The Democrats' biggest problem during the 110th Congress has been obvious: They were elected with a mandate to carry out the Herculean task of ending a war over the objections of a singularly stubborn president and a shameless minority party. Democrats won a landslide electoral victory last year in large part simply by expressing strident opposition to President Bush's foreign policy. But now, as the majority party, they're expected to actually do something. And Republicans have not cooperated.
"The strategy of being obstructionist," minority whip Trent Lott told Roll Call in April,"can either work or fail ... and so far, it's working for us." Indeed, crucial components of the Democratic agenda have passed the House with overwhelming majorities only to be defeated by filibuster in the Senate: the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have strengthened workers' right to organize, went down to defeat before a 48-vote minority; a bill to reduce the price of prescription drugs in Medicare by giving the government bargaining power was defeated by a 42-vote minority; a formal repudiation of Alberto Gonzales was defeated by 38 senators; and an amendment that would have shifted $32 billion in subsidies from the oil industry to the renewable energy industry garnered "only" 57 supporters.
Republicans had already forced a cloture vote 42 times this session, according to McClatchy's reporting. At this rate, Republicans will reach 153 filibusters by the end of the 110th Congress -- nearly three times the previous high of 58. It's not surprising that a dedicated 49-member minority party is able to dash the majority's hopes for legislative success. What is surprising, and particularly damaging to the Democrats, is that the GOP has succeeded in sinking a popular agenda in this way without paying any real political price.
This session, every time that Democrats have scheduled important legislation, the Republican leadership has threatened to filibuster it. After a few hours of debate, the Democratic leadership calls for a cloture vote to end debate, and it inevitably fails. But instead of continuing debate, Senator Reid has been tabling the legislation and moving on to other business. The media barely notices -- after all, a failed cloture vote followed by a motion to table is not exactly high drama -- and Democrats become increasingly demoralized by the process.
From a Democratic perspective, Reid's response to the filibuster threats has created exceptionally bad incentives for the Republicans: Every time the Democrats bring up a piece of popular legislation, Republicans can either allow it to pass with a simple majority and hand their opponents a political victory or they can put up their fists, make some mean snarling noises, and watch Reid meekly walk away. Unsurprisingly, they have repeatedly chosen the latter course. And so, time and again, Republicans have defeated the Democrats without even bloodying their noses first.
In early July, Democrats began to demonstrate some understanding that Republican obstructionism would continue indefinitely unless they changed the game's dynamics. On July 13, Senator Kent Conrad told Air America's Young Turks that "there's a growing consensus that we ought to" force Republicans to carry out their filibuster threats. The logic was clear. If Republicans were forced to actually filibuster these bills for 24 hours a day, the press would converge on a piece of true political drama: the spectacle of GOP senators standing up all day long in support of Big Oil, or Gonzales, or the president's war in Iraq. Not only would the press coverage force additional senators to abandon ship, but the Democrats would establish an excellent precedent for future legislative fights: If you want to establish a 60-vote bar for all pieces of controversial legislation. you better be ready to stand up and fight for your side.
On Monday, July 16, Harry Reid announced that the Senate would remain in session all night Tuesday to debate the Reed-Levin amendment, a piece of binding legislation that would begin the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. This clearly marked an attempt to put the GOP on the spot and make good on their threat to block a popular policy initiative through minority obstruction. But as the details of the nighttime debate became clear, the media described the fight more as a school yard shoving match than a heavyweight title bout. And that's because, well, it was.
By Tuesday morning, after all, Reid had made it clear that the Senate would move on to other business after 10 a.m. on Wednesday -- there were too many other pieces of business on the agenda for the Senate to get bogged down in days of debate about Iraq. But that was a fatal mistake. Preordaining the length of the debate killed its chances for success. It was pitched to the media as a one-night affair rather than a serious and indefinite debate at the end of which the Reed-Levin amendment would either pass or die. And since the outcome (defeat of cloture) was a foregone conclusion, there was no drama and thus no real coverage. Moreover, telling the enemy when you're going to retreat (as Republicans love to point out regarding Iraq) makes it much easier for them to withstand your attack. Even for endangered Republicans like John Sununu and Norm Coleman, 30 hours wasn't too long to hold out.
Sure enough, on Wednesday morning, with the made-for-TV cots put away and the weary young gallery watchers ready to leave, Harry Reid asked for cloture on the amendment and mustered only a 52-47 majority. The all-night session briefly mollified activists calling for a more aggressive approach to ending the war, but it did little else.
Democrats now find themselves in a situation very similar to last month's. The DOD appropriations bill has not passed the Senate and no Republican filibuster has been broken. But when they return from their August recess, Democrats will have the perfect opportunity to make Republicans pay a political price for their intransigence.
Senator Jim Webb has introduced an amendment that requires the military to give troops as much time at home as they spent on their previous deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Because the armed forces have been stretched thin by the wars, Webb's amendment would make it impossible for the Pentagon to retain current troop levels in Iraq for very long. It drew 57 supporters in July but was, surprise surprise, defeated by filibuster.
Webb is eager to see his amendment reintroduced. "The Senator is committed to seeing the language from his amendment included in the DOD Authorization," his spokeswoman Jessica Smith told the Prospect. "This isn't something that he's going to let go of lightly." In the House, an identical bill sponsored by Ellen Tauscher is making its way out of the Armed Services Committee.
Harry Reid should bring the amendment up for consideration in September, and he should make clear that he's not going to table it. If he demands that the bill get an up-or-down vote and sticks to his guns, Reid will almost surely emerge victorious.
Why? First off, the Webb amendment is exceptionally popular. Republicans can't seriously oppose more rest and recuperation time for soldiers and marines. They'll say that Congress shouldn't micro-manage the war, but with many troops on their third tour in Iraq, that argument doesn't carry much weight. Second, because the vote was so close last time, at the outset of this debate the outcome would be in sincere doubt. Add to that the fact that such Very Serious Republicans as John Warner and Dick Lugar have long billed September as the moment of truth regarding Bush's surge, they may finally (with some pushing) feel the need to vote against the president, and the Webb amendment offers the perfect "non-defeat" bill on which to do it. All of this adds real uncertainty -- which constitutes exactly the drama that the press loves. If Reid can keep the floor debate going for 3 or 4 days, the excitement will only build -- if the Senate is deadlocked over the fate of thousands of U.S. soldiers, America will tune in.
For Democrats, the worst possible result of this strategy is that Republicans hold on to their 41-vote minority and, anchored tightly around Bush and his 25 percent approval rating, go down to historic defeat in 2008. But that probably won't happen. By September, with the war going even worse than it was prior to the spring escalation, at least a few Republicans will have had enough. Rather than be exposed to 7 days of bad press and vicious attacks from the DSCC, they'll cave. Getting the bill past Bush's veto? That's another story.