If you were interested in knowing how interested Senate Democrats are in actually governing, you now have your answer: not very.
I’ve said before (too lazy to find a link) that we would know whether the Democrats had any serious intentions to accomplish anything by whether or not they did anything substantive about the filibuster.
Well, they didn’t. Apart from one or two welcome but relatively trivial reforms, nothing has changed.
The Democrats declined to play hardball, and in fact adopted a procedure that required 67 votes to do anything, which guaranteed they would fail. The Republicans, in turn, promised not to play hardball and deprive the Democrats of the filibuster in 2012, should the Republicans take over. The Democrats apparently believe, or pretend to believe, that they can trust the Republicans. And maybe they can, on that issue, because the Republicans can easily cow enough Democrats to overcome just about any filibuster. Anyway, the Republicans, from a strategic point of view, know they won’t care about getting rid of filibusters in 2012. They all know they aren’t likely to take the White House, so they won’t be passing legislation. All they are going to want to do is prevent legislation from passing, which they can do whether they are in the majority or the minority.
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