John Avlon is acting like a dummy. He identifies a real problem, but he doesn’t understand its cause nor does he have any solution. Let’s look at his opening:
The Blue Dog pack is thinning. Centrist Democrats saw their ranks cut in half after the 2010 midterm elections. Now, with Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson’s announcement that he will not seek reelection, an endangered species warning is appropriate. This is bad news for Democrats and, more important, the nation.
There was a time when divided government did not mean dysfunctional government. The presence of conservative Democrats and progressive Republicans helped ensure that cross-aisle coalitions could be formed to find solutions on the most pressing issues…
Right at the start we have to confront something that isn’t all that critical. Do we know what Mr. Avlon means by “Centrist Democrats”? When he goes on to call them “conservative Democrats,” does that help us at all? I know this is semantic nitpicking, but it pays to be precise with language. Ben Nelson is conservative on most issues. His career in the Senate has been more conservative than, say, Arlen Specter’s or Lincoln Chafee’s. He and Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania are both anti-choice, but most people wouldn’t describe Casey as a conservative Democrat. Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo is anti-choice but no one would call her a Centrist Democrat. Avlon uses another term: Blue Dog Democrat. He considers them to be conservative and centrist, too.
Why are we worse off with fewer politicians like Ben Nelson? Is it because we need Democrats to cross the aisle to help Republicans cut taxes on rich people or loosen pollution regulations or make it harder to file for bankruptcy? Is it simply because fewer Democrats means more Republicans? Or, is it that the Senate rules won’t allow anything to get done if the members line up in rigid opposing teams and the minority filibusters everything they don’t like?
I think it’s the latter explanation, and “centrism” or “conservatism” really has little to do with it. The problem is orthodoxy. The problem is orthodoxy and an abuse of the rules. The reason that Congress functioned fairly well between 1945 and 1994 is that one party (the Democrats) were in a dominant position and the two parties were too heterodox to allow either one of them to cohere around a rigid party line on procedural issues. There were plenty of conservative Democrats, especially on issues like race and sexual morality. And there were lots of pro-enviroment or pro-labor Republicans who thought, e.g., that Jim Crow was a travesty. As a result, conservatives didn’t look to one party to do their bidding, and progressives could find allies on the right side of the aisle.
This relatively successful system began to break down once the Republicans took over Congress in 1995. The two parties have been purifying themselves ever since, and now have reached a point of orthodoxy where they can unite in opposition to almost any motion to proceed in the Senate. In other words, we now need 60 votes rather than 51 to pass anything through the Senate for the president to sign into law. If the filibuster disappeared, the problem would largely disappear, too.
Many political scientists think parliamentary systems are superior to ours because the parties offer a clear platform and a clear choice. We have to shove every political belief into two vehicles. Under the circumstances, it’s better for the two parties to clearly define themselves than to have a muddled picture. A progressive-minded person in the mid-20th Century had to deal with a Democratic Party that built its power on the back of the Jim Crow system. Is that preferable to the choice facing a progressive today?
Unfortunately, the price of clearer choices is congressional gridlock. But that is not written into our Constitution. The Senate can change its rules and the majority would be able govern (at least, in the Senate).
Of course, we’re living in a period of divided government. Even with a majority-rules Senate, the president would have to contend with a Republican House of Representatives. But, again, the problem with the House of Representatives isn’t that there aren’t enough centrist Democrats willing to cast their votes with John Boehner. The problem is that there aren’t enough Republicans who will work in a serious manner to help craft solutions that are acceptable to the Democratic Senate or the president. Periods of divided government are not supposed to produce dramatic change, but they can be functional. Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan all had functional administrations with a divided government. Bill Clinton did his best, despite the Republicans’ effort to humiliate, disbar, and throw him out of office. But, isn’t that the point? The Republicans are built to be a minority party, but they’ve had too much of a taste of power to fill the role. Speaker Boehner cannot even control his conference.
Our government is screwed-up and dysfunctional right now, but it’s not because we don’t have enough corporate-hogs like Ben Nelson serving in the U.S. Senate. It’s because the Republicans in Congress are abusing the Senate rules, which is only possible because they are so rigidly ideological. It’s because the House Republicans won’t allow their Speaker to negotiate in good faith with the Senate or the president.
We don’t need more Ben Nelsons. We need to change the Senate rules. And we need to figure out what is making the Republicans insane and see if we can provide a cure. In the meantime, it would be better if red state Democrats would stop acting like country club Republicans and go back to being farmer-labor populists. Clear distinctions, remember?