The Fix - White House moves to make the filibuster a campaign issue
The Senate -- and filibusters in particular -- are the focus of a new White House campaign.
Over the past week, President Obama and his senior aides have repeatedly cited Republicans' filibuster threats as the primary reason for the lack of progress on big ticket legislative items, an early sign that Democrats will seek to use this bit of legislative arcana against the GOP in the coming midterm election.
At a meeting -- televised, natch -- with Senate Democrats last week, Obama harped on the GOP's willingness to invoke the filibuster, noting that Democrats had taken more cloture votes to end debate and force votes in 2009 than they did in the 1950s and 1960s combined.
Added Obama:
"We've had scores of pieces of legislation in which there was a filibuster, cloture had to be invoked, and then ended up passing 90 to 10, or 80 to 15. And what that indicates is a degree to which we're just trying to gum up the works instead of getting business done."
Later in the week, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer penned a blog post on the evils of the filibuster, reciting -- almost word for word at times -- the argument Obama had made to his former colleagues.
"Historically, the filibuster has been used as a way to try and reach a bipartisan compromise, now it's just a tactic used to gum up the works," wrote Pfeiffer. "This has prevented an honest debate from taking place, which has made it impossible to find agreement on important legislation that would benefit working families in this country."
(Pfeiffer took to the blog again a day later with a post using the news that Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby (R) had placed a blanket hold on more than 70 Obama nominees in an attempt to wring some home-state concessions from the Administrationas part of the broader narrative that Republicans are using parliamentary procedures for the sole purpose of scoring political points.)
The filibuster itself, however, is not exactly a frontburner issue for most establishment Democrats. As the Post's Paul Kane notes in his story today on the filibuster -- its history and its future -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) has not even scheduled any debate time on the idea of changing the filibuster rules.
From a political perspective, a filibuster focus seems like a non-starter as well. Most Americans don't know -- and don't care -- about the many procedures that guide the Senate (or even how a bill becomes a law).
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted in late November 2009 explained that "the filibuster is a Senate procedure which has been used to prevent the Senate from passing controversial legislation or confirming controversial appointments by the President, even if a majority of senators support that action" and asked the sample whether they supported or opposed it. Fifty six percent of the sample favored the filibuster while 39 percent opposed it -- an increase in support from a May 2005 CNN survey where 52 percent favored the filibuster and 30 percent opposed it.
Why then has the White House decided to focus on the filibuster?
There are two basic theories.
The first is that the White House believes that the filibuster can be used as symbolic image for why the government (still) isn't working and why it's Republicans fault.
"In the Senate, the filibuster only works if there is a genuine spirit of compromise and trying to solve problems, as opposed to just shutting the place down," Obama told Senate Democrats last week. "If it's just shutting the place down, then it's not going to work."
The White House recognizes the deep distrust of Washington coursing through the electorate, reflected most prominently in the defeat of the establishment Democratic candidate in last month's Massachusetts special election.
Given that Democrats control all levers of power in Washington, the White House needs to win the battle over who is working to maintain the status quo on Capitol Hill since the default position will be that it is their fault that more change hasn't come.
If the filibuster can be part of this larger argument over who broke government and who is trying to fix it, it has the potential to be effective. Shelby's blanket hold then is rightly regarded as a major gift to the White House as they try to make this case.
The second theory on the focus on the filibuster is that it is a play to energize what has been, of late, a very listless Democratic base.
Few issues animate loyal Democrats like the idea that major pieces of legislation on things like health care and climate change -- among others -- can't be passed through a Senate where their party controls 18 more seats than do Republicans. (Comedy Central's Jon Stewart dedicated an entire segment to the 59-seat problem.)
By making the filibuster a political issue, the White House may be hoping to turn the base's anger at the way things are being done in Washington away from an inward focus on the party's unwillingness to change the rules and toward Republicans for their legislative blocking.
Midterm elections tend to be a battle of base turnout. And, poll after poll shows a significant intensity gap between the Republican base, which is as passionate as it has been since at least 2000, and the Democratic base, which is far less energized at the moment.
The filibuster focus is an interesting gambit from a White House that made its name during the 2008 campaign for being one step ahead of the rest of the political world. Could they have outsmarted all of us again? Or is a focus on parliamentary maneuvering far too small bore to move the needle?
By Chris Cillizza | February 8, 2010
The Fix - White House moves to make the filibuster a campaign issue (9 February 2010)
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