CT Blue

A hapless fund raiser from the DSCC just called me, and I lit into her about this (via Americablog):

“It won’t happen,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said she would “probably not” support an effort to lower the number of votes needed to cut off filibusters from 60 to 55 or lower.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) echoed Feinstein: “I think we should retain the same policies that we have instead of lowering it.

“I think it has been working,” he said.

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) said he recognizes his colleagues are frustrated over the failure to pass measures such as the Disclose Act, campaign legislation that fell three votes short of overcoming a Republican filibuster Tuesday.

“I think as torturous as this place can be, the cloture rule and the filibuster is important to protect the rights of the minority,” he said. “My inclination is no.”

Sen. Jon Tester, a freshman Democrat from Montana, disagrees with some of his classmates from more liberal states.

“I think the bigger problem is getting people to work together,” he said. “It’s been 60 for a long, long time. I think we need to look to ourselves more than changing the rules.”

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who is up for reelection in 2012, also said he would like the votes needed for cloture to remain the same.

“I’m not one who think it needs to be changed,” he said.

I’ve said it before that the only vote that will matter next year, if it ever takes place, is the vote to change the filibuster rules. Apparently the Democrats in the Senate put Senatorial privilege in our House of Lords above the public good. We will be condemned to live in a country that slides ever farther to the right (while we slowly get basted as the world warms) because a few Democrats can’t see their way clear to letting the majority rule, the way our sainted Founders intended. What’s truly galling is that the majority does rule when the Republicans are in charge; it’s only the Democrats that let the filibuster stand in their way.

The DSCC gets no money from me so long as a dime of it goes to any of the above, or their ilk. And if, or I should say when, they fail to reform the filibuster, then I will give up on them totally. There are probably only 40 Democrats in the country that think the filibuster is a good thing, and every one of them is in the Senate.

UPDATE: A commenter asks where Blumenthal is on this issue. I was at a meet and greet at which he was asked this question by someone who beat me to it. He said he wanted to see the issue addressed, though he didn’t say exactly what he favored. I might point out that it would be just like the Democrats, with a reduced majority, for settling on reducing the 60 vote requirement to some other number that everyone knows they can never reach.

Kevin Lembo needs a few more dollars to qualify for public financing. The race for comptroller is the only one that features a Democratic primary candidate, Mike Jarjura, who is wholly objectionable. Many would say that the fact that he is mayor of Waterbury is a sufficient disqualification for any post, anywhere. But if we get beyond our prejudices, as well founded as they might be, consider that Jarjura is the guy who gave John Rowland a do nothing job for the City of Waterbury, and Rowland is, of course, actively campaigning against Lembo in league with his ultra right gay baiting friends at the Family Institute, a Connecticut based group that would like to establish religion, and a bizarre one at that, here in the very secular state of Connecticut. It would be profoundly troubling if this throwback candidate should win the primary, and force our other candidates to ignore the stench he would bring to the room. For myself, his candidacy would cause me to choose my Lieberman (prior to 2006) option: don’t vote for anyone. New Haven should be ashamed of itself for swapping votes with Waterbury to ease Jarjura’s path to the primary. Some deals are just indefensible, and that was one.

You can contribute to Kevin here.

The post immediately preceding this may in fact be proved wrong. Latest news is that the Republicans may actually be backing down on the financial regulation bill. If so it will be at least partly because the Democrats have been more aggressive this time around.

I will confess here that I really don’t have much more to say. I am mainly writing this post as an experiment. It is being composed on my Ipad using software developed by the WordPress folks. I’m really mainly interested in seeing how and how well it works. I’m cheating a bit since I’m using a bluetooth keyboard that we have hanging around. If this post seems a bit breathless it has to do with the reason the keyboard has been hanging around. It works except for the comma key. So full stops or nothing. Only problem is that there is no way to easily embed links. Hopefully that will be in the next update.

Speaking of Ipads I am slowly bankrupting myself a few dollars at a time. It would be so much better if they charged ten times more for apps as I would probably have spent 10 times less than I have. Some of these apps are truly remarkable for the price. I just downloaded one called “StreamToMe” that will stream any of your music or video content (except anything protected by DRM) to your Ipad from your computer. At $2.99 it’s a steal. It works great and basically allows you to access your entire Itunes collection from your Ipad without putting any of it on the Ipad itself. Not as easy to navigate and of course until we get multitasking it won’t play in the background but those are minor inconveniences given the price.

Well if this experiment has taught me anything it is that this works in a pinch and that I need to get myself a keyboard with a working comma key.

UPDATE: For about a day there were some unexplained pictures in this post. Those were also an experiment using the WordPress software. It allows you to browse your photos, but the method of inserting them is not explained, and there is no indication on the draft post that you have done so. Anyway, I’ve taken them down.

Why do I not find this surprising?

Democrats probably didn’t expect to find themselves in this position: On the cusp of moving a big Wall Street reform bill to the Senate floor, with Republicans, as if immune from political pressure, banding together to block them. But they knew it could happen. Some even would have preferred this, relishing the optics of allowing the GOP to side with big, unpopular financial institutions.

So surely Democrats and their allies in key pressure groups have rehearsed a bold, unified response, in the event that the GOP follows through on their threat to block debate. Ads are in the can, talking points are drafted, and everyone’s been prepped to argue before the world that the Republicans have allied themselves with the firms that wrecked the economy. Right?

As you might expect, it appears the Democrats are flat footed once again. Were the shoes switched, the Republicans would be eating the Democrats lunch, to such an extent that, were there a Republican president, they could get their own bill through even if they had less than 40 senators to work with.

It almost makes one think that the Democrats want to fail, which may not be far from the truth:

Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee Kent Conrad (D-ND) evidently won his battle and is hoping to begin budget markup onWednesday or Thursday. But there are no plans to include reconciliation instructions — which means every bill in the Senate for the next year will require 60 votes to pass.

…

Reconciliation instructions could be included by the House, too. If they don’t, it will be a powerful affirmative statement by Congressional Democrats to their base that they have zero intention of trying to deliver on any of their many policy promise unless it is something Republicans want to do. It also makes a mockery of the notion that Democrats are actually angry with Republican obstructionism and abuse of the filibuster, because when they had the chance to get rid of the 60 vote barrier on important issues they didn’t use it.

The above is from Firedoglake, where they seem to have descended into a reflexive distaste (from the left) for all things Obama, but the point appears to be well taken.

It truly is hard to believe that Obama, or the Democrats, can be so deluded as to actually believe that the Republicans are willing to work with them on anything. No thinking person in the rest of the country believes it. On this issue, they have known for months that the Republicans would lie about the bill (the Luntz memo leaked in early February and the Republicans have been running ads based on it since then). Their basic overall political strategy-oppose everything, always, has been open, notorious, and explicitly acknowledged.

But wait, there’s at least some indication that the Democrats will triumph, if delivering a weakened bill represents a triumph. Well, it did with health care, didn’t it? While probably a policy failure, it might be a political triumph, if the Democrats could frame the outcome by, for instance, claiming that the Republicans had backed down. But it would never occur to them to try to take political advantage of the opposition. That would be unfair.

If Nancy Pelosi were a man, she would be hailed as one of the most effective Speakers ever. When the Health Care bill passes, it will be because of her leadership. It’s not easy to get 200 and some odd cowards to stand up to the big bad Republicans, but she’s going to get it done. If Harry Reid was half the leader Pelosi is, we’d have the public option and we’d have Republicans on the run.

I just watched Lawrence O’Donnell, on the Keith Olbermann show, ask the head of the House Progressive Caucus if she feared the possibility of the Senate Parliamentarian ruling certain items of the Health Care reconciliation bill out of order, as not fitting subjects for reconciliation. She, of course, with reason did say that the House Democrats did not trust the Senate to follow through on its commitments but my immediate subject is the question of whether the Senate Democrats can actually make a commitment upon whcih they can deliver. In other words, if they say they can and will do something by reconciliation, can any power in the Senate, other than their own cowardice and spinelessness, stop them?

Now, mind you, the Democrats are, as is there wont, trying scrupulously to make the bill comport with reconciliation requirements. Any adverse ruling will most likely be subject to question on the merits.

O’Donnell’s question presumed that if the Senate Parliamentarian ruled against them, the Democrats would have no choice but to get 60 votes to get the right to merely hold a vote, and the Congresswoman did not disagree with this analysis.

Now, this didn’t sound right to me, so I did 30 seconds of googling, which brought me to the Senate website, where I read this:

The Senate and the House each has an Office of the Parliamentarian to provide expert advice and assistance on questions relating to the meaning and application of that chamber’s legislative rules, precedents, and practices. In the Senate, staff from the parliamentarian’s office sit on the Senate dias and advise the presiding officer on the conduct of Senate business. (Emphasis added)

which in turn linked to this (so I assume this is authoritative):

The Parliamentarians in both chambers have as their key responsibility advising the Member of Congress presiding over the floor throughout a day’s session. The Parliamentarian guides the Chair in formulating his responses to parliamentary inquiries and his rulings on points of order. In the House, the Parliamentarian on duty stands to the right of the Chair or sits very close by on the rostrum. In the Senate, the Parliamentarian sits on the lower tier of the rostrum just below the presiding officer. He is frequently seen swiveling around in his chair, which faces the Senate floor, to address the Senator presiding behind him. While the Member of Congress presiding is free to take or ignore the advice of the Parliamentarian, most abide by his guidance. Few Members have the independent body of knowledge regarding the chamber’s procedures necessary to preside on their own. In the Senate, the Parliamentarian, and in the House, the Parliamentarian’s Clerk, also keep track of the time when Members are allotted a specific number of minutes to speak. (Emphasis added)

Now, I invite you to pull out your constitution and go to Article 1, Section 3.4, which provides, lo and behold, that the Vice President shall be President of the Senate. That’s right, boys and girls, it’s the VP that ultimately makes the Parliamentary decisions, not the Parliamentarian. Sure, the Republicans can scream and shout if the VP ignores him, but so what? These, by the way, are the Republicans who fired a Parliamentarian with whose reconciliation rulings they disagreed.

So the Senate and Obama/Biden can give the House Democrats almost iron-clad guarantees, if they merely have the guts to do what we all, each and every living one of us, know in our hearts, souls and minds that the Republicans would do without blinking an eye or shedding a tear were they in similar circumstances.

Ah, but you may say, should the Democrats do such a dastardly thing? Should they trample¹ on the sacred, if nonsensical and undemocratic, institutional traditions of the Senate merely to extend health care to millions of Americans? Shouldn’t this sort of thing be restricted to more appropriate circumstances, like giving tax cuts to the rich, or screwing the poor? Stay tuned. The answer to the latter question is probably “yes”.

Wow.

Via Think Progress, from whom I’ve stolen almost the whole article:

During his reign as Senate Minority Leader, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has led his party to engage in an unprecedented level of obstruction — wielding the filibuster to block even routine bills and nominations while simultaneously lying about his own previous support of majority rule in the Senate. No one has fared worse under McConnell’s blanket obstructionism than President Obama’s nominees to key government positions, ambassadorships and judgeships. Amassive 237 Obama nominees presently await Senate confirmation, yet Mitch McConnell has done nearly everything in his power to ensure that Obama’s nominees will never even receive a Senate vote.

Because the government includes several agencies and boards whose members are required by law to be bipartisan, however, the party-out-of-power’s Senate leader traditionally gets to make a few nominations of his own. One such McConnell nominee is Sharon Browne, a nominee to the Legal Services Corporation’s board who fundamentally disagrees with the Corporation’s mission of providing legal services to the poor. Browne has spent most of her career with a right-wing litigation shop that repeatedly fought to cut off funding for indigent legal services; and she was a plaintiff in a court case which claimed that a method of funding legal services for poor Californians violated that state’s law. In other words, McConnell has selected someone to help lead the Legal Services Corporation who is committed to destroying the Legal Services Corporation.

Yet despite Browne’s obvious unfitness for this job, and despite the fact that her patron has fought tooth and nail to prevent President Obama’s nominees from even receiving a Senate vote, Senate HELP Committee Chair Tom Harkin (D-IA) scheduled a committee vote on Browne’s nomination this Wednesday. Not one Democratic senator has taken a serious step to slow down Browne — such as placing a hold on the nomination — and she appears to be on track for confirmation.

I guess McConnell must have pointed out to the Democrats that every nominee deserves an up or down vote, and they were persuaded by his argument. Or maybe he pointed out that if he didn’t get a vote on Browne, Republicans might not be willing to work with Democrats as closely as they have in the past. I’m just sure there’s a good reason for what they’re doing.

Full Disclosures: I’m a former legal services lawyer and my wife presently works for a legal services organization, though her employer is not funded by the Legal Services Corporation.

Proving once again that liberals just can’t seem to get over the demise of the Enlightenment (I mean rational thought is so over), Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly makes the obvious point that, contrary to Beltway wisdom, it is not Obama who has failed to meet the Republicans half way:

It’s tempting to think that the “Republican Ideas” section would be the area in which the White House blasts GOP critics of reform and mocks them for not even trying to create a comprehensive reform package. Of course, the opposite is true. The headline on this page reads, “Republican Ideas Included in the President’s Proposal.”

It’s clear that the American people want health insurance reform. They aren’t interested in Democratic ideas or Republican ideas. They’re interested in the best ideas to reduce costs, guarantee choices and ensure the highest quality care. They’re interested in ideas that will put them back in control of their own health care.

Throughout the debate on health insurance reform, Republican concepts and proposals have been included in legislation. In fact, hundreds of Republican amendments were adopted during the committee mark-up process. As a result, both the Senate and the House passed key Republican proposals that are incorporated into the President’s Proposal. [...]

Benen draws the obvious conclusion that Republicans aren’t interested in constructive engagement.

But, in fact, the Republican’s intransigence is perfectly logical. They ask only that Obama adopt their ideas. The problem is that it is impossible for Obama to do so. What Obama, and Benen fail to realize is that once Obama accepts a Republican idea, it is transformed into an Obama idea and is no longer a Republican idea. As a result it is absolutely impossible for Obama to accept a Republican idea. Republicans understand this transformative process very well, as is demonstrated by the facility with which they turn against any idea that once was, but no longer is, of the Republican variety. The true mystery here is why Obama or the Democrats keep trying. Maybe they should talk to a kid named Charlie Brown about a girl named Lucy and her football.