After Failing to Change Senate Rules, Democrats Lose Right to Blame Mitch McConnell

[Better Believe It]

After Failing to Change Senate Rules, Democrats Lose Right to Blame Mitch McConnell
By: Jon Walker
January 26, 2011


Senate Democrats had an opportunity to get together and make the Senate a working, majority-rule-based chamber. They could have recently used the “Constitutional Option” at the start of this new Congress to rewrite the Senate rules to either eliminate the filibuster outright or at least make staging a filibuster more difficult. Yet, due to a combination of a greedy refusal to give up any individual power, and a pitiful cowardice about a potential future in which the voters reject them, Senate Democrats collectively chose to throw away this opportunity. By doing nothing, they effectively voted to give Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell total veto power over everything.

Currently, McConnell and the rest of the Senate Republicans have the ability to kill any legislation, stop any nominee from getting confirmed, or hold any bill hostage until their demands were met. Democrats spent the past two years complaining endlessly about how horrible it was that Republicans used the filibuster to kill popular legislation that had majority support. It was the 60-vote threshold for cloture, and McConnell’s ability to hold his party united in opposition, on which Democrats placed almost all the blame for their many legislative failures over the past two years.

All these awful problems could have been eliminated yesterday in roughly 20 minutes. Democrats could have simply changed the rules and completely taken away McConnell’s power to obstruct. Senate Democrats could have freed themselves to govern as a majority party. They could have made it possible to pass whatever bills they wanted to and no longer be forced to submit to the legislative hostage-taking of a minority. Instead, though, they chose to leave themselves helpless, controlled by the whims of Sen. McConnell.

Senate Democrats had the ability to easily solve the problems they spent the last two years endlessly complaining about, but choose not to. By their failure, they have lost all right to complain, and they now have absolutely no one to blame for every single future failure but themselves. With their inaction, Senate Democrats have made Mitch McConnell entirely blameless. Every single procedural problem McConnell causes Democrats in the next two years is ultimately the fault of Senate Democrats because, despite knowing his modus operandi, they still choose to leave themselves at his mercy.

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/01/26/after-failing-to-change-senate-rules-democrats-lose-right-to-blame-mitch-mcconnell/

If the Republicans win control of the Senate in 2012 they will play hardball and quickly end any Democratic "procedural" filibusters. They will use their Senate power to do what Democrats have failed to do.

And Republicans won't have to change any Senate rules to do that.

They won't hesitate to use the "Constitutional Option" or simply end the "dual-track" procedure which doesn't require a change in Senate rules. BBI

For more information on this go to:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x51481

[msongs]

1. LBJ must rolling in his grave now that democratic party has all gone republican-lite nt

[mzmolly]

13. LBJ had to work with a 67 vote majority requirement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

Johnson didn't end the filibuster. He had to work around it, as well.

[AdHocSolver]

2. Senate Democrats give themselves another excuse for doing nothing for the people. n/t

[Supersedeas]

3. where is the leadership in the Senate?

[Better Believe It]

9. They never have enough people in the Senate ..... never. And Republicans always run it .... always

[KharmaTrain]

4. They're Scared Shitless About 2012

There's a lot of seats to defend and the retirement of Conrad could make holding a majority difficult in '12. The possibility of being in the minority in the Senate has to be in the back of not just Reid but many others and that if they nuke the fillibuster now it may come back to bite them in a couple years. Another tepid and naive move by Reid as if the GOTB does win control the first thing they're sure to do is pass this rule and lock the Democrats out. This assures a gridlocked legislative where nothing will move. Good work, gents!

[annabanana]

11. Like THEY ever use the rules to their advantage when in the minority. .

stupid stupid stupid, dems...

[Brickbat]

5. So, supposedly, they're afraid that any rule change will be used against them in 2012, not realizing

that once they become the minority, the rule will be changed anyway. These people have no savvy whatsoever. YES, changing the rule would be provocative and make Republicans yell. YES, it's messing with the spirit of how this government was supposed to run. But the system is clearly broken and it's still running and flinging parts all over the place -- you can't stand there and pretend it's still running smoothly.

[Poboy]

6. I think you've summed up the situation. As usual, our jellyfish crumble.

[JoePhilly]

7. Most people don't even know what the filabuster is ... the Dems are afraid

of their own shadow.

If you want to know why the legislation of the past 2 years isn't further to the left, look no further than the Senate Dems.

[MadHound]

8. Setting themselves up for numerous "hostage taking" moments

And of course, their solution will be to give away our future, time and again, much as Obama did with the tax cuts for the rich.

That's how were going to see Social Security cuts enacted, draconian spending cuts enacted and who knows what other atrocious policies.

Another disgusting display of Democratic Congressional spinelessness.

[xchrom]

10. recommend

[mzmolly]

12. Did McConnell support filibuster reform?

Or any Republican for that matter?

[Still a Democrat]

14. Can we get a FDL warning label on these threads?

They stopped supoorting the work of the Democratic party a while ago.

[BzaDem]

15. Actually, Boehner wouldn't take up Democratic bills even if they passed the Senate.

I agree that failing to change the rules is a problem. But it's not a problem that's going to affect us anytime soon. Boehner would block any bill that passed the Senate in this Congress, and Republicans will likely control the Senate for the next two Congresses.