| Todd Beeton and the crew at MyDD have put up their 'Road to 60' Actblue page to raise money to get to 60 Senators in the Senate. The justification is that we need 60 votes in the Senate to overcome Republican filibusters. Moveon is also organizing its strategy around getting to 60 votes in the Senate, as is the DSCC. This sounds like a reasonable argument, since the number of votes needed to get to cloture - 60 - is routinely used as justification for not passing progressive legislation.
I'm somewhat skeptical. There are two reasons I don't buy the 60 vote narrative. The first is that conservatives don't need 60 guaranteed Republican votes to pass their legislative priorities, they don't even need a Republican majority. The Patriot Act in 2001 passed overwhelmingly with a Democratic Senate majority, just as FISA did in 2008. The Iraq war authorization passed overwhelmingly in 2002 with a Democratic majority, just as war funding did in 2007. The second is that we don't need 60 guaranteed Democratic votes to move our legislative priorities; the Webb GI Bill passed with 75 votes in the Senate and the Bush tax cuts will sunset in 2010 unless they are reauthorized.
Here are some more examples of critical pieces of legislation around national security and civil liberties that passed with a much larger than 60 margin.
Cloture vote on Alito: 72-25
Vote authorizing war in Iraq: 75-24
War Funding in 2007: 80-14
Reauthorziation of Patriot Act: 84-15
FISA Cloture Vote: 80-15
Webb GI Bill, 75-22
The 'Road to 60' argument is premised on a fundamentally misguided understanding of Senate dynamics. It assumes that the body is a two team rugby scrum wherein brute head-on force rules absolutely at all times. While sometimes brute force does rule, and yes there is some validity to getting to 60, it is not the dominant determinant of what kinds of legislation passes. What is very clear in the Senate is that one Senator can operate with reckless abandon and hold up all sorts of legislation, but that this Senator will then create enemies which could stymie his or her priorities for decades. It is why bipartisanship is genuinely a concern in the Senate.
The Senate, in other words, is a network and operates as a network. Democratic and Republican caucuses are one and only one way of grouping Senators, and certainly not the only way of grouping them. Just look at the vote totals on the winning side of those key votes: 72, 75, 80, 80, 75. These are not breaking down along caucus lines, they are breaking down by 'clumps', as are the losing vote 'clumps': 24, 25, 15, 14. And these clumps link to each other, financially and through co-sponsored legislation and shared filibusters. For instance, a single hold or pledge to filibuster a bill will bring retribution, because the target is fixed. But it is much harder to be vindictive against three or four Senators all working together to hold up a bill. And it is impossible to be vindictive against 80 Senators working to hold up a bill.
In other words, power in the Senate in some ways operates according to Metcalfe's Law, in which the number of nodes on the network increases the value of the network exponentially rather than in a linear fashion. Only, the networks within the Senate are not party caucuses but ideological in nature. The progressives have a small number of dedicated stalwarts, sometimes only one, and that makes retribution easy. The far right-wing have a larger number, but the center-right clump within both parties routinely works within itself and builds constant power. They have by far the most power in the body, not because they are Republicans or Democrats but because they have the largest set of interconnected nodes.
If any of this is true, a very different strategy makes sense for progressives (as opposed to Democrats). The goal is not to put into office Democrats, but to put into office people who meet the following criteria:
Those who have a demonstrated willingness to work with other progressives within a chamber.
Those who have a demonstrated willingness to 'break' with centrist clumps and take the attendant retribution.
Those who have a demonstrated willingness to dish out retribution to centrists or conservatives and weaken their networks.
All three of these are necessary to build out a progressive power center in the Senate and actually begin to assemble the 70 or 80 vote clumps we need to pass legislation. We need people who will group with other progressives, like Jeff Merkley or Sherrod Brown. We need people willing to attack party leadership and other Senators, which is why I supported Steve Novick, and why we found Russ Feingold and Paul Wellstone so appealing, and we need a progressive Tom Coburn or Ted Stevens, who is willing to act as the cranky porcupine that you cross at your peril.
This theory of the Senate as a network explains why it is so critical for anonymous Senate aides to attack crazy liberals on the internet, and why we glom on to the most outspoken Senators rather than people like Barbara Boxer. A centrist saying that standing up to Moveon is critical is working to destroy a progressive network connection, while an outspoken Senator on our side is using outside actors to work to break up centrist 'clumps'. There is a war within the body, in other words, one in which partisan affiliations are basically a distraction.
So no, we don't need 60 votes to move progressive priorities. What we need are a committed group of Senators - perhaps as small as 25 or 30 - without whom the other clumps can't get anything done. |
