Franken in NY Times 7/1
With the long-delayed but inevitable swearing-in of Minnesota Senator Al Franken last week, the Democrats on paper have reached their magic number of 60 votes in the US Senate. The math is a little fuzzy, because it includes Democrat In Name Only (DINO) Joe Lieberman from Connecticut, Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Democrat again Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Independent/Socialist Bernie Sanders from Vermont, but close enough for argument’s sake. So why aren’t the Dems turning handsprings and toasting their good fortune? Why are they acting like the dog who finally caught the car and now doesn’t have a clue what to do about it?
The only reason 60 even matters is because the national Democratic leadership is cowardly and hopelessly caught in national political cross-currents. Allow me to explain.
Famously, it takes 60 votes to pass a cloture motion in the US Senate and thereby end a filibuster. When the Republicans had a majority of a few seats, they rammed through radical policies like tax cuts for the elite, the Patriot Act, the elective war in Iraq and a vast expansion of Presidential power, with virtually no filibustering from the loyal Democratic opposition. They pushed through far-right judges by constantly painting the Democrats as obstructionist and braying about the need for “up or down votes, up or down votes.” They even threatened to invoke the nuclear option to change the Senate rules to remove the possibility of Democratic filibusters.
Now that the Democrats have a bigger majority under President Obama than the Republicans EVER had under Bush, they can’t seem to move anything through without kowtowing to the opposition. Where are the charges of obstructionism? Where is the daily demand for up-or down votes? Heck, they don’t even make the Republicans REALLY filibuster by talking for hours and hours while C-SPAN shows the world how foolish they are, only let a single conservative Senator “block” legislation. Republicans shattered the record for filibustering in the last session and are well on their way to breaking their own record this session. With no real ideas of their own, they have adopted Nancy Reagan’s mantra of “Just Say No.”
The nuclear option is the key, because filibustering is not found anywhere in the Constitution, only in the arcane rules of the good-old-boy-club that is the US Senate. If Harry Reid and the boys had a set, they could change the rules, or even threaten to change the rules, and 51 would become the new 60. Or, they could attach key legislation to budget reconciliation bills, and would also only need 51 votes. Or, they could follow Senator Sanders’ suggestion that all members of the Democratic caucus agree to vote in unison to end Republican filibusters and allow bills to come up for votes, even if they don’t necessarily intend to vote for those bills.
When Democrats had between 50 and 60 votes, they constantly whined how they couldn’t get anything done without 60 votes. Now that they have 60, why don’t they stop negotiating with the losers over national health care and labor law reform and the like and just git ‘er done? BECAUSE THEY DON”T REALLY WANT TO GET THINGS DONE! They prefer the excuse of blaming the Republicans.
The Democrats as a national party are hopelessly schizophrenic. Their base of votes and volunteers is progressive, and especially now wants to move decisively in a progressive direction. But the party funders are the same corporate elite that bankrolls the Grand Oil Party, and their consultants and staffers come from the same incestuous pool of inside-the-Beltway permanent hangers-on. It’s easy to take positions that satisfy your constituents when it’s just empty rhetoric, but when it comes time for action, Democrats mysteriously get cold feet.
Take the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), for instance, which would help level the playing field and reverse decades of one-sided business-on-labor class warfare by allowing workers to more easily unionize. With Obama’s support, the bill’s passed the House of Representatives and awaits Senate action, where more than half the Senators say they support it. But conservative Democrats like California’s Diane Feinstein oppose it, Colorado’s appointed Michael Bennet refuses to take a position, and even former long-time co-sponsor Specter now says he’ll vote against it. Corporate America is lobbying furiously against the bill, and many Dems don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them, preferring to risk the wrath of their voters, who they cynically calculate will have nowhere else to go electorally anyway.
It’s the same reason a majority of us want Single Payer Healthcare and may not even get a public health option when the “reform” dust settles. Why did Senate Finance chair Max Baucus rule single payer “off the table,” filling his witness lists with corporate health insurance lobbyists while having single payer advocates hauled off in handcuffs? Because he received almost half a million in corporate health care donations last cycle, making him the number one Democrat on that dubious list. It’s why when the housing market melted down we spent trillions propping up banks considered “too big to fail” rather than helping the homeowners themselves at far less cost. It’s why we’re giving Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street insiders a huge taxpayer gift by setting up an Enron-style “cap and trade” system to fight global warming, instead of a much simpler, direct and more effective carbon tax. Time and again Democratic leadership talks progressive and votes corporate.
It’s simpler being a Republican. They are corporate-funded and promote pro-corporate policies, even while wrapping them in the mantle of fake populism. They may be corrupt scoundrels, but at least they are not internally conflicted like the donkeys are. And they never go home between elections. We should learn from them.
If we want real change, we must make it happen ourselves, not expect Obama or Nancy Pelosi or even Al Franken to deliver it for us. We must demand not only single-payer health care, passage of EFCA and progressive economic policies, but also institutional reforms like Instant Runoff Voting and public funding of campaigns to break out of the corporate-dominated political trap we find ourselves in. Otherwise, the promise of Hope and Change will prove empty once again, millions of us will become discouraged and drop out of the process, and the Republicans will find themselves back in power sooner than anyone thought possible, thanking their lucky stars and corporate donors for clueless, spineless Democratic leaders.
Eric Fried was a weekly political columnist for Fort Collins Now until it went under in the Not-So-Great-Depression. He can be reached at ericfried@comcast.net
The problem here is really our continued focus on single issue, identity group politics. The Democrats and Republicans like and actively promote this form of divide and conquer.
With the Repubs, its issues like abortion. See if this doesn’t sound familiar: how many times have you heard good people say “I would vote for (him or her) BUT (he/she) is pro-choice” or “I HAVE TO vote for (him or her) because (he/she) is pro-life.”
Now, if ther ever was a time to pass a law to reverse Roe v. Wade, it would have been in the first six years of the Bush II presidency with the Repubs in control of the House, Senate and Whitehouse. But it didn’t happen. Why?
Well, the Repubs can give you all kinds of bogus excuses but the real reason is single issue politics. If they actually did over turn Rov v. Wade, they would suddenly loose their most reliable voting block who then might break up and begin to care about all kinds of other issues.
The same is true of the Democrats. They’re inventing and will continue to come up with all kinds of excuses to avoid talking about what people really want.
Its like cheating at catch and release fishing. Single issue, identity politcs is the hook that they use to reel in the electorate whenever they need to get them into the boat. Once their in, they get thrown back in the water. But they never take the hook out and just keep reeling ‘em back whenever they need to get a photo of how they caught “The Big One.”
Adopting IRV or public financing won’t change anything as long as we allow ourselves to be so easily isolated and manipulated.