The Filibuster-Proof Majority: It ain't the same for them as for us

Taking Progressive's Punch's statistical survey of Senate voting habits, Chris Bowers over at OpenLeft finally puts into words what I've been saying for awhile now: the gridlock that we see now in the Senate is not merely the result of hyper-partisan atmosphere. It is the result of a hyper-partisan atmosphere combined with a Democratic majority.

I tend to have more respect for Ezra Klein than a lot of other progressives, but these kind of arguments are just ridiculous:

The Bush White House was very good at leveraging 9/11 to ensure congressional support for Middle East adventurism, but they didn't crack the code unlocking a compliant Congress for a hard-line conservative agend

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Maybe not a "hard-line" conservative agenda, ok. But a conservative agenda and not a soft one either. 1.3 trillion in tax cuts isn't 1.6 trillion, but it's still a hell of a lot of tax cuts. The 2003 tax cuts might have been reduced from $700 billion to $300 billion, but these were also top-margin tax cuts, affecting a very small number of rich Americans. No administration gets exactly what they want, including Ronald Reagan's back in 1980, but that didn't prevent the legislation Reagan did get through from fundamentally changing the nature of government for the next 30 years.

The fact of the matter is that Republicans never faced the kind of gridlock that Democrats are now facing and never will because--as Chris points out--Democrats are more likely to vote with Republicans than the other way around. Chris' calculations are depressing. For Democrats to have a "true" super-majority that could really get progressive legislation passed, they would need 72 (!!) Senators. But even more depressing is the number of their own kind that Republicans need for passing a Conservative agenda: just 54 Senators. You will always have 5 or 6 Democrats will to wheel and deal and--essentially--act as moderate Republicans. So remember: when people make the argument about the filibuster causing general "gridlock" they are oversimplifying the issue. Gridlock--as we are seeing it play out now--is exclusively a Democrat problem and a Republican creation. So getting rid of the filibuster, while making it easier for Republicans to pass conservative legislation, is the only way that large-scale progressive legislation seems to have a chance.

One thing that Chris doesn't mention, however, which I think is crucial: Republicans achieve party discipline by threatening their disobedient congressman with the removal of important powerful chairmanships. Democrats do no such thing. But there's no reason for them not to. Joe Lieberman was able to strip the Senate bill of any kind of public option or any kind of medicare buy-in simply because Democrats had no leverage over him they were willing to use. But leverage they had. Lieberman chairs the Department of Homeland Services committee and Reid didn't even mention the possibility of stripping him of it when Lieberman said he'd filibuster with the GOP on the Public Option....and then Medicare Buy-in, and really pretty much any idea that liberals liked that had a chance of making into the final vote. So when people talk about party discipline, there's this assumption--especially among liberals--that the particular ideology of conservatism somehow makes Republicans naturally more tribal than Democrats. But the practices that the GOP uses to maintain rigid party discipline are right there for the Democrats' taking. They just choose not use them. They should. I guarantee you that then support for filibuster reform would be lot more "bipartisan." As it is now, getting rid of the filibuster is far more beneficial to progressives than conservatives and liberals shouldn't pretend otherwise.