I’d like to add to Ezra Klein’s fine piece on the primacy of process that despite people thinking they understand process better than policy, they absolutely do not. In fact, even the most studious political junkie is likely to ask process questions that they ought to know the answers to, but don’t. You see these comments all the time in threads in the progressive blogosphere. For example, people constantly ask Harry Reid to make the Republicans filibuster the old-fashioned way by reading from the telephone book all night and day. What they don’t realize is that Rule 22 (PDF) is the only way to cut off debate and force a vote. And even if Harry Reid decided to force unanimous consent by refusing to schedule any other business, the Republicans could simply make an endless number of quorum calls (noting the absence of a quorum even if there is one). They wouldn’t have to read from the phonebook. During an old-fashioned filibuster most viewers at home watching C-SPAN would just hear the clerk reading the roll. We can change Rule 22 with 51 votes at the opening of the next Congress, but we don’t have the votes to change the rule until that time.
Now, we could pick a very high profile fight over something. It could be an important nomination or it could be for an up or down vote on health care, or some other bill. Reid could simply announce that he isn’t scheduling anything new on the Senate schedule until the Republicans agree to pass a cloture motion or grant their unanimous consent to end debate and hold a vote. And we could complain very loudly in the press about how this very important thing is stalled because of Republican obstruction and make it an object lesson for the people to see how majorities don’t rule in Washington anymore. In fact, it might be best to do this on something most people see as fairly uncontroversial like an appointment to the National Labor Relations Board. That way, the Republicans wouldn’t have much of an argument in their defense. People pretty much agree that the president should be able to fill positions in his own administration unless there is some ethical question involved. But, either way, even if Reid did do this, we still wouldn’t see senators standing up the well of the Senate reading from the phonebook unless that is what they wanted to do. More likely, they’d team up to make a bunch of small speeches followed by endless quorum calls.
A more important point is that Klein is right about the Democrats not putting enough thought into process. They spent the whole first year chasing 60 votes and they finally got there in September when Paul Kirk was seated. You have to question the wisdom of a strategy that relies on having 60 votes because anything can happen. A senator can get sick and be unavailable to vote. A senator can die. But if you are pursuing a strategy that relies on 60 votes, you have to be damn sure to have the vote as soon as possible after you actually get your 60th vote.
Meanwhile, you have to have a Plan B. And you have to nurture that Plan B with the public. You have to remind everyone that you’re willing to make some compromises to get your bill passed using Plan A, but if that doesn’t work out, you’re going to Plan B. Because the Democrats refused talk about reconciliation as both a threat and a promise, they lost momentum for it. The press, the people, the Republicans, and even half of the Democrats became convinced that the Republicans could kill health care reform with 41 votes. That’s absurd.
One other thing to think about is how the Republicans are using the cloture rule to wipe out weeks of legislative days. Everytime cloture had to be invoked (this is when it is successfully invoked, mind you) it takes up a ton of time.
There are several stages to the process of invoking cloture.
• First, at least 16 Senators sign a cloture motion (also called a cloture petition) that states: “We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, hereby move to bring to a close the debate upon [the matter in question].”
• To present a cloture motion, a Senator may interrupt another Senator who is speaking. When the motion is presented, the clerk reads it.
• The cloture motion then lies over until the second calendar day on which the Senate is in session. For example, if the motion is filed on Monday, it lies over until Wednesday, assuming the Senate is in session daily. If the motion is filed on Friday, it lies over until Tuesday unless the Senate was in session on Saturday or Sunday.
• The Senate votes on the cloture motion one hour after it convenes on the second calendar day after the cloture motion was filed, and after a quorum call has established the presence of a quorum. The time for the cloture vote may be changed by unanimous consent, and the required quorum call is routinely
waived.
And then, having succeeded in mustering the three-fifths requirement, the rule provides for an additional 30 hours of debate. So, it’s easy to see that it takes almost a full work week to force a vote on anything unless the Republicans offer unanimous consent. And with guys like David Vitter, Jim DeMint, and Tom Coburn in the Senate, and with a complicit Mitch McConnell, there’s no unanimous consent for virtually anything.
The importance of this is that delay works. If it took three months to pass a resolution praising the Girl Scouts, voters would hate the Girl Scouts by the time it was all over. And then there is the matter of appointments that go unfilled. To get a vote on an appointment, Harry Reid needs to be prepared to spend four to five days to get it done. He can move to other matters in the interim, but those are blocked, too. So, the Republicans are using process to the maximum extent they can under the rules and the Democrats only really began to fight back in earnest after they lost the sixtieth vote. Call it a lack of expertise about process, call it inability to understand the politics of process, call it a lack of backbone. Call it whatever you want, but something’s got to change.
Since much of your analysis in the years that I have been reading your blog has centered on the nuances of the legislative process, I defer to your judgment concerning the ins and outs of how to best get things done in our disjointed and supremely inefficient process.
But how can it be that there is apparently no one in a leadership position within the Democratic party who demonstrates any particular ability or understanding on how this maneuvering needs to be carried out in order to successfully navigate the legislative waters? How can they continue to be flummoxed over and over by the same Republican tactics to thwart their agenda at every turn? Why are there so many proverbial political neophytes in the blogosphere who can likely lay out in spades exactly what route the Republicans will take to stymie anything the Democrats are going to try to do? Yet when it actually happens, the Congressional Democratic leadership seems to honestly be caught off guard every damn time?
This consistent tone deafness and inability to anticipate the obvious is what I find supremely frustrating. Are they living in that remote a bubble that they cannot reliably construct a plan to try and obviate these seemingly transparent steps taken every time that the GOP wants to throw a wrench in their plans?
I’m not a politician. I work in a technical field where you have to try and anticipate negative scenarios that might occur with regard to anything you are attempting to accomplish or implement. You lay out a rational and progressive approach on how you are going to deal with unanticipated events and problems. You work up a range of responses to a set of prioritized possibilities, working from most likely to least likely. You try and cover as many bases as you can possibly anticipate. It is a very rational and scientific method that you apply to the likelihood that things are not always going to go perfectly. Put simply, you prepare for the unexpected.
Why is that so fucking hard a principle to apply in the realm of legislative politics? When perception is sometimes more important than reality, how can you not prepare yourself for the unexpected, even when you are god-damn certain the chips are going to fall your way? It would not be so mind-numbingly aggravating if it wasn’t an almost daily occurrence in the Democratic Party.
Will they ever learn how to do this shit right or are they doomed to an eternity of GOP ass kissing and capitulation because of their inability to learn from their mistakes? Is it just something in their political DNA that causes this or are they just that damn thick in the head?
Because many Dem representatives are too old, too tired, too stupid, or too cowardly to play the game. If you watched the Ollie North hearings, you could see a number of prominent high ranking Dem congressbots being routed and bamboozled by a dimwit and his lawyer. WTF! And many of those same people are still there – even older and weaker than before as are their protegees.
The best answer I can give you without providing a dissertation on the subject is that the Republicans have two big advantages that we can’t and don’t want to match.
First, the Republicans have an ideology that is hostile to the very existence of the federal government. They don’t believe in government solutions, particularly at the federal level. This developed from a half a century in the minority in the House and most of that time in the Senate, as well. They honed oppositional strategies, messages, and tactics down to a fine art. We don’t utilize all these tools when we are in the minority because we don’t share their ideological opposition to government action. A Democratic congressperson is going to be dispositionally inclined to get the best deal she can cut, not inclined to kill all bills no matter their content.
Second, the Democrats don’t really understand the Republicans and have a hard time learning that they don’t share basic assumptions about how this country works and has worked since at least the end of World War Two. Again, that is because the Republicans were out of power in Congress for most of that time and they never bought into the changes that were made or the rules that applied. Because the Democrats don’t understand Republicans, they keep thinking that they can be reasoned with. But this ceased being the case the moment Newt Gingrich finally won back the House. That was when the GOP finally (thought they) had the power to undo everything that most people think of as American politics and policy. Eight years of Bush just put the whole thing on steroids.
So, the Dems keep thinking that they can work with Republicans like Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt, and the football.
That’s why they don’t plan for the worst. They always give the Republicans too much credit. And they fail to make the GOP pay for it. It’s always up to the American people to make the GOP pay. And we’re slow, forgetful learners, too.
They were in the minority for twelve years and they didn’t learn anything at all? I really don’t understand and it’s getting to be kind of depressing.
Mostly, they learned the wrong lessons.
You can attribute that mostly to Clinton’s limited success.
Above all, Clinton was elected and re-elected. That it was under his watch that we lost and failed to regain Congress seems lost on most Democrats.
They think we can win elections by being Republican-lite.
But their main problem is that they think legislators in the minority should work constructively with the majority. The Republicans don’t agree and they don’t respect it when the Democrats do it.
I agree that the basic ideological differences in the party is partly to blame for the situation. But if, as Ezra contends, that people’s strongest process preferences are “the belief that the people sent to do the people’s work shouldn’t be working on behalf of special interests” and “the aversion to partisan conflict, as most people think that these problems have common-sense solutions, and too much conflict suggests the two parties are deviating from that middle path, then why does it appear that for most of the last generation that the Democrats have been unable to formulate their process to use these facts to their advantage? It is the Republicans, in large part, who have been most responsible for “working on behalf of special interests”. Special interests which the American people are supposed to despise. And no one more than the Republicans have been responsible for the vehemence of the partisan conflict.
Is anyone in the Democratic political intelligentsia (oxymoron???) trying to devise their process strategies around ways to drive this fact home in the minds of the voters? I know there is a huge media disadvantage in this country when it comes to pushing the different political narratives. The Democrats really have nothing remotely resembling the echo chamber that is available to the Republicans. But even in the venues they have available I just don’t see much evidence that the Democratic Party as a whole “gets it” when it comes to honing these important skills to ensure legislative success.
You might well be right about the Democrats not understanding Republicans. But they have had almost a generation since the “Gingrich Revolution” to glean the true nature of the Republican beast. And despite this beast continually eating their lunch, they still seem to think they can tame it. In my opinion that is just plain willful ignorance.
The complexity and nuances of all this would, as you describe, require a lengthy dissertation. Something which is beyond my meager capabilities. But the bottom line is that these Democrats are elected with the expectation that they will at least learn the most expeditious and efficient ways to create, promote and implement policies and programs which reflect the Democratic world view. Yet they somehow seem to have stalled out when it comes to learning the lessons necessary to make this happen. Their de facto position on what are supposed to their party’s singular issues always seems to come down on the side of Republican-lite. My wish is that they would at least show some signs they understand that this is not why they were elected. Is it any wonder that they Democratic party is in such a shitty mood right now?
Great point on the implicit advantage that the GOP has because at the end of the day, they are always fine with government inaction. Anytime they walk into a room to negotiate policy changes, they can always just walk away because they are fine with the default status quo (which, Obama is right to point out, is not the same as having no policy preference- government inaction just means things will be decided by market forces).
At this point, given everything you just wrote about the GOP, which I agree with, do you think the Dems are more likely to (1) get their caucus unified and fight back, (2) stick with the current lucy/football strategy until the midterms, and then if possible, reform the senate rules in 2011 or (3) play to the public to make the GOP pay for their obstruction, like Clinton did to Gingrich.
In other words, how do you think this will play out?
I have trouble predicting these things. The Democrats rarely fail to disappoint me and the Republicans consistently exceed my expectations for bad behavior. Based on that, I’d give you a pessimistic response.
However, the president is clearly expecting Congress to figure out a way to pass a bill. So, there is still hope. Greg Sargent spells out how they might get it done if they don’t listen to Mary Landieu.
Here’s how it would work. The House passes a sidecar reconciliation bill and hands it to the Senate. The Senate passes that (which would be a very tough slog) and then the House, having secured these changes, votes for the already existing Senate health care bill without any changes.
The reason they have to do it that way is because the Senate can’t amend a bill that doesn’t yet exist. So, they have to have the sidecar in hand. And the House won’t pass the Senate bill unless the Senate has proved that they can pass the sidecar.
All of this makes the criminal irresponsibility of the so-called “progressive” bloggers even more obviously inexcusable.
They work as hard as Blanche and Evan to reinforce republix narratives. The eagerness, for example, with which the “progressives” try to sell the story that the bailout was Obama’s action is unbelievable. They should get Frank Luntz medals for their idiocy.
Process is often interesting in a political trivia sort of way, but it seems not particularly useful for those of us out here to lobby our representatives and president on process tactics.
We should just yell about results.
“We should just yell about results.”
At first sight this seems to makes sense, but that’s what we’ve been doing all along, and it doesn’t work very well. The important thing is, there’s no reason to see this as an either/or. As in any disciplined, goal-directed activity, we ought to know something about the PROCESS that is most likely to lead to the desired RESULTS, especially because, as this very thought-provoking post shows, our representatives don’t seem to.
Or rather, they know, but they think we don’t. And to a large extent they are right, we don’t. So they can pretend they can’t do it. Whereas, if we knew how it could be done, we could pressure them more efficiently.
It works the other way too, If we know who is gumming up the works, and precisely where, the entire weight of public pressure can be brought to that very point, rather than being diffused over a goal that is usually pretty obvious.
Like what Franken did the other day in that hearing on the NLRB appointee. Basically he had only one question, and it was designed to elicit the fact that the appointment was being blocked by one senator, McCain, and that he was doing this for no other reason than because he could. There’s a process problem for you. I saw from that exchange that Franken is one guy who understands this whole process/public pressure thing very well.
At one time I was involved in an [ultimately successful] grass-roots lobbying campaign. One thing I learned is that the people in Washington or the state capital who know the most about legislative process are the legislative aides. Those are folks you can actually talk with on the phone. A good legislative aide can tell you EXACTLY what needs to be done, where the squeaky gear is, so to speak. They are inclined to do this, because they know their boss needs the motivation of public support. (For lazy or complacent legislators, there may be little distinction between piublic support and public pressure.)
The more the campaign “makes sense” process-wise to a legislator, and is understood by the public not simply in terms of results but in terms of process, the more likely they are to go for it, because it becomes a public process.
I think I need to add one thing. Process is a turn-off or sounds like trivia to many people because the media like to talk about process ito avoid discussing real issues. But it’s not only that. Usually their cut-and-dried “process” explanations are based on pat assumptions about what’s possible. We’ve seen this for years in Dem political campaigns, and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy for defeat. It’s what Landrieu & Co. are doing right now. By bringing public pressure to bear right into the heart of the process, you can introduce dynamism into the process and actively disprove those pat assumptions.
But you may say, well if people aren’t interested in process, how do you motivate them to do this? Simple … they don’t have to be interested in process. Only the campaign organizers have to be. Most folks simply want to know, if they support the result aimed at — WHOM to call, and WHAT to say.
And I’ve seen plenty of cases where organizers, NOT understanding the process, blow a campaign by siccing the public on the wrong people, telling them to say the wrong things, and rather thsn achieving the desired results, just pissing the legislators off.
this is completely correct.
I’d add that the people who know as much or more about process as legislative aids are lobbyists.
I cannot recall the details, and I don’t want to ruin my amateur standing by actually doing the research, but it seems to me that I recall if the Dems had paid more attention back in 2008 spring and fall to their nominees and to the election, they could have had their 61 or 62 Senate votes.
There were a couple of states which they lost Senators by very small margins, even though they hadn’t bothered nominating strong candidate and the DNC did not fight for them.
I don’t think they had ever planned for winning 60 seats in the first place, they never expected to win Franken’s seat, or Webb, or Tester. So getting to 60 in the first place seemed to surprise and intimidate them. They never thought of themselves as having a kind of “Contract with America”, but they did — what a shock to be expected to get something done!
You’re right people understand policy better than process. That goes for everyone – even if it’s on the level of a question. Will I be able to keep my insurance? Am I going to have to pay more in taxes for what I have? Aside from what you said about Democrats not being able to use the process to advantage, the process / Repub obstructionism is making people nuts and and unable to discern what is at stake. Which is, of course, the Repub strategy, or a good part of it.
That said, I think I understand what you’re saying about why you can’t just make them “actually filibuster.” I’m not sure I agree with you about using something uncontroversial as an object lesson, tho’.
It seems like whatever issue is picked either to overcome the process, or “break” it in the instance, or use it to showcase the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the Senate rules, it should be something people really understand and care about.
Somehow, Republicans obstructionism needs to be shown to be as insane as when they threatened to shut down the government after the ’94 elections. That IS what they’re doing. People were furious then, and turned on the repubs when at the time they seemed unstoppable. Especially when people thought their Social Security checks weren’t going to be in the mail or in the bank. And I say that with NO derision.
Recently, there was an issue of money for either troop or veterans support which was blocked by the Repubs, but no one organized an outcry, and it went by with only a few comments on cable.
Not to reveal myself as completely ignorant, but has anyone ever challenged the filibuster in court? Asked for immediate injunctive relief? (No, i’m [obviously] not a lawyer). I know it says in the Constitution that each House can make its own rules, but what if those rules violate the one man/one vote, or one state/2 Senators principle?
Also, I don’t mean to take this OT – it just seems there’s too much talk about hypocrisy, and not enough about what this obstructionism is doing to exacerbate the real difficulties facing people now. No need to catalog.
Love it, like always. Especially your explanation to Richard.
And Waldman’s.
Tell me when heads have been piked via “procedure.”
I will rain down the dowry.
We needed it as a threat.
But between Obama’s apparent naivete (or whatever his problem is) and centrist dems in the senate and his administration who don’t actually want change we can believe in, the dems are too weak and feckless to deal with republican obstructionism.
There is so much here that is correct and important. There is no possible excuse for not knowing and using all of the arcane rules. Aging Senators don’t need to know them all by heart: they have hordes of young staffers with agile minds, some of whom could and should be assigned these tasks.
But Democrats’ failure to learn and use procedure – especially in the Senate, where it is much more complicated than in the House – really just comes down to a matter of understanding and trust of today’s right wing. By calling a John Ensign, for example, a “conservative,” people confound the motives of a right-wing nihilist with those of an actual conservative like Bob Dole, a politically cautious man who loves his country. As a consequence, Democrats assume that in a time of need, Ensign will act as Dole did, be reasonable, put personal interests and doubts aside, and act in the interests of the nation.
In fact, right-wingers will do no such thing. I would take the point Booman and others are making that right-wingers adhere to an anti-government ideology at least one step further and contend that they have no real ideology of any kind beyond their own success. They certainly do not care what happens to the common people of the United States. They have a grab bag of tools that they use: extreme nationalist and libertarian rhetoric, and political opportunism that results in constant hypocrisy, for example. But they have no real ideology, no policy program they want to enact, and no love of country to guide them. Once they have done what they can to make themselves and their allies richer, they are pretty well done. This has been clear since 1994, but Democrats want to pretend otherwise. Fighting fascists is nasty business, and we might have to get our clothes dirty.