As nice as it is to have the kind of party unity that the Democrats displayed on Christmas Eve when all 60 Senate Democrats voted for cloture and to approve the health system overhaul, it’s not the healthiest situation. It’s far preferable to have some liberal Republicans and some conservative Democrats, and for the Senate to operate more collegially and less along strictly partisan lines. I’ve gone over the history of the U.S. Senate many times to make the case that it functioned in the post-war era largely because of the lack of party unity (in either party, but especially among the Democrats). As a kind of aside, one thing that increasingly irks me is progressives’ tendency to compare the modern Democratic Party unfavorably to the Party of the 1960’s or 1930’s and 1940’s. If I had grown up in the 1960’s in New Jersey, and I saw Democrats like Lester Maddox, George Wallace, Robert Byrd, Ross Barnett, and Orval Faubus defying efforts at desegregation, I would not have belonged to their party, no matter how much I disagreed with Richard Nixon, the John Birch Society, and elitist assholes like the Bush Family. I would have aligned myself with the enlightened Hubert Humphrey wing of the party, sure, but I would never have called myself a Democrat. Never forget, the Southern Strategy belonged to the Democrats, including FDR, before it belonged to the Republicans. We passed our retrograde elements over to the opposition, and for good reason.
David Halberstam, in his book on the Civil Rights movement entitled “The Children”, quotes Lyndon Johnson talking with Bill Moyers right after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had passed by large margins in the Congress of the United States…Moyers expected to find President Johnson jubilant over this legislative victory. Instead he found the President strangely silent. When Moyers enquired as to the reason, Johnson said rather prophetically, “Bill, I’ve just handed the South to the Republicans for fifty years, certainly for the rest of our life times.”
Fortunately, the Republicans reciprocated by largely passing the North over to the Democrats. But this total flip-flop of the loci of political power in this country took decades to unfold completely, and it was during this turbulent transition that most of us were born and have spent our entire lives. We have never seen a political atmosphere like the one we’re witnessing in DC before because there has always been some significant ideological and regional overlap between the two parties. If you want to know why the filibuster rule worked for decades and now is gumming the ability to govern, look no further than the ideological purity and regional dominance of the two parties right now. Yes, we can amend the filibuster rules, but it wouldn’t be necessary if there were a few liberal Republicans in the Senate who were willing to vote based on ideological or regional concerns rather than strictly partisan ones.
That’s why it was important to win the health care debate at almost any cost, because it invalidated the utility of lockstep opposition. There is now a definite potential to break that opposition on both the financial reforms and the Supreme Court nomination. And, there is nothing more damaging to morale in our current polarized political atmosphere than bipartisan cooperation.
This is something even Mark Halperin recognizes:
Some GOP strategists have been sensitive to the “party of no” label their side earned during the health care battle and are reluctant to reflexively defy the President on his choice to replace Stevens before the process has officially begun. In addition, given Republicans’ recent opposition to using the filibuster in judicial confirmations and Democrats’ still strong 59-seat Senate majority, conservative politicians who brandish the court card would run the risk of whipping their base into a lather in anticipation of an epic fight with the President, only to watch a new Justice seated with little struggle shortly before the midterms in November.
Forcing the Republicans to retreat may be even better politically than beating them in pitched battle. Why? Mainly because they’ve already whipped their base into a lather. And, even if the Republicans have tasted defeat on health care, they feel like they have all the momentum going into the midterms. They may be right, and beating them in highly polarized fights may not change that reality while forcing them to abandon a so-far successful strategy could change the dynamic.
But more important than any speculative political advantage, it’s in our own interests to somehow get back to a system that has less party purity and more ad-hoc coalitions. The problem is that we have no control over what the Republicans will do. And as long as they are rigidly ideological, we have no choice to pursue a rigidity to match. All we can do is set them up for failure. Knowing their weakness is in their need to oppose all things all the time, we can set well-placed traps. They’re like a poker player that always raises and never folds. Eventually, when your cards are unbeatable, you have to call their bluff.
