can I get some agreement that Senate Democrats even asking this question are part of the problem?
Republicans changed the rules. Use the new rules. This ‘question’ is just like when Senator Leahy put the 2 blue slip rule back in in order to confirm judges. Just shoot yourself in both feet and get it over with dickheads. Shit I can’t believe I send money to these folks.
rikyrah
@Cacti:
that, is what you call a straight up MUTHAPHUCKA.
no chaser.
askew
Why am I not surprised? Senate Dems are again doing the bare minimum and expecting Obama to do their job for them and then they’ll turn around and bitch that Obama isn’t doing it the “right” way. Completely worthless. How does it help the Dem brand that the only elected Dem politician who is going to stand up for Dem policies is the guy who is never going to run for election again? It makes the rest of the party look as useless as always. It looks like the Dems learned the wrong lesson from 2014. Stand for nothing and try to appear like a Republican got Red state Dems booted from office in 2014. Expect a repeat of that with Hillary at the top of the ticket, because lord knows she won’t be able to inspire the base enough to provide coattails to the rest of the do-nothing Senate.
fuckwit
The solution is simply to fire the people and elect a new people.
You cannot elect more and better Democrats until you have better Americans voting. That means organizing in RED STATES, if you want to change the House or Senate, and I don’t see to many liberals rushing to move to those states or to organize and educate people there. We’ve intentionaly gerrymandered ourselves into relatively diverse urban enclaves. All the action is happening in rural states and statehouses with ALEC and fundamentaist churches and FOX and talk radio and the like. We’re clueless what’s going on out there in the real world, living in our bubble of urban diversity and getting our news from the internet (except Colbert and Stewart) instead of TV like the bulk of the voters are.
Bow down before the one you serve. You’re going to get what you deserve.
The American people have elected dominant R statehouses, who have gerrymandered a house majority to R’s, and elect dominant R Senate candidates, because the R’s are the dominant party in many, maybe even most, of those states, because the voters in those states want it that way.
You can’t ignore the will of the American people, even when it is disgusting. If we get disgusting representatives and disgusting legislation it is because we are a disgusting people. There is no sugarcoating that.
You can certainly argue that too many people are brainwashed by their churches and the 1% and the Kochs and corporate media and the NRA, etc, but that doesn’t change the reality that these people exist and that have brains and agency, and they believe what they believe and that they vote for teabaggers, over and over again.
You can shift the reality by education over the long term, say a generation or two, but I don’t see a whole lot of liberal activists moving to red states for a generation or two to try to accomplish this goal. I used to think demographics would save us organically over time, but now I wonder if the demographic changes will mostly happen in already-diverse, already heavily blue, urbanized areas, and won’t change things nationwide.
jl
@askew: Obama is running again, even though he’s not on the ticket. His public image will have a lot to do with who is next president and how much of Congress Dems can take back.
We know the GOP is going to try to pass lots of horrible legislation. That is why I think best approach is to split burden of stopping it between Senate Democrats and Obama in best way for 2016 electoral chances. What that best way is, I do not know, though.
NotMax
@KG
True, but only up to a point (incumbency is a robust bedfellow versus an individual vote). When cover your ass becomes the raison d’être for holding the office, when position trumps policy (as was implied in the post), it is beyond time to regroup, reconsider, revamp and raise some hell.
Barring some catastrophe, the odds of flipping the Senate back to D in the ’16 election are hugely, hugely demographically favorable. If that situation doesn’t allow for some to stick their necks out and stand up for principle, we’re in a pretty sorry state of affairs.
Stan of the Sawgrass
As much as I really, really want to see the Repubes get a taste of the shit they’ve given their “friends” on the other side of the aisle for the last three years, Richard is (probably) spot on. Look at the list of Democrats; how many of them sort of whistled past that graveyard called “ObamaWho? in the last election. At first I thought, “Well, yeah, let Obama just use his pen, unless it’s something like repealing Obamacare.” But in reflection, it would just be embarassing and depressing to see a Dem filibuster fail on something like that, and I just don’t trust any of the ‘red state’ Democrats to support it. And of course Manchin is the Lieberman of his era: a Donkey with a trunk.
Irony Abounds
@askew: You get an A+. Leaving it all for Obama’s veto pen will allow the Republicans to claim that progress would be made but for the Democrat in the White House. I don’t think the Dems should be quite as filibuster happy as the Republicans, but don’t rely on Obama to save the bacon on everything.
Roger Moore
@KG:
I expect Villaraigosa to run, too. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a few other big-name Democrats put their names forward, even if it’s just testing the waters.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Beat your chest and furrow your brow.