Like Ezra, I strongly recommend Jon Chait's depressing article about Senate obstructionism. Also like Ezra, I think the problems identified are structural and go beyond any particular group of politicians. Indeed, I would push it even further. While there's some truth to his argument that "[t]he Senate is a broken branch," I don't agree that its inherent problems have symmetrical partisan effects. The fact that it's a lot easier to stop things than to get things done definitely favors conservative interests in the long run. (Although, at least some of the rules that allow for minority obstruction can (and should at the earliest opportunity) be changed.) But more problematic is the gross malapportionment of the Senate, which strongly favors reactionary interests. There are Blue Dogs with a slavish adherence to business interests in the House too, but they're much less of a problem there because urban liberals are more fairly represented (and because the rules give much less leverage to a smaller minority of conservative Dems) . This isn't to say that Chait's argument isn't useful; the Senate was a really bad idea, but we're stuck with it. The only way to get around it is to create and enforce norms that make obstructionist conservative Dems as politically toxic as possible. But, structurally, conservative obstructionism is going to be the rule, not the exception, in the Senate. It's what the branch was designed to do, and it does it all too well. --Scott Lemieux
