Okay, so you can probably guess what has me motivated to write this today. But the lack of anything happening in the US Congress has actually been on my mind for a while. And to me, the answer seems relatively simple, meaning every day I get increasingly frustrated by the lack of action.
Most subjects follow a similar pattern. Democrats collectively work up an idea hoping that they will get Senators Sinema and Manchin to vote along with them. Sinema and Manchin tease things along for a bit and then ultimately say they won’t go along with it killing whatever was in the works. The Democrats come off looking feckless and foolish and it ultimately hurts the brand as a whole.
The natural question is what is the point in having a majority if you can’t make things happen with it. And of course, there’s the well-known stupidity of the US Senate that I have written about before (although I realize now that I should probably collect all of those random comments in various places into a cohesive Medium article). Fixing the issues with our representative government is my long term mission. But Democrats need to get shit done today so they have to work with the government they have not the one they wish they had. (I hate that I’m adapting a Rumsfeld quote here.)
The reality is that Democrats have a majority in the sense that Chuck Schumer is the Majority Leader and anyone who is pro-democracy is glad that it isn’t Mitch The-Rules-Only-Bend-My-Way McConnell. So anyone who says that the majority is useless to Democrats since they don’t have 50 reliable votes is missing the first big important point. While Sinema and Manchin are super annoying, let’s not forget that they the only thing keeping McConnell from returning to power.
But of course even more important point here is that the US Senate needs 60 votes to do anything. It doesn’t need to be that way and it didn’t used to be that way and it is insanely stupid, but again, that’s where we are now. Let’s also dismiss the idea that we’ll get filibuster reform to get that down to 50 votes any time soon — it’s just not going to happen; let it go.
Let’s not look at Manchin and Sinema as the only problem — let’s recognize Democrats need to get Republicans on board to get shit done. Right now they go after zero or maybe occasionally 2 or 3 Republican Senators. But let’s change that up and aim for 20. Yes, 20.
No, I’m not delusional. Democrats aren’t going to get 20 Republican Senators to go along with a Bernie Sanders / AOC progressive action. Instead, Democrats need to be realistic that the only way to get stuff done is to see what the 20 most moderate Republican senators want.
There are 50 Republican Senators. A handful of them are vile narcissists who view the position as one of personal power where the job responsibilities are Twittering and appearing on Fox “News” — Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley come to mind. Then there are a handful who are pretty hardcore conservative and wouldn’t go along with with anything moderate whatsoever — Marsha Blackburn and Tommy Tuberville, for example. Maybe that eliminates 20 Republican Senators from ever being able to talk about any legislation with Democrats. Make that list, strike them out, and move on.
Now we are down to a list of Republicans that can be talked to. Many of them would have objectionable pasts and seemingly incompatible positions on many topics. That has to take a back seat to talking about current issues. Democrats need to make honest efforts to engage with these Republicans while simultaneously being clear that failure to get on board will bring a world of hurt their way.
For example, let’s take Marco Rubio and gun control. What would it take to get Rubio to vote for any kind of gun control? What’s the most amount of gun control he would agree to vote towards? Same question for Rob Portman? Thom Tillis? Could there be any coalescing among a group of 20 Republicans? And is whatever that is something that Democrats would be willing to vote for? I think yes — it wouldn’t be the best legislation but something is better than nothing.
With 20 Republican Senators, it is no longer such a small number that any of them would feel conspicuous. And given the fractured state of the Republican party today, which is unusual in recent history, now is the time to get into it. Let these moderate Republicans know that they are in the driver’s seat. They are the “swing” voters in the Senate.
That’s the carrot side of the equation. For the stick side, it’s time to go after Republicans. Set up an attack ad that shows Cruz talking about guns juxtaposed with the school shooting. Let the moderate Republican senators know that ads against them will be queued up if they don’t engage.
Now imagine out of that group of 20, 10 are left that are ready to vote with Democrats and Sinema and Manchin had previously been against the vote. How could they possibly be against something that has the support of 10 Republican Senators? Surely they would come around and agree to vote with the coalition. And there are the 60 votes.
Repeat with each topic facing the Senate and odds are good that the Democrats will end up with a different group of Republican senators for each topic. That’s okay. Go with whoever you can get.
And remember that if Republican senators don’t go along with the plan, their voters will know. Again, taking gun control legislation, consider a Republican Senator who votes against something super reasonable like universal background checks for assault weapons; the ad goes out showing a 14 year-old blowing away targets that are dressed up like schoolchildren with the voice saying “Senator So-And-So thinks this is the way to treat kids in schools”. Or lets say that a Republican goes along with it but then another Republican doesn’t — do they battle each other or do the contrasts just come through on their own? Either way, it works for the Democrats politically — and on top of that they got a legislative win.
Sure the realities will be messy and not easy. It will take a lot of discussions, hand-shaking, power lunches, all manner of icky DC political sausage-making. But it is what the times call for and it is what the politicians were sent to DC to do in the first place. So Democrats, that’s the way to do it and now Democrats, go get shit done.
