How to Fight the Filibuster

A must read article by William Grieder in the Nation makes the case for the Dems to grab the elephant by the balls and change the filibuster rules to allow cloture to occur at 55 votes.  (And how to avoid a filibuster in so doing.)

Now is the time for this kind of action.  I would make it the first order of business when the new Senate convenes in January.  Then I would pass a decent bailout bill for the auto industry.  And then I'd jam the Employee Free Choice Act down McConnell's malevolent throat.  

It's time to draw a line in the sand and tell the Republicans that we won big, we have a mandate to govern and solve problems, we're going to use that mandate, and we will not be held hostage by a bunch of reactionaries from dumbfucksville.   

Let's achieve post-partisan politics by making the partisans on the other side utterly irrelevant to the debate.  Oh, and if we need a couple of Republican votes, I say we all pledge to order the lobster at market prices, without even asking the wait staff what it costs.  (Do you hear that Senators Snowe and Collins.) 

Comments

[Stephen]

I'm not as far down this road as you, but ISTM that worrying about keeping the filibuster intact for later Democratic use - aside from how unlikely it is that a Democrat might ever filibuster something - is evidence of a defeatist attitude.

We have the GOP scared to death right now. They're desperate to avoid universal healthcare, and what just happened at Republic Doors and Windows must have them wetting their beds - and not just as part of Vitter's various fetishes.

The problem is that the filibuster is part of Senate tradition, and as I've written somewhere or another, Senate tradition is Harry Reid's only constituent.

Actually, I didn't write it nearly as concisely.

[Corvus]

Well, we need to do something, because this shit has already gotten old.

[Andrew]

Mmm-kay. And in 2004, when Republicans won a similar "mandate," we'd have said "yes, you're right, no need for you to be held hostage by left wing yahoos?"

Of course we would. Heck, why should we have had any concerns that Messrs Bush, Frist and DeLay had anything other than the best interests of the nation at heart?

[Sir Charles]

Andrew,

You're dead wrong about the Republicans winning a similar mandate. Bush, a wartime incumbent president, won by 3 million votes. The Republicans gained 4 senate seats but actually lost the popular vote for senate by 3.7 million.

Obama won by 9.3 million votes, a 7% margin. The Dems gained at least 7 senate seats in 2008, after already taking 6 seats in 2006. The Dems carried the popular vote for senate by 7.3 million in 2006 and by 5.2 million in 2008. The Dems have won 41 of the 65 senate seats contested in the last two elections, with one still undecided.

I have never liked the filibuster and believe in the end it works against progressive interests. I'd rather be rid of it and take my chances or at least go to the 55 vote model.

[low-tech cyclist]

It still effectively takes 2/3 of the Senate to change the cloture rule, or any other Senate rule, for that matter. The wording of Senate Rule 22:
"Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?" And if that question shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn -- except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting -- then said measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, shall be the unfinished business to the exclusion of all other business until disposed of.

The way to deal with filibuster abuse is to make them filibuster. Blocking cloture means that debate continues, at least in theory. But whenever debate on a bill ends, it's voting time. So make 'em keep talking to forestall a vote.

[low-tech cyclist]

Meant to say somewhere in there that, since it would take 2/3 of the Senate to ratchet the number of votes needed for cloture down to 55, it's not gonna happen anytime soon.

I'm perfectly happy with 60 votes for cloture. The problem isn't the rule; the problem's Harry Reid and the rest of the Senate Dems who practically get the vapors at the thought of playing hardball.

The great thing about the threat of making the minority party actually filibuster is that it works to the advantage of the party that has the edge in public opinion. Doesn't matter whether it's the party that would win or lose the up-or-down vote.

In this particular instance, the Dems have the advantage in public opinion. Regardless of the overall numbers, the people who actually care about this vote are those who are in the affected areas, who know people who might lose their jobs, or who might lose jobs themselves. The more it's drummed in (by forcing them to filibuster for days) that the GOP's the party playing politics with their lives, the less likely it is that they'll ever vote Republican again. The GOP would be scared of being made to filibuster, if there was any chance the Dems might make them do it.

But imagine it's 2005 and the GOP wants to cut school lunch funding. If the Dems block cloture on that, the threat of the GOP making them filibuster is empty: the last thing in the world they want is for everyone to know that they're cutting school lunch funding. So the GOP, in this hypothetical example, wouldn't dream of making the Dems filibuster, because they know they're going against the will of the people.

It doesn't take a Lyndon Johnson to figure this stuff out. It just takes someone smarter and gutsier than Harry Reid as Majority Leader.

[Andrew]

Sir Charles,

Not really sure that the size of the margins makes a difference. Politics is very much a game of momentum and perception: the rolling over by Democrats in the last two years has had nothing to do with the number of votes they received at election time, and everything to do with their (lack of) willingness to face the Administration down when Bush moved his (dwindling) chips into the pot.

One thing I am sure of is that it's a really, really bad idea to change the rules just because you've won an election. Sure, our hearts are pure, and all that - but the Republicans will form a majority sooner or later, and I really don't like the thought of their citing precedents for what Democrats did in 2009.

low-tech cyclist's suggestion is more appealing to me - make the party filibustering be seen to be doing so. CNN today reported that the bailout bill was defeated on a procedural vote of 52-35 in the Senate. Two things stand out - as TPM pointed out earlier today, many news organizations are declining to report that Senate Republicans killed the bill, and that also there's a suggestion that the bill was defeated in Congress - not that a partisan minority of Senators chose to block it.

With a 58 (give the Dems Franken, subtract Lieberman) seat count, if the Democrats can't pick off two Republican senators for votes that count or make their opponents pay a very high price for obstructionism then they'll only have themselves to blame. At least this Democratic Administration starts with Emanuel as Chief of Staff, so they're better equipped than the last one for integrating Presidential and Congressional action.

[Delicious Pundit]

And, when we talk about the filibuster, we should make sure to call it, Luntz-style, the "nonconstitutional filibuster." This 60-vote business isn't in Scripture, you know, even our secular scripture; the Senate made it up. It's nonconstitutional. The more we get that out there the more people will realize it's just some procedural bullshit that doesn't have the Sanction of the Founders.

As to this:

One thing I am sure of is that it's a really, really bad idea to change the rules just because you've won an election.

What is the point of winning elections if you are not going to change rules? In Parliamentary systems the majority combines executive and legislative powers; huge things can happen just because a party wins an election. That's one of the reasons Barack Obama in 2009 is going to do less than Clement Atlee in 1945. And yet Parliamentary states, despite their dangerous ability to allow the majority sweeping powers, seem as stable as ours.

[yoyo]

If democrats aren't smart enough to add some $$ to the EFCA and push it through on reconciliation, they deserve to get thrown out of office as a do-nothign congress.

[MR Bill]

I actually remember the days when Thurmond and (I think) Rivers of Mississippi were filibustering the Civil Rights Bills, and they came off as silly and mean. I'm with the folks who think we ought to make them actually filibuster and stand there, Grinchlike, reading from the Bible or "Gone with the Wind", instead of Reid folding at the threat of a filibuster. Let them keep the Senate in session and droodle on about the 'Free Market'.
We can post all those noble statements about the Nuclear option, and make them look as good as the old segregationists did in the '60s.

[litbrit]

What MR Bill said. Fillibuster away, you foul, cowardly old bastards. Show the world who you are: arrogant, outmoded, heartless, and eminently selfish free marketeers who want to literally destroy an industry, leave millions without jobs, and slam the final nails into the coffin that holds what used to be our vibrant economy--all in order to bust unions and further realize their Saint Ronnie dreams.

Good God, I can't wait until all these miserable motherfuckers die off and honest-to-goodness thinking, feeling people can start running things. (Sorry, I woke up in a very grouchy mood this a.m., having somehow contracted a nasty headache despite not drinking a drop of anything last night. Hey, maybe I need to start drinking! It's not as though there's a paucity of reasons for so doing...)

[Sir Charles]

It can't hurt. Well, it can a little bit, but as I noted to someone yesterday, the bitch about nearing 50 is that some mornings I wake up and feel hungover when I haven't touched a drop.

[oddjob]

They've already changed the filibuster rule once during my lifetime (born in '60). I think it was back in the late 70's that they lowered the cloture threshold to 60 votes from the previous 65.