Barack Obama made health care reform a cornerstone of his campaign for President. A key part of the Obama plan was the creation of a health insurance exchange in which Americans could choose between private plans and a government operated, not-for-profit public plan. Three out of four Americans supported the public option while health care reform was under debate this past summer, and it was included in the bill passed by the House. But with all the support it had, the public option could not get through the Senate. An historic chance has been lost.
The public option died because its supporters were not able to overcome a threatened Republican filibuster. The Senate rules permit one or more senators to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless 3/5ths of the Senate (60 out of 100 Senators) brings debate to a close by invoking cloture.
The Democrats have 60 Senators in their caucus, but unfortunately can't count on keeping them all in line. The Republicans, aka the Party of No, have made it a policy to use every means available stop all important legislation from being passed, and to hold up the confirmation of President Obama's nominees for ridiculous reasons. If fact, they have made the once rare filibuster into standard operating procedure, invoking it more than 100 times per year since becoming the minority in 2007. That number is double the filibuster rate of the early 2000's. (In the 1970s, the filibuster was used about 20 times per year, in the 1950s once per year, and in the 19th century twice per decade).
So how did the GOP manage to make 60 the new 50? It's because the Democratic leadership has allowed the threat of a filibuster to substitute for the filibuster itself, stunting debate before it even begins. Majority leader Harry Reid has not been requiring the Republicans to actually hold the floor and continue to speak once they have declared their intent to filibuster. The grand political theater in which a single senator would speak for hours to hold up the passage of a bill is long gone.
Aaron Zelinsky of the Yale Law Journal did a great job of summarizing the situation this week. Commenting on recent suggestions that majority leader Harry Reid should use "the nuclear option" of getting rid of the filibuster altogether, Zelinsky suggested a different course: "What we have today is a cheap and easy filibuster-lite; Senator Reid should reestablish the real thing."
"Traditionally, senators had to physically speak on the Senate floor to sustain a filibuster. Filibusters were costly and dramatic. They truly tied up the Senate and the individuals undertaking them. Members of both parties had to be present during a traditional filibuster, the majority for quorum calls, the minority to sustain the ongoing discussion. "(The modern filibuster) requires no real action or sacrifice by senators. In recent times, Senators merely notify the Majority Leader of an intent to filibuster, and the Majority Leader delays further action unless he has sixty votes." "Senate filibusters used to require large amounts of time, energy, and dedication. Now they are the legislative equivalent of a Wal-Mart product, available at everyday low prices. The result has, unsurprisingly, been the universality of the modern filibuster, which requires no real commitment but the lifting of a senator's finger."
Zelinsky notes that bringing back the real filibuster would not only help break gridlock on important legislation, it would also force both parties to take the President's nominations for important appointments more seriously:
"Moreover, a return to the classic filibuster would force Senate Democrats to fight for the President's nominations. Right now, filibusters happen in the darkness. The public does not know how many filibusters are occurring. Nominations languish on the back burner indefinitely. However, if the Republicans were required to actually filibuster on the floor of the Senate, Democrats would be forced to mobilize in response and to defend these nominations openly."
Other types of filibuster reform are also under consideration. Senator Tom Harkin's plan would reduce the amount of votes needed to break a filibuster the longer it goes on. Senators would need 60 votes to break the first vote but then the amount of votes needed would drop to 57, then 54 votes and finally 51 votes.
I don't know for sure what approach to reforming the filibuster is best, but I do know that Democrats had better think of something, or risk seeing the federal government go into long-term gridlock. Today, they are occasionally able to get the 60 votes they need to end debate, but that's not going to continue for very long. It is highly likely that the Democrats are going to see a net loss of Senate seats in each of the next three elections. I'm already forecasting a net loss for 2010. In 2012, Democrats will have 24 seats up for reelection, while Republicans will have only 9. And 2014 looks absolutely disastrous.
I heard it said recently that Democrats govern like they're out of power even when they're in power, and Republicans act like they're in power even when they're deep in the minority. Senator Harry Reid, I'm looking at you.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Sunday, January 03, 2010
2010 US House Predictions
Current US House, 111th Congress:
256 D, 179 R
256 D, 179 R
Prediction: US House, 112th Congress:
221 D, 214 R
This post will be updated continuously through election day 2010.
10/13/10: Am I the last guy who thinks the Democrats can hold the House? Nope! I've got the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Um, hooray, I guess...
9/11/10: Currently, 3 out of 5 top prognosticators are forecasting that the GOP will take the House in 2010:
Nate Silver: GOP to net 46 seats -- Hew House 225 R, 210 D.
Cook Political Report: GOP to net 40 seats -- Hew House 219 R, 216 D.
Rothenberg: GOP to net 37 to 42 seats -- Hew House 219 D, 216 R to 221 R, 211 D.
Larry Sabato: GOP to net 47 seats -- Hew House 226 R, 209 D.
Election Projection: GOP to net 38 seats -- Hew House 218 D, 217 R.
I'm going to go a little more optimistic for the blue team: Republicans to gain 35 seats. Here's my reasoning.
1. Looking at the polls on a race-by-race basis gives a slightly brighter picture for the Democrats. For example: Nate Silver says there's a 74% chance that Democrat Bobby Bright will lose in AL-2. But a recent poll gave Bright a 9-point lead versus his Republican opponent. Ditto MS-1, NY-24, NC-8, and SD-AL, where again Nate gives Republicans challgengers a 50% or better chance of winning, but the polls tell a different story.
2. Ok, I'm a cheerleader for the Democrats, and I'm not going to give up until it looks completely hopeless. Admittedly, Nate Silver is just about never wrong (though in 2008, he predicted Indiana for John McCain, while I called it for Obama. HA!).
8/20/10: "It's the economy stupid." The generic ballot is looking pretty grim for Democrats. While America's combat mission in Iraq has ended, and the gulf oil spill has practically been forgotten by most of the country, the weak economy is leading the news cycle.
The likelihood that Democrats will lose a bunch of House seats in increasing. But I'm not as pessimistic as many. Here's why. The generic ballot shows Republicans with the advantage only in the south, where they already hold the lion's share of the seats. From msnbc: "But could those GOP electoral gains come from just one part of the country? The poll contains this interesting finding: The GOP has a HUGE generic-ballot edge in the South (52%-31%), but it doesn’t lead anywhere else. In the Northeast, Dems have a 55%-30% edge; in the Midwest, they lead 49%-38%; and in the West, it’s 44%-43%."
7/4/10: Happy Independence Day! Swing State Project has a post that gives us some food for thought. Among the Democratic incumbents, it rates 29 seats as Likely Dem, 34 as Lean Dem and 18 as Tossup. The tossups are: FL-08 (Grayson), OH-15 (Kilroy), NH-01 (Shea-Porter), PA-11 (Kanjorski) NV-03 (Titus), OH-01 (Driehaus), CO-04 (Markey), FL-24 (Kosmas), NY-23 (Owens), NY-24 (Arcuri), VA-05 (Perriello), NM-02 (Teague), IN-09 (Hill), VA-02 (Nye), MD-01 (Kratovil), MS-01 (Childers), AL-02 (Bright), ID-01 (Minnick).
Some thoughts: The list doesn't include ratings on the 17 Democratic seats that are open due to retirements. Some of those are tossups or even "lean Republican." Suppose we concede five of the open seats, half of the tossup incumbent Dem seats, and nine of the Lean Dem and Likely Dem seats while subtracting the three seats that Democrats are very likely to pickup this year. That still only gets us halfway to a GOP takeover of the House.
6/17/10: A mixed bag of news. On the one hand, the generic ballot doesn't look to bad, with a new AP poll showing Democrats with a 7-point edge. On the other hand, Nate Silver (who is right about pretty much everything all the time) this week said, "the over/under on the number of net Democratic losses is about 40 seats (i.e. they have about even odds of losing the House), with a 90 percent confidence interval of about +/- 20 seats." Ouch.
5/23/10: The GOP has picked up HI-01, but their 8-pt. loss in PA-12 doesn't bode well for Newt Gingrich's prediction that Republicans will pick up, "somewhere between 40 and 65 or 70 seats." (Incidentally, the fact that a slimeball like Gingrich would be back in the spotlight says a lot about the leadership vacuum on the Republican side). Republican Mark Souder (IN-03), yet another holier-than-thou hypocrite, has retired but his seat is safe. Democrat David Obey (WI-07) has retired, but it's a seat Obama carried by 14 points.
4/25/10: I'm guessing we'll probably lose MI-01, where conservative Democrat Bart Stupak is retiring. Michigan is trending red. We're also fairing poorly in New Hampshire, where we could lose both seats.
3/21/10: I'm removing AL-02 from my list of Republican takeovers. There's no indication that Bobby Bright is going to lose his reelection bid, despite the fact that McCain carried his district by 26 points in 2008. Bright must be some kind of magician. Also removing PA from my list of states to net one for the Democrats.
I realize that many pundits are predicting that the GOP will pick up more like 40 seats than the 5 I'm currently predicting. Here's the funny thing though. Those same pundits aren't saying where, exactly, these Republican victories are going to materialize. I actually feel like I'm being pretty generous in predicting that the GOP will pick off the Democratic incumbents in ID-01, MD-01, and either IN-08 or IN-09. Currently, there's no indication that those races are any worse than toss ups for the blue team. As we get closer to election day, I suppose we'll start seeing more polls showing specific Democrats in trouble. But again, I refuse to announce that the blue team is going to get creamed until I see the race-by-race poll numbers to demonstrate it.
1/3/10:
If there's one thing upon which everyone can agree, it's that the Democratic Party will lose seats in the House in the 2010 elections. Let's start by considering the advantages that the Republican party has going into November.
* Here's the big one: current polls demonstrate that conservatives are far more energized than progressives regarding the coming election.
* There are a limited number of vulnerable Republican seats just because the party has fallen so far, it doesn't have much more to lose. They've lost a whopping 55 seats since 2006.
* While the economy is growing again, unemployment is likely to remain high through 2010.
* Historically, the party that holds the White House loses seats in mid-term elections.
While the Democrats will be playing defense, they will also have some advantages:
* Democrats still have a small lead in the generic ballot, and their congressional leaders are more popular than the GOP's.
* While the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats has held steady or risen slightly over the past several years, the percentage identifying themselves as Republicans has plummeted, from 30% in 2004 to only 23% today.
* As I've noted in recent posts, the GOP is engaged in a "purity war" between its tea-party conservatives and more moderate elements. This "circular firing squad" wastes resources they could be using to attack Democrats.
* Speaking of resources, the Republican party is not currently raising the kind of money it needs to wage war on a large number of Democratic incumbents.
To summarize, the Democratic Party would like to keep its losses small enough to continue to be able to push through legislation in the House next year, then regain momentum heading in 2012. They also have high hopes of gaining some advantage in the 2011 decennial reapportionment of Congressional seats. Democrats currently hold much stronger representation in some states in which Republicans controlled redistricting in 2001. In that year, states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas re-drew their congressional maps so as to eliminate as many Democrats as possible.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The tea party revolution: principle and purity
I'll be the first to admit it: if the Democratic Party doesn't get our act together, we're going to get killed in the 2010 elections. The Republicans have jumped ahead in Gallup's generic Congressional ballot. President Obama's approval rating has been on a long, slow slide since peaking this past spring. Senate Democrats' attempts to pass a health care bill are looking increasingly farcical.
On the positive side, the fractiousness of the right in this country seems to be increasing even as their electoral prospects appear to be improving. It's beginning to remind me a bit of what's happened to the political left in Canada.
Canada is a very liberal country. There have been four national parliamentary elections in Canada since 2000, and in each one the candidates on the left have received nearly two-thirds of the vote. So how did Stephen Harper's Conservative Party "win" the last two elections? It's because the Conservatives are the only right-wing party in Canada, while the vote on the left if split between no fewer than four major parties: the Liberals, the New Democrats, Bloc Quebec and the Green Party. If progressives ever want to govern in Canada again, one might think it wise for them to unite under one banner (or at least cut it down to two or three banners).
The United States is never going to develop into a multi-party system. And yet I see some hope that squabbling on the right may keep conservatives from achieving the kind of unity they need to get back into power. A new three-way ballot offered by the Rasmussen poll showed the generic Democratic candidate garnering 36% of the vote, compared to 23% for a "Tea Party" conservative candidate and only 18% for a Republican.
This poll mirrors the recent congressional race in New York's 23rd district, in which Democrat Bill Owens won a surprise victory because conservative support was split between the Republican nominee and the Conservative Party nominee. New York has a unique system in which third parties are allowed to cross-nominate the candidates of the major parties, so for the most part the race in the 23rd can be seen as a fluke that won't be repeated in a lot of other places.
The Washington Post this week provided a good summary of the mixed feelings that the Republican world has regarding the Tea Party conservative activist movement: "Publicly, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele and other GOP leaders praise the tea party movement as a crucial component of the party's base that will help Republicans make substantial gains in 2010. But the push from the right has also worsened infighting over the GOP's course."
Even if the GOP doesn't have to worry about the tea part activists backing third party candidates, it's clear that the movement is still going to cause the Republican establishment all kinds of headaches. In Florida, the National Republican Senate Committee has backed popular, moderate Governor Charlie Crist for next year's open-seat Senate race. Unfortunately for them, party activists are backing very conservative state representative Mark Rubio for the nomination. At a minimum, this will mean an expensive and divisive primary battle for the nomination that the party would prefer to avoid. At a maximum, Rubio will actually get the nomination and prove unpalatable to Florida voters in the general election and hand the seat to the Democratic nominee. The same thing is happening in Kentucky, where the establishment Republican candidate for Senate Trey Grayon is being challenged for the nomination by the libertarian Dr. Paul Rand. A recent poll shows Rand with a small lead to get the nomination. While Grayson would probably be favored to win in the general election over the Democratic nominee, Rand would not.
The Republican base is clearly moving to the right. Hopefully this movement will alienate more voters than it attracts, because right now Democratic prospects for 2010 election are not very bright.
On the positive side, the fractiousness of the right in this country seems to be increasing even as their electoral prospects appear to be improving. It's beginning to remind me a bit of what's happened to the political left in Canada.
Canada is a very liberal country. There have been four national parliamentary elections in Canada since 2000, and in each one the candidates on the left have received nearly two-thirds of the vote. So how did Stephen Harper's Conservative Party "win" the last two elections? It's because the Conservatives are the only right-wing party in Canada, while the vote on the left if split between no fewer than four major parties: the Liberals, the New Democrats, Bloc Quebec and the Green Party. If progressives ever want to govern in Canada again, one might think it wise for them to unite under one banner (or at least cut it down to two or three banners).
The United States is never going to develop into a multi-party system. And yet I see some hope that squabbling on the right may keep conservatives from achieving the kind of unity they need to get back into power. A new three-way ballot offered by the Rasmussen poll showed the generic Democratic candidate garnering 36% of the vote, compared to 23% for a "Tea Party" conservative candidate and only 18% for a Republican.
This poll mirrors the recent congressional race in New York's 23rd district, in which Democrat Bill Owens won a surprise victory because conservative support was split between the Republican nominee and the Conservative Party nominee. New York has a unique system in which third parties are allowed to cross-nominate the candidates of the major parties, so for the most part the race in the 23rd can be seen as a fluke that won't be repeated in a lot of other places.
The Washington Post this week provided a good summary of the mixed feelings that the Republican world has regarding the Tea Party conservative activist movement: "Publicly, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele and other GOP leaders praise the tea party movement as a crucial component of the party's base that will help Republicans make substantial gains in 2010. But the push from the right has also worsened infighting over the GOP's course."
Even if the GOP doesn't have to worry about the tea part activists backing third party candidates, it's clear that the movement is still going to cause the Republican establishment all kinds of headaches. In Florida, the National Republican Senate Committee has backed popular, moderate Governor Charlie Crist for next year's open-seat Senate race. Unfortunately for them, party activists are backing very conservative state representative Mark Rubio for the nomination. At a minimum, this will mean an expensive and divisive primary battle for the nomination that the party would prefer to avoid. At a maximum, Rubio will actually get the nomination and prove unpalatable to Florida voters in the general election and hand the seat to the Democratic nominee. The same thing is happening in Kentucky, where the establishment Republican candidate for Senate Trey Grayon is being challenged for the nomination by the libertarian Dr. Paul Rand. A recent poll shows Rand with a small lead to get the nomination. While Grayson would probably be favored to win in the general election over the Democratic nominee, Rand would not.
The Republican base is clearly moving to the right. Hopefully this movement will alienate more voters than it attracts, because right now Democratic prospects for 2010 election are not very bright.
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