the consequences of 60, or, this town ain't big enough for both Harry Reid and the filibuster

The current Senate Majority Leader has just been dealt more power than any since the Carter Administration, though in truth he has both more and less than appears. Like the Republicans, the Democrats are more ideologically sympatico than they've ever been, so Reid just doesn't have to worry about major splits in the ranks and significant rebellious factions (despite Evan Bayh's threats to form the elusive agenda-less senate faction. Scary!). Sure, a handful of senators here and there can and will play contrarian for the papers, but it will be nothing like the Dixiecrat factions of old.

And yet, the smart money is on Harry Reid losing most of his battles, failing to advance Obama's agenda very far, and ultimately being unceremoniously dumped as Majority Leader. The reason is that expectations are going to be very high now for Reid to pass legislation with sheer brute force. Even people who know better are going to act as if Reid should be able to ram the president's agenda down the throats of the puny Republican minority in the same way Pelosi has been able to steamroll the House GOP delegation time and again since '06. And frankly, they aren't entirely wrong. Historically a Senate supermajority has always meant that the party in power can pass legislation at will, barring no serious internal divisions.

The de-publicized, or silent, filibuster has changed all that, however. Now a party with even just 40 senators can obstruct with impunity, filibustering every single piece of legislation that comes down the pike. Because of this change in procedure, even a party as utterly (and repeatedly) rejected by the voting public as today's Republican remnant can demand major concessions from the Majority Leader even when he can keep his entire party in line, because he must attain 60 votes to break a filibuster, and yet several prominent Democrats are too infirm to attend sessions reliably, such as Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd.

What's funny about Reid's predicament is that, as is often the case with life's problems, it is a monster of Reid's own making. There are 2 different ways in the last 8 years in which Harry Reid could have prevented either the Republicans' abuse of the filibuster or the public's assumption that it isn't a big deal, and he backed down every time. The first one lies in Reid's tenure as Minority Leader, when he had the option of obstructing the Republicans and chose not to. Frist seemed to be able to pass anything he wanted (as long as it didn't have to do with Social Security) with 5-11 fewer senators than Reid now has. In fact, it appears that Reid's Democrats engaged in fewer filibusters even than previous Republican minorities. The second Republicans found themselves in the minority, however, they began filibustering at three times the previous year's rate, filibustering some 150 times in the last congress (the previous record was 58, also a Republican minority).

The other moment came when the rules for this session were enacted by Congress at the beginning of the year, and he neglected to revisit the filibuster rule even after suffering 150 filibusters in the 2007-8 session and even after Mitch McConnell openly admitted that the primary tactic of Senate Republicans would be obstruction via filibuster.

Thus it is expected that Reid should be able to do what Frist could do with 51 senators, though the truth is that he can't because, frankly, he isn't facing Harry Reid on the other side of the aisle.

It may already be too late for Reid, because it takes 67 votes to change the rules, and I don't think Franken will be enough to secure passage in a pinch, even with the sudden, convenient metamorphosis of Arlen Specter into a reliable progressive Democrat. If he does survive to 2011, though, has absolutely must reconcile himself with one simple, irrefutable fact: the decorum and camaraderie and willingness to be a minority partner in governance that existed in the Senates of the 1980's and before is long gone. The Republican party, Mitch McConnell included, has no interest in abiding by the old mores of the Senate because they believe that the stakes have become too high to worry about things like honor and precedent. Rules without teeth will not be followed, and an across-the-board 60-vote threshold is unacceptable in the United States Congress. Reid should take note of the hell states like California and Arizona are going through right now trying to deal with unworkable supermajority thresholds.

holy cow

Arlen Specter switches parties. Democrats now have 60.

"procedural roadblock"

This is getting ridiculous. I have to be honest, I've never actually seen a double-standard all across the media that they've fought so hard to maintain in the face of all logic and evidence. Or at least, one that's stricken me as such.

This, however, is just so out of bounds, so egregious, that you have to wonder what the hell is going on behind the scenes. Marshall flags material from McClatchy, Reuters, the Washington Post, and Diane Sawyer all going to great lengths to avoid calling what the GOP is doing "filibustering."

Diane Sawyer is convinced that it was Harry Reid who did the filibustering!

What the hell is going on here?

speechless

After all this time, the press finally ends their boycott on the word "filibuster" and reports:

During the July 17 edition of ABC's Good Morning America, co-anchor Diane Sawyer falsely claimed that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "vows to filibuster, talking all night to close out all topics besides a vote on Iraqi troop withdrawals." Sawyer was referring to Reid's plan to hold an all-night Senate debate prior to the July 18 cloture vote on a Democratic proposal to withdraw troops from Iraq. However, by planning to extend the Senate session throughout the night, Reid is not "vow[ing] to filibuster," as Sawyer reported. Rather, he is highlighting the Republicans' blocking of an up-or-down vote on the proposal; in other words, it is the Republicans who are filibustering the withdrawal proposal by requiring that 60 senators vote for the amendment in order for it to pass.

Additionally, on the July 16 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes asserted that Reid is "filibustering his own bill."

Yes, you read that right. Diane Sawyer just reported that it's the Democrats who are filibustering.

This is insane.

Senate's impending all-nighter

It's funny, now that there's a full press boycott on the word "filibuster," I had no idea what the point of this was until I stopped relying on the press to tell me and went to the blogs. Here's some snippets of what I was reading in the papers. From TPM:

This article from Reuters manages to get through an entire article on the filibuster the Democrats are going to force senate Republicans to go through with without ever actually using the word 'filibuster'. It's almost a thing of beauty in its negative capacity of bamboozlement.

Some choice quotes ...

U.S. Senate Democrats, hoping to raise pressure on President George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans to pull troops from Iraq, have scheduled an around-the-clock war debate starting on Tuesday.

and

Democrats have all but publicly acknowledged that they will be unable to pass their end-the-war amendment because opposition Republicans are insisting on 60 votes for a victory.

That's not a good sign.

You figure maybe that's the whole point of why Reid is doing this, i.e., to force the press to acknowledge the obvious?

filibuster

It's good to see I'm not the only one upset about this strange turn in our supposedly "liberal" media. Why is the media refusing to call it a "filibuster" when the Republicans do it, after crucifying the Democrats for merely debating doing it? From AMERICAblog, we see Roll Call referring to GOP filibusters as "the need for 60 votes for passage of any measure — one of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) chief tactical tools this year." You'd think a newspaper concerned about space would use a shorter phrase, like "filibuster."

The best part of the Roll Call article: when Reid complained about the fact the GOP is filibustering everything, here's how they printed it:

"In fact, Reid and McConnell traded barbs on the floor over the process for debating the bill, with Reid saying McConnell's insistence on pre-setting 60-vote thresholds for all Iraq-related amendments amounted to a defacto filibuster. Sixty votes are required to cut off a filibuster."

News flash: requiring 60 votes to bring a bill to a vote in the Senate... can only be done via filibuster.

Meanwhile, here's today's Washington Post:

But the GOP leadership's use of a parliamentary tactic requiring at least 60 votes to pass any war legislation only encouraged the growing number of Republican dissenters to rally and seek new ways to force President Bush's hand.

A free cookie if you can guess what the name of that "parliamentary tactic" is called!

institutional goldfish memory

From USA Today:

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a bill that would allow labor unions to organize workplaces without a secret ballot election.

Democrats were unable to get the 60 votes needed to force consideration of the Employee Free Choice Act, ending organized labor's chance to win its top legislative priority from Congress.

The final vote was 51-48.

The outcome was not a surprise, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., saying for months that he would stop the legislation in the Senate. The White House also made it clear that if the bill passed Congress it would be vetoed.

Apropos of the GOP "block", I would like to ask a question: why have I not heard the word "filibuster" since the Democratic takeover of the Senate? That's the single word term for "a move requiring 60 votes to force consideration," so why are so many newspapers and news shows refusing to use the term? I was starting to wonder if the Senate rules had been changed so that now 60 votes are required to pass bills, as every vote the Democrats lose these days "falls short of the necessary 60 votes to force consideration." Then I realized that Trent Lott has been organizing filibusters of virtually every bill Harry Reid brings to the floor. What happened to the moral necessity of the "up or down vote?" More importantly, how come they're "filibusters" when the Democrats did them but just "blocks" when the Republicans do them?

I expect the GOP to be craven and hypocritical, they've made it their business to be such and their goals and strategies pretty much require them to be. But what's USA Today's excuse?