The reason I haven’t written about Harry Reid going a bit nuclear last night is because I was having a lot of difficulty understanding what happened. David Waldman helped me understand a little better, and I thank him for taking the time to do it. Steve Benen put in the effort to write it all down, so I don’t feel the need to repeat it all here.
There are two important points you need to understand about what Harry Reid did. First, he did not do what the Republicans threatened to do in 2005. He did not get rid of the filibuster for judicial nominees or for any other purpose. The filibuster is as strong today as it was yesterday. Second, he did go nuclear. He went nuclear because he disregarded a ruling by the parliamentarian and the chair, and held a vote to change the rules, which ordinarily requires a two-thirds vote. The vote was 51-48.
This rule change will not come back (directly) to bite the Democrats when they are in the minority because they will still have the filibuster. The rule change only pertains to legislation that has already passed the filibuster hurdle. However, if the Republicans ever want to do away with the filibuster for judges or anything else, they can now point to what Harry Reid did as precedent. I suppose it lowers the bar and makes it slightly more likely that the filibuster will go away at an inopportune time for Democrats at some point in the future.
For now, all that’s changed is that Mitch McConnell lost one of his tools of obstruction. He has plenty left, so you won’t notice much of a change.
I take it as a hopeful sign that the Democratic caucus (for the most part) hung together and voted with Reid. (Anyone know who switched sides?)
Ben Nelson. And Boxer didn’t vote.
Thanks, not surprising.
One reason I’m cautiously optimistic about the Senate in the medium (3-7 years) term is the gradual turnover in the Democratic caucus that began with the class of 2006. These are senators who never played poker and drank with Robert Byrd and Howard Baker, and have only known a hyperpartisan Senate split on party lines, with a Republican caucus that’s spent the past 2+ years breaking every remaining norm that differentiated the Senate from the House.
As this continues—and this vote only adds fuel to the raging fire that is the Senate Republican caucus—I expect it will become increasingly easy for Senate Democrats to exploit the filibuster and other delaying tactics next time they’re in the minority.
Then, once the filibuster is eliminated or sharply weakened (say, only for appellate judiciary appointments), Democrats will have the ability to enact their agenda more powerfully next time they control both houses of Congress.
Of course, the same is true for Republicans—and they might get a chance as early as 2013. The problem for Republicans is (as always in the 21st century Republican Party) that most of their agenda is unpopular when it moves from being electioneering slogans to law of the land. Any advantage Republicans have will, I expect, be quickly lost and overturned.
The filibuster has been such a big thumb on the scale for the right for so long that I don’t ever expect the Republicans to ever get rid of it. I’d be perfectly happy to put up with a couple of years of a filibuster-free Republican Congress in order to kill it for good. I’d take that deal in a heartbeat.
But I don’t think that they’d be that stupid
The filibuster has been such a big thumb on the scale for the right for so long that I don’t ever expect the Republicans to ever get rid of it.
They have no need to get rid of it as long as there are traitors like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu.
The rule change only pertains to legislation that has already passed the filibuster hurdle. However, if the Republicans ever want to do away with the filibuster for judges or anything else, they can now point to what Harry Reid did as precedent.
If the Republicans want to do something they just do it. They don’t need precedent.
I suppose it lowers the bar and makes it slightly more likely that the filibuster will go away at an inopportune time for Democrats at some point in the future.
Since the filibuster overall is un-democratic AND more easily exploited to aid the conservative agenda than the liberal one, I’m not worried at all about this. The filibuster rule helps conservatives FAR more than it does liberals, and is why they tried as hard as they damn well could to avoid having to nuke it back when they had the majority. They threatened to do it but for most of them it was just posturing.
You’re right. On the other hand, the filibuster provides a lot of stability and protection for progressive programs and laws. This country could get wacky in a hurry with one Congress always spending all its time undoing what the prior Congress has done.
But, it would be healthy for the GOP faithful to find out for realz that the GOP is a) pandering to them, and b) that their beliefs are much more popular in theory than in practice.
Adding to this, remember W. Bush’s attempt to “spend” the “political capital” he’d “earned” by getting reelected by privatizing Social Security? With a Republican House and a Republican Senate, the idea was so unpopular that, if memory serves, they never even drafted a bill…let alone got a bill voted on in committee or on the floor of either house.
The flip side of providing stability is that it decreases accountability. Both parties campaign with unrealistic platforms knowing that they’re not going to get through the Senate.
In parliamentary system’s there’s no excuse for a party not to enact its platform once elected.
Even without the filibuster we’d still have more checks and balances than a parliamentary system, and the Senate is likely always to be more conservative than the House.