Tweet
I know this is often hard for professional politicians and political aides to comprehend, but regular Americans really don’t pay attention to abstract congressional maneuvers. If the Senate Democratic caucus thinks reforming Senate rules is a good thing that would eventually will lead to better policy outcomes, they should implement them. If they don’t think it will, they shouldn’t make the change. But what definitely shouldn’t be part of their decision making process is any concern that slightly modifying the rule could cause a broad political backlash. There simply won’t be any.
The American people are just barely paying attention to the biggest congressional actions, there is no way they will cast votes in two years based on Senate rules changes.
Despite health care reform being the biggest most debated, most partisan legislation in years, a Pew poll found only 32 percent of Americans know that no Republican senators voted for it. A nearly identical number of Americans, 29 percent, thought it actually got bipartisan support.
According to Kaiser Family Foundation poll from April, 45 percent of people thought the CBO said the health care bill would add to the deficit. Only 25 percent state correctly that the CBO said it would reduce the deficit. (That is the same number of accurate responses you would expect from pure guessing given that there were only effectively four options.)
Even more telling is that according to a Pew Poll only 46 percent of Americans know that the Republicans won the House but not the Senate this last election.
Most Americans don’t know understand the Senate rules
According to a Pew poll only 26 percent of Americans even know that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate, 25 percent incorrectly think it only takes 51 votes. The number of people that understand the far more obscure rules Democrats are thinking about modifying is probably in the extremely low single digits.
Completely ending the Filibuster is popular
Even if Democrats went so far as to bring cloture down to 51 votes, which a quarter of the country already thinks it is at, there would probably be little political blowback from what would be a relatively well-reported event.
Ending the filibuster is the popular position. A New Times poll from February found 50 percent in support of ending the filibuster, with 44 percent in support of keeping it. A poll by Mark Penn from July put support at 53 percent, with opposition at 35 percent, and a PPP poll from November found 64 percent of voters in support of reform, with just 23 percent opposed. The worst I’ve ever seen it poll was a recent Quinnipiac poll that had 42 percent saying it was a good idea, and 45 percent a bad idea.
Americans are not going to go to pay close attention to modest changes to arcane Senate rules
Democrats would probably win politically from totally crippling the filibuster, but given how modest their proposed reforms are, it is almost impossible to see how most Americans would notice or care in two years. Even the conservative blogs are showing little resistance to Udall’s modest changes.
The number of Americans who even know there is a motion to proceed to debate, and that it can be filibustered, must be incredibly small. Does anyone honestly think regular voters would care if this frankly nonsensical Senate rule they didn’t know about is eliminated?
If Republicans in two years want to go through the excruciatingly monotonous task of trying to make a political issue during the campaign out of how Democrats didn’t eliminate their ability to filibuster, but made it slightly harder by eliminating their ability to debate whether to start the debate on a bill, Democrats should joyously welcome this development.
While there are plenty of things Democrats should consider as they debate the issue of possibly reforming the Senate’s rules, the concern that Republicans could create political backlash by turning this extremely complex and boring procedural debate into a campaign issue in 2012 definitely shouldn’t be one of them.
The fact that even Ben Nelson (D-NE), one of the most enduring conservative Democrats is leaving the door open to supporting modest rules reform by majority vote shows how negligible any political damage from the position would be.
9 Comments
It’s not the public backlash Senators are worried about. It’s the backlash from their corporate cronies. The corporatists do not want meaningful filibuster reform.
The other day Politico was talking about a so-called compromise where “Reid could allow for more open debate, while McConnell eases back on his party’s use of the filibuster.” I think that’s where we’re headed here, unless these folks can somehow get some leverage.
Looks to me that this is the leverage.
sorry for OT…pass the popcorn
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Ex-prez-wifes-greed-drove-revolution-in-Tunisia-/articleshow/7309263.cms
Ha! JPM puppet! Good one.
Sheesh! That’s what happens when the wealthy expect the masses to eat cake, er dust bunnies.
I think conservaDems should support it. They would become more important swing votes on all legislation. Back when Nelson was the 60th Senator, he had a lot of influence. If he is only 52nd, his influence is lessened with Obama sucking up to whoever is the new 60.
I also remember that Nate Silver cited some slanted polling to argue that using reconciliation would cause a backlash in late 2009. Has he ever retracted that?
I actually do think there will be a backlash – just like “demon pass” the media will follow the right wing noise machine and do what they do. People care about results, only junkies and nerds care about the rest of it, which to most people is crap interrupting the premiere of American Idol or the NFL playoffs.
Trust Harry Reid and the Senate Dems to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s their core competency.
Actually, no, a great many of us do pay attention to “abstract Congressional maneuvers.” If we didn’t, the Democrats would not have lost control of Congress after wasting four years appeasing the far right and punching their own party’s base whenever said base dared complain about it. You underestimate the intelligence of the American electorate. We understand a great deal more than you give us credit for.
Only with those who want Americans to have less representation in Congress than we already do. Everyone else would gladly have more representation. Obviously, you’ve demonstrated yourself to be in the former camp. Thankfully, sensible heads are prevailing.
So let’s ask the relevant questions, thou anti-democracy proponent: Why are you pushing so hard to reduce representation in Congress, rather than increase it? What do you have against the open debate of legislation that affects millions of lives — not only in this country, but across the globe? Why do you not believe that every American should have representation? And having demonstrated yourself to be exactly the sort of person who would gladly throw away representative government for the sake of short-term political convenience, aren’t you exposing yourselves as being undeniably not progressive?