As David Waldman notes at Daily Kos, the Democrats decided to deny Arlen Specter his seniority for the remainder of this Congress. If he gets reelected in 2010, his seniority will be restored, making him eligible to chair high-level subcommittees on Judiciary and Appropriations (and possibly become chairman of the full Judiciary Committee if Leahy moves to chair Appropriations, or become the chairman of Environment & Public Works). But Specter has at least two checks on him. First, he must please the Democratic Caucus enough over the remainder of this Congress for them to agree to give him a chair and second, he must win over the Democratic Primary voters in Pennsylvania and then win the general election. If he can do all that, then he’ll be considered a Democrat in good standing and get full seniority.
But double-crossing Specter and denying him his seniority is only one part of how the Democrats showed their muscle. The Senate is organized by a resolution that was passed back in January. That resolution set the ratios on all the committees and it also set the chairman and ranking member for each committee. Unless the Republicans were willing to revisit that resolution, Specter would have remained the ranking member on Judiciary. The Republican didn’t want that, but they also didn’t want to seat Al Franken, which could have been forced on them if they reopened the organizing resolution. So, they agreed to a minor change…simply flipping Specter on all his committees without any compensation. This means that the ratio of Democrats to Republicans on Appropriations, Judiciary, Environment & Public Works, Aging, and Veteran’s Affairs just shifted by two in the Democrats’ favor. In other words, the Republicans made a decision that they would rather lose five committee seats than make any room for Al Franken.
That’s some pretty serious short-term thinking. But the lesson is that you can’t write a book called Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot and have the Republicans treat you with any due deference or respect.
I don’t know – this doesn’t pass the smell test. Did the Republicans really think that Reid would try to use this to seat Franken? Really? I haven’t seen that suggestion anywhere except from David Waldman, and even Waldman only presented it as a suggestion for what the Dems should do, not as something they were seriously considering. The Republicans had to know that Reid would fold like a house of cards on the Franken thing – he’s already backed himself into a corner and he isn’t going to try anything until Franken shows up with a signed certificate from his governor.
I think it’s more likely that the “can of worms” mentioned in the piece Waldman cites is that Reid could actually take even more seats away from Republicans with Specter sliding over since their majority is now somewhat larger. They lose 6 seats total, and the Dems gain 6 seats, but they preclude the Dems from making that a larger gain and forcing GOP leadership in the Senate to make some potentially caucus angering decisions about who has to leave which committees.
Reid got a decent deal out of this, but I just really don’t believe that he got it because of some imaginary fear that Reid was going to try to use this to seat Franken before the Minn. SC had issued their final decision. That just doesn’t sound like Reid or any of the rest of the Dem leadership in the Senate.
technically, you’re right. He wasn’t going to actually seat Franken prior to the Minn. SC ruling. He was going to redo the ratios to create spaces for Franken. This would, as you say, result in some Republicans getting booted off their committees.
That makes more sense. So does that mean that when Franken finally gets seated he’s not going to have any committee assignments? Will Reid be able to force a measure to redo the ratios, or will Franken just be left out in the cold until 2010?
there are a couple of slots for him available. One on Indian Affairs, for example, is empty.
But to give him choice assignments they need some more room.
oh, and to answer your question, with 60 votes the Dems can redo the caucus anyway they want. Specter might not be a reliable vote on most things but on organization, he will be.
Ah – I wasn’t sure if this was one of those things that needed “unanimous consent” or if it was a standard measure where if Reid could get 60 votes he could do what he wanted.
However, I’m not going to call it a slam dunk until things have been reorganized. I’ll believe that all of the Dems will line up for a reorg vote (including Specter) when it happens. I think some of them just don’t like Franken (or the idea of Franken, for that matter) and might be willing to “not show up” on a day when their vote is needed for that reorg.
that totally undermines what you just wrote in another comment about how the Dems only cave when it is in their self-interest to cave (what they really want to do).
On the unanimous consent point, I don’t think you understand what that means.
Everything in the Senate must be done with unanimous consent, always. The cloture vote (to end a filibuster) is the only way to proceed with the lack of unanimous consent.
We talk about needing 41 senators to maintain a filibuster or 60 to end one. But one senator is all it takes to filibuster. They deny their consent and you have a filibuster.
No it doesn’t. If a Dem thinks its in his self interest to piss on Al Franken, he’ll piss on Al Franken and there’s not a damn thing that Harry Reid can do to stop it. Who knows – one or two of them might well think that standing up to the “liberal machine” and poking Franken in the eye will play well at home and so decide to do it. I never underestimate the power of the “this will piss off the dirty hippies and make me a hero to the folks at home” mentality of certain Democratic politicians.
I will admit that I will be somewhat surprised if one of them decides to play that card. But I keep my cynicism open because it’s been so well-justified in the past.
Yeah, I had a brain blurble. For some reason I was thinking that the Senate had some procedural stumbling blocks for organizational purposes that were different than the standard legislation stumbling blocks, and that you actually needed the full Senate to agree on changing things. But in retrospect now I don’t know where that came from. Stupid brain – think before you let the fingers type.
that would make sense if there was a way to diss Al Franken without dissing themselves. Franken will get committee seats, the question is only whether he will take slots already held by Democrats or if he will take newly created slots. And having better ratios on committees is desirable to all Democrats.
Ah, that’s the part of the calculus I was unaware of. If there’s a guarantee that Franken would have to boot people once he gets seated then you’re right – there’s no quarter in any Democrat blocking it because they’d not only poke Franken in the eye, but also anyone who has to be pushed aside to make room for him.
Thanks for the info – this site is always educational!
Losing sight entirely of the fact that Franken will be seated sooner or later.
I have to wonder how much benefit will be derived from having the uberDINO on these committees instead of a plain ol’ Republican. He doesn’t seem to have an intention to vote any differently as a Dem than he did as a Rep.
The seniority thing seems more important — and even shocking — given the Dems usual proclivity for caving on everything they see. This should limit his power now and, as you say, keep him on a short leash for at least the next year or so.
Still, I fervently hope he’ll be primaried out in the next election. He’ll never be a real asset to the Democratic Party.
I think I’m missing something, because I see people all over who are shocked at the fact that the Dems didn’t “cave” into Specter on this and I fail to see it as surprising at all.
Dems “cave” when they want to cave. They use Republican opposition as a shield to negotiate terms to be more to the satisfaction of themselves, or of some constituency that they’re trying to appeal to. “Caving to Republicans” is a cover for “Doing What We Wanted To Do In The First Place, And It Just Happens To Be What The Republicans Wanted To Do Too.” Seeing it as anything other than that is buying into the GOP framing of Democrats as “weak” – they’re not weak, they do what they want to do. The only way they’re “weak” is that they use Republicans as a cover to keep their asses from getting primaried out of office at the next election.
Here there was literally NO INCENTIVE for Dems to “cave” to Harry Reid and Arlen Specter. WTF was Specter going to do? Change his mind? Say “Sorry guys, the Dems wouldn’t let me keep my seniority so I was only kidding – I TOTALLY want to be a Republican again!” Right. I’m sure that the current GOP would have welcomed him back with open arms and GOP primary voters in 2010 would have completely forgiven him for his week-long dalliance with the Dems.
And what do the Dems gain by giving Specter his seniority? He’s already promised to not be a “loyal Democrat”. He wouldn’t promise to be a cloture vote. Dems gain nothing and roughly 50 out of the caucus would have been bumped down in seniority to make room for Snarlin’ Arlen. Some would have lost chair status. Some would have been bumped off committees entirely. And for what? To keep a guy who has no loyalty to anyone but himself happy – but not so happy that he actually promises to do anything for you?
This is a completely unsurprising development given how the week shook out. The ONLY surprising thing to me is that Specter thought that he might somehow keep his seniority in the move. WTF was he thinking banking on a promise made by Harry Reid? You’d think that after all these years Specter would understand how the Senate operates.
Well, “want to cave” is kind of a gray area. I think most Dems want to do the right thing — ie, uphold to some degree traditional Dem Party progressive inclinations. But they cave anyway when the imagine the blowback they’ll get from the noise machine and the possible loss of
bribescontributions. Given Obama’s unfortunate public enthusiasm for Specter, it might have been easier to just be a “good soldier” and go along to get along.Of course everything you say about the reasons not to cave are true, but how many senseless capitulations have we seen from this leadership? For me the handling of this remains mildly gratifying and slightly surprising.
part of the problem is a failure to distinguish between Barbara Boxer and Ben Nelson or between Dick Durbin and Evan Bayh. What ‘The Democrats’ want is not a real category most of the time.
Take a hypothetical piece of legislation that is considered fairly progressive. Let’s say that the legislation is popular among activists and they are clamoring for it. Let’s say that mainstream/center news columnists agree it is a good idea. And let’s say that the president campaigned on it and says he supports it.
Okay, with me so far?
Now, say that the Democratic Senate Caucus gets together and discovers that three or four of their members simply will not go along with this legislation. And they talk to the Republicans and discover that none of them will support it.
Now they know that they cannot pass this legislation. What does Harry Reid do?
Sometimes he tells people the truth. But other times he comes up with some watered-down piece of shit compromise and tries to sell it to us as what they wanted to do all along.
Either way, if 55 Democrats supported it and four opposed it, it’s kind of strange to say that ‘The Democrats’ wanted the piece of crap legislation in the first place.
This could apply to retroactive immunity or to cramdown legislation or to the coming health care bill.
On the other hand, sometimes the Dems really are pretty divided (like on FISA) and they let the ‘centrists’ take the fall for not killing something a significant number of them didn’t want killed in the first place.
I think this is exactly correct, BTW. Unlike with Republicans, who have a very tight caucus, there are no “The Democrats”. There are individual Democrats who have their own agendas and ideology and who will vote how they want to vote when they want to vote. What I meant above is that when Democrats “cave” it’s because certain Democrats in the caucus are voting exactly as they want to vote – either because it’s part of their own internal ideology or because it represents what their state/district wants and they know they’ll get chewed up over it in a primary or in the next general election if they don’t vote that way.
I’m amused/appalled that so many Democrats want to believe that the Democrats are just weak-assed cowards who routinely kowtow to whatever the Republicans want. That’s just not believable at all – the members of the Democratic caucus are quite a group of strong-willed people who agree with each other in broad strokes on a lot of things and fiercely and vehemently disagree with each other on many details of things they agree on and on a few issues in general.
And I actually blame Harry Reid and the rest of the leadership a bit for pushing the perception that the “watered-down piece of shit compromise” is actually what they wanted all along. That helps everyone – including other Democrats – think that the Democrats are weak. Instead he should just be honest about it – “we have 5 members of our caucus who won’t vote for this legislation as is, so we’re giving you a weaker version of it because of them. Oh, by the way, here are their names” and then let the chips fall as they may. If those Senators are really standing up for the will of their constituents, they’d be proud to be the ones who can say “we stood up there and stopped this from happening” and everyone wins.
I agree that it would be nice and get Reid more love and understanding if he were honest about how powerless he is. But you can’t really be an effective leader for long if you’re constantly making a public example of your centrist members. It’s nothing specific to Reid. Unless you have giant panda balls of steel (like LBJ) you just can’t run the Senate that way.
LBJ and a lot of other Senate leaders knew how to use the stick as well as the candy. They showed it can be done, so I don’t see how Reid gets a pass for being inadequate. You might say he has giant pander balls.
LBJ was the Michael Jordan of Senate Majority Leaders. It’s not giving Reid a pass to not expect him to live up to that example. Especially when you consider how Johnson exerted his control. He basically was the DSCC. Do we want Reid controlling the money for senate candidates and using it as a bludgeon?
If he were on the right side on the issues, yes — maybe that’s the way politics needs to be under the current corrupt system. How do you exert some power over the DINOs unless they fear you as much as fear what Fox”news” will say?
Um, yes. Remove all excuses – it would be a much more honest set up.
Johnson knew how to use the carrot and stick .. I remember hearing on PBS(I believe) how Johnson got some Senate Republicans(when he was Prez) to vote for the Civil Rights Act .. I think it was Dirksen(Yeah the guy one of the Senate buildings is named after) .. he told Dirksen that it was so much the right thing to do .. they’ll name one of the office buildings(or at least a prominent DC building) after him .. and what do you know
Having more committee seats is only useful if you’re actually interested in formulating policy.