Two days ago, I wrote that I did not trust the Obama administration when it comes to applying political pressure on conservative Democrats in order to pass some of the more progressive elements of the Democratic agenda. The specific examples I used were card-check and cramdown, on which I believe the administration offered token vocal support but did not take serious (or at least effective) efforts to advance.
In response, Matthew Yglesias wrote yesterday that I wasn't using common sense, which would show that the Obama administration is passing the most progressive legislation that is possible to pass:
For a bill to pass the House of Representatives, it needs a majority. According to DW-NOMINATE score, the median member of the House of Representatives is currently Stephanie Herseth of South Dakota. The median member of the United States Senate is Kay Hagan of North Carolina. The pivotal sixtieth Senator required to break a filibuster is Ben Nelson of Nebraska. All you need to believe in order to believe that Barack Obama is generally signing the most progressive bills that it's possible to pass is that the Obama administration is more left-wing than Representative Herseth and Senator Nelson.
That is a very nice generalization about the political situation, but it breaks down when you look at the specific fights I cited as my examples: card-check and cramdown. In particular, the card-check fight is case where the administration completely failed to apply necessary pressure to pass what was a very winnable fight.
In the 110th Congress, 52 Senators supported cramdown, eight away from passage. On June 26th, 2007, 51 Senators voted in favor of invoking cloture on a version of the Employee Free Choice Act that included card-check. One Senator, Tim Johnson, was supportive but too ill to attend the vote.
With 8 votes needed to reach 60 in the Senate, and with all major Democratic challengers for Senate stating their support for the Employee Free Choice Act with card-check, the target in 2008 was to net Democrats 8 Senate pickups. Rather than lacking common sense about the need for 60 votes, as Yglesias accuses me, I mentioned this target repeatedly during my 2008 Senate forecasts, as a running whip count on card check. In the end, Democrats netted exactly 8 seats--enough for passage.
A couple of months after card-check had been defeated, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was quoted calling pressure from progressive groups against conservative Democrats, including labor, "f*cking stupid."
To recap: we had 60 votes for card-check, we lost six of those votes under the Obama administration's watch, and then the White House chief of Staff called attempts to apply political pressure on wayward Democrats "f*cking stupid."
So please, tell me again why I should believe the Obama administration is doing everything it can to pass things like card-check, and how I lack common sense about how 60 votes are needed to pass the Senate. We had the votes, the votes were lost under the Obama administration, and then the Obama administration protected the Democrats who defected.
As far as cramdown goes, there was never any direct polling on the matter due to its relative obscurity. However, the poll with the closest wording, taken not long before cramdown was defeated, showed overwhelming support:
CBS News/New York Times Poll. Feb. 18-22, 2009. N=1,112 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3 (for all adults).
"The Obama administration has a plan to help homeowners refinance their mortgages, avoid foreclosure, and make more credit available for mortgages. Do you think the federal government should provide this financial help to homeowners, or shouldn't the federal government do this, or don't you know enough yet to say?"
Should: 61%
Should not: 20%
Don't Know Enough: 14%
Help only some: 3% (voluntary answer)
Unsure: 2%
Through a generalization, Yglesias argues that voting in favor of cramdown was politically dangerous for conservative Democrats due to their conservative constituencies. As such, he implies there was no possible political pressure the Obama administration could have applied to these Senators that would have resulted in the passage of cramdown.
However, there is no evidence at all that cramdown was either unpopular or even understood by the constituents in any district. What little polling there was indicates it actually would have been extremely popular. Further, the long-time champion of cramdown in the House is Representative Brad Miller, who is from a lean-Democratic district in North Carolina (PVI D+5) and who first won his seat in 2002, which was a very good election for Republicans.
President Barack Obama firmly resists ideological labels, but at the end of a private meeting with a group of moderate Democrats on Tuesday afternoon, he offered a statement of solidarity.
"I am a New Democrat," he told the New Democrat Coalition, according to two sources at the White House session.
With cramdown pressure like this, it is no wonder that the lobbies for financial institutions were able to exert more influence on conservative and moderate Democrats than the Obama administration.
There is just no evidence that this is a politically toxic position that would put any member of Congress in trouble with his or her constituents. There also isn't any evidence that the Obama administration tried to apply pressure on conservative Democrats during this fight. So instead, I will go with Senator Durbin's famous explanation for the defeat of cramdown in the Senate:
And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.
Maybe there weren't 60 votes to be had in the Senate under any circumstances. Still, it is important to remember that the reason for that has nothing to do with the conservative constituencies some Senators represent. Rather, it is because the lobbies of financial institutions appear both more willing and able to influence certain conservative Democratic Senators more than are the Obama administration or Democratic leadership. That these decisions by conservative Democrats are more often based on fear of powerful financial interests than the conservative nature of the constituencies involved is common sense Yglesias should have about the political process.
