Sphincters and 60 Votes

Posted on 10/15/2009 at 10:09 pm by Bob Cesca

Ezra wrote an interesting piece about 60 votes versus 60 “seats.” While it’s true that there aren’t any guarantees that Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman and Mary Landrieu will vote with the Democratic caucus to break the Republican filibuster, I keep wondering if the public option needs to be the bargaining chip to get their cloture vote.

The first and most obvious question we’ll all be shouting at our computer screens for the next couple of months is: Why can’t Harry Reid do his goddamn job, and hold the caucus together, allowing the conservadems to vote however they want on the final vote?! The second and more crucial question is: Why can’t the conservadems be offered other concessions besides the public option in exchange for voting against the Republican filibuster?

There are any number of deals that can be cut with this faction that doesn’t involve shit-canning the public option in the Senate. I find it hard to believe that any of these senators have supported every line item of every bill they’ve voted for. Throw them something else to rest their sphincters.

The fact remains that healthcare reform dies without the public option. So Reid is going to have to come up with something to get them on board — something other than sacrificing a robust public option.

Adding… John Amato: “If Reid can’t get his own party to vote for cloture, he should step down as leader. He’s a joke.” And David Waldman wrote today that it’s not a “Republican filibuster” until all 60 Democrats agree to vote to end the filibuster. Until then, it’s either just a “filibuster” or it’s a “bipartisan filibuster.” But you know what? I dare anyone from the Democratic caucus to filibuster healthcare reform. It’ll be political suicide.

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  • JG

    and this is why Harry Reid has the powwr to do it–He must make those Dems fillibuster. I’d rather have no bill–regroup, and vote the Dem$ out–than have a bad bill. Mandate w/o public option is not only bad policy, it could not only ruin the Dems, but also any future efforts for big thinking in the future.

  • Dan in DE

    Bob, is this kind of threat, the removal of committee chairmanships and such, really normal use of the majority leader position? Or is this just wishful thinking from the Progressives, hoping that there was some simple way to enforce party allegiance?I imagine that Frist and others under Bush used such tactics, but is it really conventional?

  • J

    I think it’s pretty conventional that there’s this sort of behind the scenes deal-making/threats to get things done. I think that’s one of the thing Rahm was known for in the house.What I find so funny in this bashing of Harry Reid–not that I don’t find him ineffectual–is this idea that some other Senate leader would have no problem getting everyone in line.The Democratic party is not at all homogenous, nor are they known for banding together behind a single cause. And democrats/liberals get very annoyed at the suggestion that they should compromise in any way. So I blame the entire set up of the Democratic party for this whole 60 seats doesn’t equal 60 votes thing much more than I blame Harry Reid.