The current sense amongst people whose political opinions I respect is that if the Blues cannot get anything significant done with numbers as favorable as these then we really are all doomed. The knee jerk reaction to this grim but increasingly plausible conclusion is to slather blame on Barack Obama, feckless Congressional Blues, really anyone with a D anywhere near their name. That’s understandable and certainly at least partially true, but there’s a shallowness to it that I find disconcerting.
Then I read two excellent posts at James Fallows’ blog. They were messages he received from “someone with many decades’ experience in national politics”. The first begins:
“GOP member: ‘I’d like this in the bill.’
“Dem member response: ‘If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?’
“GOP member: ‘You know I can’t vote for the bill.’
“Dem member: ‘Then why should we put it in the bill?’
“I witnessed this myself.”
There is considerably more at the original post, but the really disheartening stuff comes in the follow up post from the same anonymous person:
“A closely related development fascinates and infuriates me, partly re the GOP and partly re the press. In the Senate, the GOP votes against cloture. But when the Dems finally manage to get the 60 votes, lots of GOP senators typically vote for the bill on final passage. “What’s up with THAT?” I’ve asked several times. In the past, if you opposed a bill getting to a vote on the floor, typically (admittedly not always) you would also oppose it IN the vote on the floor. That was the only reason to oppose it getting to the floor – because you opposed it! The answer, I’ve been told several times (by Democratic staffers, who don’t seem at all surprised or perturbed), is that a lot of Republicans don’t want to be on record as voting against a bill they believe the public or their constituents favor. Huh? Trying to kill it without a vote is somehow safe politically, but voting against it on final passage is not? Now that, I submit, is an anomaly the blame for which we can lay at the feet of the much-diminished news media, and the shortcomings of the Senate Democrats.”
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for your modern media-political complex! Not only are Red senators allowed to act like spoiled children, they’re able to get away with it scot free. If you have any interest in how the American government works (or doesn’t) read both posts in full.
None of the above absolves Obama, Congressional Blues or the rest of our only non-insane political party. But if Fallows’ correspondent is correct then they are facing something genuinely new under the sun. Which is another way of saying that for once the hoary old canard “nobody could’ve predicted” is in some way true. They expected resistance, but they expected it within the usual framework of Congress.
The only question that remains is what, if anything, they can do about it. Because they have nine months (and probably two years after that, but that’s just my guess) with Congressional majorities but no Senate super majority. I don’t know enough about how the Senate operates to know whether or not the Blues can find a way to circumvent or short-circuit this kind of exploitative obstructionism. But if a way cannot be found then we have a far bigger problem in this country than budget deficits, health care costs, and wars no one seems to want to talk about.
