Al Franken is now officially a senator. And with a 60-member caucus, Democrats have the power to circumvent every Republican filibuster–at least in theory. Two members are battling serious health conditions and often unable to vote at all. And even if that weren’t the case, Dems would still need to be united to guarantee an up or down vote on every bill. But that’s exactly what party leaders want to see.
After a caucus meeting on Tuesday, Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said he told members, “Don’t let the Republicans filibuster us into failure.” Here’s how he characterized his position:
If they will stick with us on the procedural votes, we at least know that we can move forward…. They may vote against final passage on a bill, they may vote with Republicans on an amendment. That’s entirely their right to do. But this idea of allowing the filibuster to stop the whole Senate…. We ought to control our own agenda.
Sources on the Hill have been fairly mum about how the message came across. Was it more of a pep-talk? An attempt to rally the troops? Or was it a warning to conservative Democrats, who’ve extracted more than a pound of flesh from the President’s agenda already, and who stand poised to do so again as the health care debate moves forward? It’s a bit unclear.
But there are a couple of interesting data points.
First, the original push for party unity on procedural votes came from Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), who called on his colleagues to stand united against Republican filibusters after Franken became senator-elect last week. And one of his aides told me that, today, in the wake of yesterday’s meeting, Sanders was wearing “a bigger smile than usual.”
Second, reformers are cautiously pleased with the news. According to one health care activist, however the push for unity turns out, “I imagine as the bills take shape in the Senate, the question will become, ‘Will you actually filibuster health care?'”
But if it seems like some will, what sort of power does Reid actually have over individual senators? The quick answer is: not much.
“There isn’t a lot that a leader has directly over an individual senator,” said Norm Ornstein–a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
There are little things they can do to make their lives more uncomfortable.: Not schedule bills that they want…postpone this vote… But if you begin to use those things, the fact is that individual senators whose support you need on unanimous consent agreements…if you stick it to them because they’re not going along with you on some things, they can stick it right back.
Ornstein’s take away, procedurally, is that Reid and Durbin and Senate leaders in general aren’t really armed to the teeth. “You don’t have a lot of weapons to cut toes off or other portions of their anatomy.”
So will this strategy work?
“Intermittently,” Ornstein predicts. “It’s tricky. It’s wise for them to be aggressive, getting this out there, so that if someone defies them, they’ll have some explaining to do.”
Which seems to be what reformers are hoping.
