Fifty Plus One
We are a nation divided. The chasm of that divide is nowhere more apparent than in the United States Senate. There are many who say that the Senate is anachronistic, representing a “false” America. In a nation where the term “one person, one vote” is taught as unassailable doctrine, the Senate is an institution founded on the exact opposite. In the Senate, one in 700,000 has as much say as one in 52 million.
But the Senate “representation” is more of a mirror image of America than even the House of Representatives. America is divided; by race, by economic class, by political party, and by allegiance to the false ideology of the 45th President. And so is the Senate.
There are forty-eight Democrats in the Senate, two independents who organize with the Democrats, and fifty Republicans. Only by virtue of Constitutional tie-breaking by the Vice President does the Democratic Party control the assembly. On any “party-line” issue, every single vote counts. If Democrats can gain a tie, they can win.
But the arcane rules of the Senate allow a single member, with the support of forty others, to prevent passage of any legislation (Filibuster). So to get most things done, it requires not fifty plus one, but sixty votes. And that simply doesn’t happen much.
Wedge in the Crack
A “wedge” issue is one which further divides the nation. And any issue involving voting rights drives right to the heart of our current crisis. The United States has “papered over” the Insurrection of January 6th. Some Congressmen even pretended that the rioters were “tourists” wandering the halls of the Capitol improving their knowledge of US History. But underneath the thin veneer of “moving forward”, the lies about a stolen election that drove the Insurrection are unresolved and un-refuted.
The falseness of those lies really doesn’t matter. A majority of Republican voters, and a LARGE majority of Republican primary voters, believe the 2020 election was stolen (MTP). Whether Republican Senators know better or not really doesn’t matter. They want to get re-elected, and in order to win their primaries, they must agree with their voters.
These lies are enabling state legislatures throughout the nation to institute restrictive and suppressive new voter laws, laws aimed at reducing the number of Democratic votes. And even more importantly, those laws allow those same state legislators to overturn the results of fair elections.
On the Democratic side, suppression laws may well determine which side controls the House and the Senate. Both Republicans and Democrats learned the lesson of the Georgia Special Election of January 5th, the day before the Insurrection. If everyone can vote – Democrats have a much better chance of winning.
Play to the Base
So both sides in the US Senate are bound to “play to their base”. The want to stand in “support” of their voters. So there is little room to compromise, or to reach some “bipartisan” deal that might be possible on some less controversial issue like spending trillions of dollars on infrastructure. It is absolutely no surprise then, that the Senate split 50-50 on the “For the People” voting rights act that would have prevented many of the state legislative restrictions. It failed – unable to gain the sixty votes needed to overcome the filibuster rule.
Republicans can tell their voters that they held firm. Democrats can demonize Republicans as using “arcane” rules to thwart the will of the people. Nothing moves forward.
But we know there is a path forward, one in control of a few Democrats. Should they decide that the “arcane” filibuster rule is done, they can, by a fifty plus one vote, be done with it. But those Democrats have also made a political calculation. They have determined that their voter base values “bipartisanship” more than action. They can hear the opposition ads now if they remove the filibuster rule: “ Joe Manchin is a puppet of Nancy Pelosi and the Socialist Democrat Left”.
Play Out the Game
The “For the People Act” is not over. Manchin will bring a “compromise” bill to the floor of the Senate in the next couple of weeks, one that gives Republicans the national “voter ID” they have wanted to decades. But the likelihood of getting ten Republicans to agree and overcome the filibuster rule is almost non-existent.
So why go through the motions? There are a few of possibilities. First, perhaps Joe Manchin knows something the rest of us don’t. Perhaps he has found a wedge in the Republican side, among the retiring members, that could gain him his ten votes. Maybe he can use the ultimate negotiating tool – the filibuster itself – to leverage their support. Vote for this bill, or I will have to vote to modify or even end the filibuster. That might be his ploy.
And maybe Joe Manchin will actually allow himself to be dragged into filibuster reform. He has said that voting rights are the most important law he could pass, and it is within his power to get that done. Maybe he needs the visual of getting dragged, kicking and screaming, across the line of filibuster reform, to make the change.
Or if not that, then at least Manchin will have “reached across the aisle”, striving to find of bipartisan solution to our most divisive issue. He will have “played to his base”, standing as the Senator in the middle from the state that is so far to the right, for normalcy in times of hyper-partisanship.
Fish or Cut Bait
The Senate will “play out the game”. But as the clock winds down, it will be time for those Democrats placed in the middle to “fish or cut bait”. For the past five years we have waited for acts of political courage, of Senators (and Congressmen) to stand up for the right instead of the expedient. It has happened far too infrequently and our nation has been sorely disappointed in the “fortitude” of our leaders.
They will be tested once again here in the next few weeks. And like Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football, we will all be lining up to take our swing again. Perhaps this time, we will kick the ball through the goal.
