DEBATING "DEBATING THE DEBATE DEBATE." Over at The Plank, Mike Crowley discusses this week's stalled Senate debate on the Warner anti-surge resolution and, contra today's New York Times editorial, questions whether anything's really lost by us not getting to see senators bloviate and speechify about the war on the floor. My point is slightly tangential -- to the extent that we do find it valuable for the Senate to go on record with positions on the president's escalation of the war, the last few days of opaque parliamentary wrangling and paralysis help to underscore the basic crappiness of the U.S. Senate as an institution. The unsatisfying-to-all outcome of this fight was a result of the 60-vote rather than 50-vote requirement Republicans insisted on, which is another way of saying that the arbitrary vote threshold resulting from that most awful of Senate institutions -- the filibuster -- is serving to prevent the Senate from expressing straightforward majority-held positions on basic questions. The way this fight/non-fight unfolded in the Senate -- and now, by contrast, with Nancy Pelosi's House set to pass its own anti-surge resolution soon in a nice, straightforward manner -- offers a preview of what I anticipate will be continued progressive frustration with the cumbersome, discipline-undermining, and anti-majoritarian processes and structures of the upper chamber. Cooling saucer and all that �
--Sam Rosenfeld
