Let Lieberman and his obstructionist pals filibuster the goddamn bill with a full public option in it.

Well at long last, there’s a thought.

After three years of total GOP obstructionism, pathetic Dem weakness, and corporate media complicity, I’d bet most Americans actually believe U.S. the Constitution requires 60 votes to pass things in the Senate.

Shyaddup already, willya

Now the Republicans are holding up war funding with a threat to filibuster in order to delay health care funding (that’s the troops’ checks). There appears to be enough Democrats willing to break the filibuster.

All is not lost. The fat lady hasn’t sing-ed yet. It’s discouraging as hell, but don’t give up. Something good may come out of it, and it may not, in the end, be worse than nothing. It might be quite the improvement.

The health care industry is still spending a lot of money lobbying against this. The tea-baggers are still all nuts to the face, and the Republicans are still having tantrums and obstructing. This makes me suspect that something fair might come out of this mess, after all.

health care DEBATE and passing the bill—that’s what the Republicans are trying to block

I’m tired and kind of sad. SadlyNo has gotten understandably serious.

It could, wiley, but at this point the Ted Kennedy card is really the only thing holding the center together, e.g. pass something, anything, so as to be able to build on it later. That might be the right path.

But I also think it could be surprisingly popular for Reid and the Dems to finally, after all these years, show the stones to go all out in the GOP’s ongoing game of chicken. To arm wrestle for this fucking bill the way they (and the American people) want it.

And fuck decorum, fuck personal danger and fuck the unknowable outcome of drawing that line in the sand. But they lack those stones, so we’ll never know.

Or to put it another way, since I’m currently reading the excellent Cowboys Full by Jim McManus, re-raise these assholes. But Reid & Co. have been playing the penny slots for so long, they’ve forgotten how to play poker. Which is especially sad for the Senator from Vegas.

Over at Megan’s joint, she predictably tut-tuts everybody outside of her own brain pan for being naive and stupid, re: the politics of health care reform, specifically, that Nate Silver’s commenters ‘have a quite naive view of how negotiations work’:

Negotiation doesn’t work that way. There is a zone of possible agreement (known to those who study this sort of thing as the ZOPA). You can’t negotiate your way out of that zone no matter where you start. Nor does starting from a more aggressive bargaining point always mean that you will do better in the negotiation. It can often mean you do worse, because you poison the process.

Then there’s a bit about her mom selling real estate, and how macho men blew their chances at buying ‘apartments’ (as would-be slumlords or hipsters, she never says) by low-balling the sellers.

Her mostly male commenters are 10:1 syncophantic — because who wouldn’t want to tap a pasty, engaged Glibertarian who serves you buttered spaghetti with tofu the next morning? — until this guy turns up:

anirprof December 17, 2009 11:44 AM

Megan,

Your analysis has its naive aspects too. First, the players are not negotiating only over health care. They are engaged in negotiations on a very wide range of unrelated issues, and, they will be repeatedly in the future. That opens up all sorts of opportunities for logrolling and other strategies that can SHIFT the preferences initially stated by each side. The $300 million payoff to LA is a particularly clear example, but there are all sorts of hidden opportunities for a determined President and Majority Leader to exploit. In addition to side-payments, there is also the ability to impose costs in the form of things like losing influence/positions within the party caucus. That a potential deal is outside of the zone of outcomes that someone initially claims is preferable to “no deal” doesn’t mean much in a multi-issue, repeated game like this. Whether you learn that from intro game theory or from reading LBJ’s biography, it’s pretty elementary stuff.

There is also the difference that this negotiation is being played out in front of an audience, and that audience’s approval is part of payoff set — the largest part! That’s totally different than haggling for a car or condo. If I can get an “acceptable” outcome only at the cost of the voters in my state hating me, then I am far more likely redefine my set of acceptable outcomes than I would to accept certain electoral defeat. An lot of this process isn’t about the negotiations among the principals per se, but about shaping the public perception of the outcomes and of the negotiators. Actual outcomes matter less than being seen as “right” and being seen as “the winner” since the real payoff is votes.

Reagan was brilliant at this, and in his first term frequently forced the Dems to accept deals that were outside of their initial zone of possible agreement by appealing to the public and shifting public opinion so as to force the Dems to CHANGE their zone of agreement.

It’s possible that a strategy of asking for the moon and bargaining down could help, in that you could frame the negotiations in terms of your side making compromises, really working for a deal, and the other side being too demanding. Of course the other side would try to frame it in terms of your side being extremists, and who wins depends on a lot of factors. But what strategy is preferred depends more on winning the battle for audience perception than on the simple two-party negotiation game.

That was a pretty epic pwn, but anirprof gets no love from the regulars because, you know, fantasies of buttered spaghetti with tofu after passionless, awkward sex trump logic with a certain portion of the commentariat.

Works for me. Let’s do it.

The problem is that this isn’t how the filibuster works. Indeed, basically the filibuster requires just one member of the minority objecting to votes, and repeatedly making quorum calls; the majority has to maintain a quorum, which means they have to keep at least 50 members on hand at any given moment. in short, the filibuster is incredibly easy to run, and incredibly hard to break. Especially thanks to dual tracking, which was meant to allow some bills through while the floor was held up with a filibuster, but instead made the cost of filibustering even lower, because your opposition to cloture on the health care bill won’t prevent the troop funding bill or the local post office bill or the Senator Bloe is a great guy bill.

Sorry, “Make ’em filibuster” sounds great. But in reality, it doesn’t do anything but cause even more headaches for the majority.

I’m gonna get me a big ol’ airplane & do what them 9/11 dudes failed to do to the Capitol Bldg.

W/ a parachute, though.

Jeff Fecke nails it. The ability to force Senators to talk endlessly in opposition to some measure was given away in the 1970s era reforms that lowered the cloture margin to 3/5 of senators duly chosen and sworn instead of the previous 2/3 of Senators present and voting

So cloture needs 60 aye votes. The other 40 don’t even have to show up, they can vote present, no, or “buttered spaggheti” and if the cloture vote is 59-0, cloture fails and debate continues.

I’m kind of curious to know why it took the republicans 25 years to start abusing the 70s filibuster rules to the max. I’m guessing the demise of Rockefeller repubicans has a lot to do with it.

and twice on High Holy Days

That would put us in Fall 2010.

Of course, 51 Senators can have the filibuster killed dead by objecting to it, having the chair rule it unconstitutional, and having 51 vote to uphold the ruling of the chair after the inevitable appeal.

That’s the real majoritarian card Reid isn’t playing. He probably doesn’t have 51 senators willing to uphold such a ruling, because centrists all gain more from the filibuster than they lose.

Now if you were a 12 year old boy with anal string warts, you’d have the Republicans eating out, well, er, um, of the palm of your hand, yeah, that’s the ticket.

“That’s the real majoritarian card Reid isn’t playing. He probably doesn’t have 51 senators willing to uphold such a ruling, because centrists all gain more from the filibuster than they lose.”

There are a full ten (or eight) Democratic senators who care so little about the bill that they’re not willing to support passage of health care that way? Or is it just that the Democrats as a whole aren’t willing to stick they’re neck out because they think it’s mean?

Either way, that’s depressing as balls. Although it’s probably not as depressing as being in the House of Representatives, having worked hard as hell for months to turn out a very good bill, only to watch the God damned House of Lords rip it into something that could have been put together by monkeys!

Aw, hell, Jeff … there goes that plan.

There are a full ten (or eight) Democratic senators who care so little about the bill that they’re not willing to support passage of health care that way? Or is it just that the Democrats as a whole aren’t willing to stick they’re neck out because they think it’s mean?

Eh, I’m with them on this. I don’t think that they should use the nuclear option, especially when we were up in arms about it during the Republican rule 2000-2006. It would set a bad precedent.

I am, however, a fan of Harkin’s proposal, which will keep shit like this from happening in the future.

The Tragically Flip:
Of course, 51 Senators can have the filibuster killed dead by objecting to it, having the chair rule it unconstitutional, and having 51 vote to uphold the ruling of the chair after the inevitable appeal.

That’s the real majoritarian card Reid isn’t playing. He probably doesn’t have 51 senators willing to uphold such a ruling, because centrists all gain more from the filibuster than they lose.

That first sentence is very much true and is a point that doesn’t get repeated enough.

The problem, however, is less the empowerment of centrists and more the laziness of Senators. If they got rid of the filibuster they’d also need to get rid of the rule allowing unlimited debate, which would necessitate forming a Rules Committee–either permanent or ad hoc for each piece of legislation–to determine the terms of debate on legislation. Rules Committee work is, of course, tedious stuff that no one, least of all a Senator, wants to do.

The current Senate debate rules may be a disaster, but they are a one-size-fits-all set of rules that can be applied to every piece of legislation that comes before the Senate. Any rules more complicated than “debate until we decide not to debate any more” mean someone or some committee has to be empowered to make decisions and do work that Senators believe to be beneath them.

And I have anal string warts.

I think there’s a cream for that.

When do I get to see D. Aristophanes on the ballot in my state?

The current Senate debate rules may be a disaster, but they are a one-size-fits-all set of rules that can be applied to every piece of legislation that comes before the Senate. Any rules more complicated than “debate until we decide not to debate any more” mean someone or some committee has to be empowered to make decisions and do work that Senators believe to be beneath them.

I’m not quite sure why “Debate until we don’t want to debate anymore” can only apply when you’ve got 60 votes. Why can’t we have a simple majority to end debate? The House and Senate know how to fast track legislation so it goes right past all that debating stuff anyway. And we all know the “debate” that occurs on the floor of Congress is fluff anyway. Everything worth hearing occurs behind closed doors, where some Congressman can suggest we levy a tax on money or sell illegal immigrants as cattle feed and gets told to STFU by his less idiotic peers.

Unlimited debate is fine. Killing a bill by talking it to death, not as much. The sixty votes to end debate was always somewhat arbitrary, and was instituted on the assumption that Senators were actually interested in debating a subject, rather than just lying to each other ad nauseum while they played demagogue with the public.

And I have anal string warts.

That didn’t stop Lieberman from running.

I’m all for it. Of course, I also think Harry Reid and Dick Durbin should just repeatedly kick Lieberman and Campbell in the nuts until they decide to support a public option. Maybe not perfectly constitutional, but it has an engaging element of simplicity to it. And given their performance over the past year, there is little damage that such treatment can affect them.

There are some things in life I feel I am better off not knowing about, and any phenomenon combining the words “anal,” “string” and “warts” is near the top of the list.

Of course, 51 Senators can have the filibuster killed dead by objecting to it, having the chair rule it unconstitutional, and having 51 vote to uphold the ruling of the chair after the inevitable appeal.

wait is that accurate? it wouldn’t even take a 2/3 vote for the first vote?

if that’s true, then the senate’s parliamentary procedure is worse than the parli pro of the average rotary club. which i don’t doubt for a second.

Another way to do it would be to simply use the “nuclear option” to eliminate repeated quorum calls. This would still allow the fillibuster, but would require the bill’s opponents to actually hold the floor and fillibuster rather than have one guy repeatedly force a roll call.

Watching these benighted fucks further fuck up a fucked-up bill makes me bitter and evokes a strong desire to cling to guns and religion.

Pryme beat me to it. But I would also add that being lazy and a crappy public speaker doesn’t seem to disqualify anyone from holding office either. In fact, it seems a qualification for Republicans. Along with anal string warts, whateverthefuck THOSE are! That nobody-would-vote-for-me thing could be a problem, but it didn’t seem to impede George W. Bush. You could be president!

It strikes me as an excellent idea save that the Repubs are really good at making just about anything into the Dem’s fault. Even though they’re the one’s filibustering they’d find a way to blame the other side for obstructing progress.

I’ve noticed this Senate = House of Lords thing cropping up quite a lot. But here in the UK we have a nice little thing called the Parliament Act. If a piece of legislation which was in the governing party’s manifesto has been passed in recognisable form by the Commons, the Lords can only kick it back as long as the Commons let them. The House of Commons has the right, in those circumstances, to vote a big “Fuck you” to the Lords and push through whatever they’ve agreed on, on the grounds that it was in the manifesto so it’s been endorsed by the people. (By about 40% of the people, usually, since no party ever wins an absolute majority of the popular vote in Britain: any pledge by an American candidate who goes on to win is likely to have a much _greater_ democratic mandate.)

Unfortunately, of course, as I understand it you couldn’t pass anything equivalent without the agreement of the Senate. It’s one of the upsides to the usually pretty crappy fact that our constitution is unwritten. (Of course, the Parliament Act itself did require the assent of the Lords, but that was achievable owing to the fact that Lords are appointed and there’s no limit to their numbers. The conversation that got them to agree went pretty much like this: “Vote it through or we’ll get the King to appoint a load of new lords who will.” – “What if he says no?” – “We’ll remind him what happened to Charles the First.” – “Ah. OK then.” Nothing gets reforms enacted like the threat of decapitation.)

Well said D.A.

Shame about those warts.

If the Dems can’t pass anything good NOW, when will they ever be able to? Due to this awful bill they’re going to LOOSE power, not gain it.

The warts thing was sharing a little too much.

Lazy, terrible public speaker…

You would be in good company in the US Senate. Now just load a machine gun full of nonsensical platitudes, work a cross somewhere into your propaganda, and yes, many people will vote for you.

Remember, substance kills. Don’t be a substance abuser.

OTOH, maybe it’s time to check in on a state legislature that CAN STILL GET THINGS DONE.

To wit: “A proposal to name Harley-Davidson as the official Wisconsin motorcycle has stalled in the state Legislature so concerns raised by a group that fights noise pollution can be considered.

Meanwhile, a bill naming the bacterium that converts milk into cheese as the official state microbe passed easily 7-1.”

On Wisconsin!!!WH0000tt Go Cheeseheads.!!

What Jeff Ficke said (I was planning to link this old Hilzoy blogpost to the same effect). It’s always embarrassing when people say “well, make them filibuster!” in obvious proud ignorance of which side actually suffers when there’s a filibuster. Hint: it’s not the side maintaining the filibuster.

Yes, the nuclear option is for real. It is weird that 51 can elide the normal requirement of 67 to change the rules, but it is what it is.

And once used, the filibuster would be gone for good.

Nuke it from orbit. Only way to be sure.

I’ve noticed this Senate = House of Lords thing cropping up quite a lot. But here in the UK we have a nice little thing called the Parliament Act.

Yes, this is deliberate. We who use the term are aware that the Upper chamber in Britain has been severely hobbled so it can’t fuck with the will of the elected chamber. The idea is to start having Americans think that way about their upper chamber.

Every other Democracy I can think of cripples their upper chamber, only in America is the upper chamber actually more powerful than the lower one.

… in obvious proud ignorance …

Yeesh, I acknowledged I was wrong …

Perhaps Lieberman’s threat to use the same filibuster he once tried to abolish might’ve been an indicator that there was a flaw in your cunning plan. There’s no way a typical US Senator is going to use a tactic that requires them to undergo real ongoing hardship – especially if it threatens to infringe on their sacred paid leave … those pageboys & sexytime ex-Marine “reporters” won’t just bugger themselves, y’know.

I’d love to see Obama pull a Shrub & slip the PO in via a signing-statement, but (a) his “Charlie Brown Gene” for wishy-washyness seems to be dominant, & (b) some political wonk here is likely having an even bigger LOL at my idea than they had at yours, because the Hunchentoot vs. Plotz ruling of 2002 renders such a move untenable or non-binding or dangerously high in trans-fats, etc.

DA,

Actually….that’s fucking brilliant. Make them set aside their Bahamas vacations for a full-dress session in chambers.

i like it too! Make ’em pay for this crap with some “skin in the game” – like their precious TIME.

“And I have anal string warts”

Maybe we should start a support group. Talking to fellow (and sister-)-sufferers can be very supportive. Plus a lot of practical tips about living with ASW