Reply #60: Eh, not so bad.

[sofa king]

58 (or maybe 59) seats is still a powerful majority, and only one or two Republicans (and Lieberman) will have to be won over to invoke cloture. Having 60 seats still would have been no picnic--again thanks to Lieberman, but also because Democrats actually tend to be democratic, and are less disposed to stifling debate.

If things get really ugly and nothing's getting done, well, those fine folks across the aisle have already shown us the way: Remember how the Dems were locked out of Appropriations meetings in 2003? Remember how the deck was stacked so that the GOP had two more votes on every committee and subcommittee instead of one like we currently do? Remember how all pork-barrel spending was denied to Democratic states? Remember the "nuclear option"? And on the House side, remember how the floor votes of delegates from PR, VI, Guam, and DC were revoked?

I remember all those things, and so do Reid and Pelosi. And those were the tricks from the amateurs who mainly study and practice how to break and circumvent the rules, rather than follow and enforce them. We, on the other hand, have Robert Byrd, who knows how to turn the entire force of Congress' guidelines and precedent against the GOP.

As it stands now, 19 GOP Senators of Class III stand for reelection in 2010, while the Dems will be defending 16, many of them held by the Senate's most prominent Democratic warhorses. That offers a chance to make still more gains.