Getting back to the things I wrote about earlier in the day, the election of Al Franken is going to change some of the dynamics in Washington DC. It isn’t going to be anywhere near as dramatic as when Jim Jeffords of Vermont defected to the Democratic Caucus in May 2001, but it comes at a similar point in a new presidency. Jeffords’ defection flipped control of the Senate and all its committee chairs to the Democrats. Franken’s election merely provides the Democrats with a theoretical immunity to filibusters.
The first distinction between these two cases is obvious. Jeffords’ defection provided an early rebuke to Bush’s presidency and temporarily stalled his agenda. Franken’s election strengthens Obama and gives him new momentum at a critical time. Since Franken was actually elected on election day, taking his rightful place in the Senate doesn’t ratify Obama’s approach, but merely gives him a reinforcement for the key battles ahead.
Others have noted that merely reaching the goal of sixty members of the Democratic Caucus doesn’t guarantee that the filibuster is a thing of the past. Two Democrats have major health issues that limits their time in the Senate, and many Democratic senators have major differences with the president’s agenda. To understand how this changes the dynamics in DC, it pays to look at two quotes. The first is from the chairman of the Republican National Senatorial Committee, John Cornyn of Texas:
“With their supermajority, the era of excuses and finger-pointing is now over,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Mr. Cornyn said it was “troubling to think about what they might now accomplish with 60 votes.”
The second is from Markos Moulitsas:
[W]e’re already seeing signs that the Democrats’ supporters aren’t about to cut them any slack if they can’t pass their agenda now — or if they have to make the kinds of compromises, on the public option and other issues, that progressives believe are no longer necessary. “Let’s do what the American people have asked Democrats to do, and let’s not use any excuses like this 60-vote nonsense, which is now obviously [no] longer an issue,” Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos, said on MSNBC yesterday.
Something new is afoot when John Cornyn and Markos Moulitsas are singing from the same hymnbook. But what is really going on?
There are different kinds of politicians. Most politicians come from very safe districts. A huge percentage of incumbents are reelected in every election cycle, and most of them are challenged only nominally, if at all. What makes the gears grind in Washington is not the overwhelming majority of safe politicians. It is the handful of vulnerable politicians who decide what is possible and what is not possible in Congress. And vulnerable politicians are predisposed against change. In effect, they are temperamentally conservative. Every significant vote that they take could spell the end of their political career. And the Democrats have dozens of these timid creatures in Congress. How does Al Franken and reaching 60 votes in the Senate affect them?
Basically, Al Franken screws them, plain and simple. A timid, vulnerable, conservative Democrat wants anything but to be put on the line in a contentious and significant vote. Their first instinct is to figure out if a piece of legislation is going to pass. If it is not going to pass, they want to make sure their Democratic base is happy, and they will vote for it. If it is going to pass, and it is either going to anger big donors or become a painful campaign issue, they will vote against it. In each case, they are ignoring the merits and voting to create for themselves the least amount of pain.
A third category exists where it is their decision which is decisive in determining whether something will pass. This is their least favorite circumstance, because it means they cannot avoid angering their base if they vote against it, but the business community will not give them a wink-and-a-nod-pass on it if they vote for it.
So long as the Republicans had 41 votes in the Senate, the timid, vulnerable, conservative Democrats could get away with voting for progressive legislation that wouldn’t pass and against progressive legislation that did. But now that the Democrats have sixty votes, every single bill the Democrats introduce should pass. Every nominee should be confirmed. And each Democrat that votes ‘nay’ on an issue is giving the Republicans the ability to stop the president’s agenda. They can no longer hide. And that is that last place they want to be.
A big part of this changed dynamic is related to visibility. The Senate has cloture votes all the time. The 110th Congress set the record for cloture votes. And timid, vulnerable, conservative Democrats voted with the Republicans all the time to sustain filibusters. But these were mainly low-visibility votes because the Democrats’ votes were not decisive. Even Democratic activists have a hard time maintaining a level of outrage about a vote that had no material effect on the outcome. It is only when a Democrat casts the deciding vote that sustains a filibuster that people really stand up and notice. But, guess what?
With sixty members in the Democratic caucus, every single time any Democratic senator votes against cloture, they are casting the decisive vote to kill the president’s (and the Senate leadership’s) agenda. It doesn’t matter if 10 Democrats vote against cloture. In that case, each and every one of them is guilty of casting the decisive vote that obstructs passage of a bill (because Vice-President Biden can cast the tie-breaker in a 50-50 tie).
There is no longer any cover, because the assumption is that all Democrats should be willing to at least give the president and their own leadership the benefit of an up or down vote on their priority legislation. They cannot escape responsibility and consequences if they oppose the Senate calendar. This is the major change that Al Franken brings to Washington DC.
Senators like Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson like to thwart the Democratic agenda quietly. They reassure their corporate donors by voting against anything that might threaten their interests unless it is already a foregone conclusion that it will pass. But they can’t do that anymore. They can’t get free votes against the progressive agenda that will be forgiven by both sides of the issue. They must now choose between their corporate masters and their fear of Republican campaign smears on the one hand, and the president’s agenda on the other hand. All wiggle room is gone. There are no more free votes.
So, what’s it going be? Who really runs this country, when you come down to it? Keep your eye on timid, vulnerable, conservative Democrats in the Senate. They will let you know shortly.