The Conservative Senate

Frank Luntz has been advising Senate Democrats, both as a group and in special sessions with Harry Reid.

Digby, it very nearly goes without saying, has the definitive take on what this means for America's public discourse.  What interests me is why the Democrats would want to rely on Frank Luntz.  Why DC is wired to privilege the conservative point of view - not just a right-of-center view, but insane, unhinged from reality rantings about ludicrous conspiracy theories, calls to violence against fellow Americans, constant warmongering, worship-the-rich economics with a heaping side helping of the worst delusions of Randian libertarians; it can't just be from all the whining conservatives have done about the so-called liberal media.

The only answer I can come up with is that with just a few exceptions, the Democrats in the Senate are simply more conservative than I am -  and almost certainly more conservative than you, no matter who you are.  In fact, if your position on America's political spectrum is anywhere at all to the left of "straight-up conservative," then the Democrats in the Senate are more conservative than you.  This is especially true of our famously anti-choice, anti-same-sex marriage Majority Leader.

Senate Democrats enthusiastically supported Bush's warmongering, the Patriot Act, DOMA, the "partial-birth abortion" ban.  A Democratic Senator is always available to worry on TV about the deficit, to bash unions, to offer his unqualified support for the bankers' regime in DC. 

For the pedantically inclined, of course not every Democrat in the Senate does this.  Anyone who makes this point in comments will be ridiculed mercilessly.  The point is that the majority of them are what would be called, in a less dysfunctional political system, conservatives - and not only that, but more conservative than solid majorities of the American public, who want to get rid of DADT, institute a government health care plan, preserve and strengthen social security, keep abortion legal, get us out of Iraq, etc.

There's been quite a bit of discussion about how the Senate is institutionally designed to impede progress.  But the plain fact is that Harry Reid has a lot of power - and the knowledge and skills - to move legislation forward when he wants to.  It's just what when it comes to truly progressive legislation, he doesn't want to, and few members of the Democratic Caucus care enough about progressive policies to put any pressure on him.  So we can go two ways:  transform the Senate's rules, procedures and most imporantly, its privileges, or transform the Democrats in the Senate.  Neither option is attractive, but ISTM that primaries will be more effective than trying to remake The World's Greatest Most Ridiculous Deliberative Body

Comments

[joel hanes]

Harry Reid has a lot of power - and the knowledge and skills - to move legislation forward when he wants to. It's just what when it comes to truly progressive legislation, he doesn't want to

Exactly.

Reid at least has the excuse that he comes from a conservative state.

But Reed's ally Sen. Feinstein, from California, is also very conservative. California voters, particularly in the liberal Bay Area, never seem to notice.

[Sir Charles]

Stephen,

World's most ridiculous deliberative body -- indeed. The low intellectual level of the Senate writ large -- not to mention the lack of guts on the Democratic side --is really remarkable.

joel,

I have been told by several people in the know that Feinstein's instincts are really bad and that she has to be frequently reminded by her staff which side she is supposed to be on.

[low-tech cyclist]

I've said in the past that, if the GOP was down to 100 seats in the House and 20 in the Senate, the Dems would still be jumping every damned time the GOP, or its media proxies, said "Boo!"

And on issues where big business might have something to lose, that would be true even if there was no GOP left to say Boo: far too many Dems are fully-owned subsidiaries of businesses from the defense contractors to Big Pharma to agribusiness, and on from there.

That's one of the reasons why I think a progressive third party is the way to go: we need a party that isn't functionally in the employ of the big-money boys.

Put in terms of Kos' desire for "more, better Democrats," we're still decades away from the day when the "better Democrats," the ones who will put people ahead of moneyed interests, will effectively control the party.

[Joe]

I think we actually have approximately 30-40 really good Democratic Senators (the usual suspects who opposed the Iraq War, want climate change legislation, want the public option, still support the EFCA). Its the 15-20 conservative, pro-business Dem Senators who are the problem. With that kind of math, I think its unfair to blame Reid- What's he supposed to to with a Liberal/Progressive block of maybe 40 Senators ?

(This argument is a variant of "there are liberal senators" so I guess I'll have to deal with Stephen's ridicule).

However, I think more importantly, there's an issue with the electorate being biased towards conservative messaging. Here in Chicago, Tom Geoghegan ran in a very Democratic district on an unabashedly prolabor, pro social democracy platform, and he got his hat handed to him in a Democratic primary. In general, Congressional candidates find that conservative messaging works while liberal/progressive messaging doesn't. When there's a bias like that, you're going to get a conservative Senate. That's something I don't know how to fix.

[Stephen]

I think its unfair to blame Reid- What's he supposed to to with a Liberal/Progressive block of maybe 40 Senators ?

Gee, I don't know. Maybe someone made this exact point in the post to which you are putatively responding, except that this hypothetical person also made the point that Harry Reid is a very conservative Senator and therefore isn't going to even try to address most progressive goals, let alone accomplish anything about them.

The only "blame" I'm assigning to Reid is how he is acting according to his own fundamentally conservative agenda.

Here in Chicago, Tom Geoghegan ran in a very Democratic district on an unabashedly prolabor, pro social democracy platform, and he got his hat handed to him in a Democratic primary.

Geoghegan was a no-name candidate who ran in a field of 14 people and who lost to a popular county commissioner. And while the district may be very Democratic, that doesn't always translate into a victory for prolabor, pro-social democracy candidates running in a crowded field against a well-established and well-known front runner. So perhaps the problem for Geoghegan wasn't that "conservative messaging works," but that money and experience matter a whole lot.

And it's weird that you're talking about Congressional candidates in a thread about the Senate. Congressional Dems are far more liberal as a group than their Senate counterparts. Illinois's 5th district can hardly be seen as a microcosm of the nation as a whole.

[Corvus9]

C'mon, guys. Don't give up so easily. The labor struggle has been going on in this country for about 170 years (there were calls for something like socialism as early as the 1837 riots, I believe). It's gonna take a long time to get real economic change in this country, and where we need to get is not going to come in our lifetimes, sad to say. But if we give up on a strategy every time it doesn't immediately bear fruit, we will never get anywhere. It will take some time to get better democrats. Politics doesn't really move that fast. It moves in two, four, and six year increments, and in certain ways, even longer than that. We just have to tough it out. I mean, what's the other option? A third party? The last time we tried that, it was a disaster. And that was only eight years ago. Let's give this strategy a bit more time, huh?

[Corvus9]

Anyways, considering the conservative nature of Democratic Senators. Remember that Senators need to win something like half the votes of a State, which is actually a pretty heterodox region, which means that such individuals will tend to moderate, or what can pass for moderate in a political theatre stage managed by the rich owners of mass media. This means that your gonna end up with people not a little reflexively concerned with the interests of the powerful, even if they are more heterodox in other areas. Add in the degree of impedimental power granted to each Senator, and you have a situation where it's really hard to get anything through.

On Reid: Honestly, I think Reid in so ineffectual because his caucus wants someone in that seat ineffectual. I think he is playing that part they elected him for, and probably the point most Majority Leaders are elected for. A pushover that won't try to encroach on all the individual power that Senators enjoy. Reid could try to crack down on Republican stonewalling, but any reforms that would accomplish that would remove powers enjoyed by his own "constituents." So he won't.

By the way, who would you guys like to see as majority leader? Durbin? I love Durbin, probably my favorite Senator, but I am not sure if he is really all that effective as Whip. If he couldn't get the Dems in line for cramdown (which was HIS BILL) then what can he get them in line for? And other than Durbin, I don't know who in the Senate I don't hate on at least one issue or another, or think would just suck at the job.

[oddjob]

What interests me is why the Democrats would want to rely on Frank Luntz.

Ummm, the Beltway Dems. have been drinking the Koolaid?

[oddjob]

I have been told by several people in the know that Feinstein's instincts are really bad and that she has to be frequently reminded by her staff which side she is supposed to be on.

If she's that conservative why not just declare yourself to be a moderate Republican and be done with it?

(Yeah, like that level of honesty is ever going to happen......)

What are Feingold's instincts like?

[oddjob]

Its the 15-20 conservative, pro-business Dem Senators who are the problem. With that kind of math, I think its unfair to blame Reid- What's he supposed to to with a Liberal/Progressive block of maybe 40 Senators ?

Isn't Reid (more or less) one of those 15-20?

[oddjob]

(Disclaimer: Fiscal deficit spending bothers me enough that I regard myself as politically moderate, comments just posted notwithstanding.)

[Corvus9]

I really don't understand how fiscal responsibility can be considered a political issue, either one on the right or the left. It's simply a principle of good government. Even in a socialist paradise, the government is going to have to strike a responsible balance between the money it spends and the money it takes in in taxes. Liberals want to spend more on social programs, and thus should promote high taxes (preferably for the rich). Conservatives want no social programs, and thus can safely ask for low taxes. Liberals who want lower taxes or conservatives who want more spending are more right-wing or more left-wing, their just irresponsible, or maybe foolish.

[Corvus9]

That should read "are NOT more right-wing or more left-wing." Curses.

[oddjob]

It's simply a principle of good government.

But one that both sides gleefully ignore whenever remotely possible.

[Corvus9]

As I seem to remember it, Clinton gave us surpluses, and Obama is merely running further deficits to rescue us from the economic horror that Bush fostered upon us while simultaneously running historically unprecedented deficits.

In recent memory, only one political side has ignored this principle whenever remotely possible. And it ain't the left.

[willf]

"Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." [/Cheney]

[Infrascape]

Really Great Site.

[oddjob]

Clinton gave us surpluses

He only gave us surpluses once the GOP was in charge of Congress, and hell bent on making his presidency as difficult as humanly possible. I have no doubt whatsoever that a Clinton presidency with a Dem. congress would have only given us a legacy of more debt.

[Zarpazo the Jesuit]

"The only answer I can come up with is that with just a few exceptions, the Democrats in the Senate are simply more conservative than I am - and almost certainly more conservative than you, no matter who you are."

The factual claim of this post--that Senate Democrats are substantially more conservative than American voters--is demonstrably false. In fact, Congressional Democrats are more liberal than Democratic voters, Congressional Republicans are conservative than Republican voters, and in both cases the differences are only slight.

From Columbia University political scientist and statistician Andrew Gelman (summarizing research from Dartmouth political scientists Joe Bafumi and Michael Herron): "[In Bafumi and Herron's paper] House members and senators' positions are estimated based on their votes in Congress. Voters' positions are estimated based on some survey questions where people were asked their views on a number of issues that had also been voted on in Congress. As you can see, elected representatives are generally more extreme than voters. Congressmembers are more ideological--more partisanly-consistent in their views--than most voters. When you see this graph, it should be no surprise--after all, congressmembers are professional Democrats and Republicans in a way that few voters are." See http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/02/partisanship-go.html

There's a nice graphic from Bafumi & Herron's paper summarizing their data: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/herron1.png

Here are Gelman's two posts on the topic:
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/02/partisanship-go.html
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/12/measuring_voter.html

[low-tech cyclist]

Corvus said: I mean, what's the other option? A third party? The last time we tried that, it was a disaster. And that was only eight years ago. Let's give this strategy a bit more time, huh?

A third party that runs a Presidential candidate before it's won a decent number of Congressional seats would be kinda useless, as it's always been. My hypothetical third party, at least in its formative years, wouldn't run a candidate for the Presidency, and would support the Dem candidate for President. What it would do differently is to run candidates in Dem districts so safe that a Republican couldn't win even if the Dem and the Progressive candidate split the left-of-center vote evenly, and in districts sufficiently conservative that the Dems weren't really putting up decent candidates.

The purpose of a third party of the left, besides winning elections, is to move the Overton window. Right now, Obama represents the leftmost edge of acceptable opinion, as defined by our media gatekeepers, on a host of issues. That's not a good situation.

For instance, you have 80 House Dems in the Progressive caucus who favor single-payer, but it's unacceptable to bring up that option in 'serious' company. If they were their own party rather than a faction in the Democratic Party, it would be a lot harder to fuzz over their very existence, which is what the media currently do.