Seats don't vote, senators do
Why the Democrats don't need 60 senators
Seats don't vote, senators do
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
Now that Republican Saxby Chambliss has held onto his Senate job, by handily winning the runoff election in Georgia last night, the Democratic dream of capturing 60 seats - of achieving a "filibuster-proof majority" - has finally come to an end. But the thing is, all this suspense about 60 seats has always been a tad contrived.
And that's the big reason why the Georgia Senate runoff, and the (still-pending) Minnesota Senate recount, have barely been mentioned in this space.
The journalistic hook was that Democratic victories in both races would have pushed the Senate Democrats to 60 seats - a purported magic number, akin to Babe Ruth's once-fabled 60 homers. The argument was that if the Democrats got to 60 (as opposed to their current 58), they'd have enough votes, under Senate rules, to cut off Republican delaying tactics (notably, the filibuster) and move forward crucial legislation on health care, energy, and the rest of the lengthy laundry list.
But the magic of 60 has been consistently oversold - or, in the words of congressional expert Alan Ehrenhalt, editor of Governing magazine, all the talk about 60 seats "was always an overrated issue."
Even if the Senate Democrats had wound up with 60 seats, that wouldn't have guaranteed 60 votes to stymie all delaying tactics all the time. In reality, that's not how the place works these days. Senators are independent operators who typically resist party-line discipline. Their alliances shift depending on the issues that come before them. They tend to build bipartisan coalitions on an ad hoc basis.
Nevertheless, this coalition-building will give the Democrats many opportunities to get 60 votes. On some key issues that enjoy broad public support, for instance, liberal Democratic senators might find common cause with (the dwindling roster of) moderate Republicans. Assuming that defections among conservative Senate Democrats are kept to a minimum, some of those scenarios could translate into 60 votes, thereby allowing the Democrats to move forward with the agenda.
And that's how the Obama administration hopes to operate, anyway - by cultivating the votes from cooperative Republicans on an ad hoc basis. It's a political necessity, because the big-ticket measures - notably, on health care and energy - will require broad bipartisan support in the chamber before they can be effectively sold to the general public. (Back in 1977, the new Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, had a filibuster-proof 61-seat Democratic Senate...yet he got nothing accomplished, in part because he never effectively built coalitions with moderate Republicans, who were more numerous than they are now.)
Some of the key Republicans to watch in 2009: Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, George Voinovich of Ohio, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and (assuming he survives the current recount) Norm Coleman of Minnesota. And perhaps Florida's Mel Martinez, now that he has declared himself a lame duck and therefore can do what he likes. With the exception of Lamar Alexander, the rest of those senators hail from states that voted last month for Barack Obama.
Indeed, Obama's public standing will be crucial. If he can sustain popularity - notably, by governing from the center - these Republican moderates will have greater motivation to cross the aisle and help the Democrats get their 60 votes. As Ehrenhalt wrote last month, "the route to breaking filibusters runs through the court of public opinion more than it does the Senate chamber."
We've recently seen this behavior in action. Last year, 17 Senate Republicans read the political tea leaves and concluded that there was strong public support for an expansion of children's health insurance, and hence it would be stupid for them to block the Democratic bill. So these 17 Republicans sided with the Senate Democrats and broke the 60-vote barrier, snuffing the GOP delaying tactics. Then 18 Republicans joined the Democrats to pass the bill. (Naturally, President Bush vetoed the bill, but he'll be gone soon.) The point is, there are a number of ways that Democrats can reach 60 without occupying 60 seats. As the saying goes: Seats don't vote, senators do.
And, lest we forget, some crucial Senate matters don't require 60 votes at all. I won't get into the weeds trying to explain the "budget reconciliation" process (even to myself); suffice it to say that, under Senate rules crafted for the purpose of eluding the filibuster logjam, key economic measures can be passed with just 51 votes. Earlier in this decade, Senate Republicans used that process to pass Bush's tax cuts; and back in 1993, when the Democrats had 57 seats, they managed to pass President Clinton's economic package with just 51 votes...only because Vice President Gore cast the tie-breaker.
So the bottom line is, we can all continue to keep tabs on Al Franken's last-ditch bid to scour the rejected absentee ballots in the hopes of toppling Norm Coleman in Minnesota, but the future direction of the Senate, much less the fate of the republic, will not hang in the balance. Nor would that be the case even if Saxby Chambliss had been defeated in Georgia.
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Speaking of Senator Mel Martinez, the Florida Republican's decision not to seek re-election in 2010 inspires this noteworthy factoid:
At present, the roster of House and Senate Republicans - 251 people - boasts four Hispanics and zero blacks. Which means that, in terms of its congressional delegation, the GOP is now 98.4 percent Caucasion. And with Martinez heading home, that roster may well be reduced to three Hispanics and zero blacks.
Is it unfair to suggest that the GOP should be renamed the White People's Party?
Or how about this suggestion: "The 'old white-guy' party."
That comes straight from Jeb Bush, the ex-Florida governor who is weighing a '10 bid for the Martinez seat. As he just told the conservative Newsmax website, "We can’t ignore large segments of our population and expect to win. We can’t be the ‘old white-guy’ party. It’s just not going to work, the demographics go against us in that regard."
Sounds right to me.
Richard is now getting racist. How desperate is he to bash Republicans? No new material? Does this help the Inky's circulation? Tierney, do you care?— CD75- Richard, nice brush off of the dems big defeat in GA. If Chambliss had lost I am sure you would be making a big deal of it. The loss shows the limits of your messiah.— CD75
- Saxby Chambliss is a racist pig, if you don't already know.— p-diddy
- Here is your legacy as a liberator, Mr. Bush: BAGHDAD — About 1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to the U.S. military have been confined for as long as three months in windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work. MrBarber: Iraq is Worse than under Saddam, the world is much less safer, and Iraq is NOT liberated = Iraq War LOST.— MrBarberToYou
I'd love to know what liberal Democrats do for blacks and hispanics that's so great.— jmc- Let's see, Philly has been run by democrats for 60 years and has had 3 black mayors in the last 25 years. During that time, has the plight of black and hispanics in Phlly got any better? NO. The myth of the dem party being the party of helping minorities and the poor is just that, a MYTH.— CD75
- JMC: "I'd love to know what liberal Democrats do for blacks and hispanics that's so great." How about voting them into the White House for starters?— Red Wright-Hand
- Mr CD75 - What did the GOP do these past 8 years to help the minorities ???? Surely the Bush tax shifting - which shifted taxes from the rich to the middle class and poor cannot be said to have helped the minorities !!! Finally a president for the masses not just the rich !!!— ModerateMarge
- The dems don't have to do anything for hispanics and blacks. Both groups vote democratic because they feel hate vibes from the republican party. For blacks, the hate comes from Nixon's "southern strategy." which is still alive and well in the GOP when election times roll around. For hispanics, the hate comes from the vicious anti-immigrant campaign that has come mostly out of republican-leaning areas in the South and elsewhere. My advice for the GOP is--be nice and these two groups might come trickling into the fold.— liberal
- I see these things that CD says in here every day about the plight of Philadelphia being so bad. My question would be to him -- what have you done to make it any better? Why are you entrusting a government that you obviously abhor to make it better? Maybe, instead of spending the hour or two a day reading and responding to this blog, you could spend just half that time doing some community service. Imagine, you could show all these minorities you look down upon how good it is to be a Conservative. Or, maybe, just maybe, you will realize, by doing this, that it has nothing to do with party affiliation and everything to do with ecomonic class struggle.— Master Dreamz
- I see these things that CD says in here every day about the plight of Philadelphia being so bad. My question would be to him -- what have you done to make it any better? Why are you entrusting a government that you obviously abhor to make it better? Maybe, instead of spending the hour or two a day reading and responding to this blog, you could spend just half that time doing some community service. Imagine, you could show all these minorities you look down upon how good it is to be a Conservative. Or, maybe, just maybe, you will realize, by doing this, that it has nothing to do with party affiliation and everything to do with ecomonic class struggle.— Master Dreamz
- CD, Why do you keep referring to Obama as the Messiah? Is there a reason or are you just a ditto-head? And don't you see the difference in the newsworthiness of a dem winning Georgia as opposed to a republican? It would be like a republican winning Delaware.— PA_Dutch
- I’ve never understood why the voters of Mass. kept re-electing Ted Kennedy. He lacked the ethical state that we should demand in the Senate. Chambliss was elected to the senate previously, by smearing the name of a war hero. Cleland left limbs on the battlefield. And Chambliss didn't serve at all, using more deferments than Cheney. McCain referred to that campaign as "worse than disgraceful, it's reprehensible;" The voters in Georgia have dug to new lows.— JimR
- Georgia and the Republicans can have Chambliss and his FIVE Vietnam deferments. Someday he will pay for what he did to triple amputee Vietnam vet Max Cleland. I may be a Democrat, but the filibuster proof majority scares me- If the policy is good, I dare the Republicans to stop it.— pagoda
- There is nothing wrong or racist with securing our borders, north and south! The GOP needs to come up with a compromise on the immigration situation, something along the lines of McCain's old idea. The GOP also should offer 'education vouchers' to all inner city kids suffering in poor performing public schools, enough to cover the whole cost of a reasonably priced(less than per student cost in public school) private school! Maybe poor people can be convinced to vote for a better future (on the local level, easy folks) for their children if not for themselves:) A good education can lift a person out of poverty faster than any govt program or handout:)— NEPhilly
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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