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Does Barack Obama Want To Keep Saxby Chambliss In The Senate?

The Netroots may need to be prepared to continue their disappointment with their President

By: Icarus (Diary)  |  November 19th, 2008 at 12:51 PM  | 

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There are a lot of easy to explain reasons why Barack Obama probably won’t come to Georgia to campaign on behalf of his newest best friend, Jim Martin. (I say newest because former Senate opponent and DeKalb county CEO Vernon Jones is still taking great pains to point out that Jim Martin voted for John Edwards in the Georgia Presidential Preference Primary, even though Edwards had already dropped out of the race).

Obama is, as he should be, building his team to manage the country through a set of unprecedented crisis. In addition, he may not want to unnecessarily risk capital on a race that is probably a loser for his side. The contrarian in me tells me there is one possible other good reason: Obama doesn’t want Jim Martin in the Senate.


Despite Martin’s snub in the primary, I don’t believe it is anything personal. It’s just business. Obama is already taking heat from the Netroots, those left of the left, who created him. They aren’t happy with some of his early appointments, and believe they are too centrist. They are beginning to fear that Obama may actually try to govern from the center, instead of the lurch to the left that they believe they were promised in the primary.

The Dems picked up Senate seat 58 yesterday. There’s a very good chance that they’ll pick up seat 59 in Minnesota when the recount, or the recount of the recount, or the court interpretation of the recount, gives the Dems the numbers they want there.

If Saxby loses, and the Dems have their 60 seats, they have no excuses on why the far left can’t be placated. All the looney fringe stuff that the Dems use to fire up their base will either have to be voted on, or the Dems will have to explain to the base that they were just being used, and they’ll have to settle for far less “progress” than they were promised.

Fessing up to the base isn’t easy. Just ask the pro-lifers in the Georgia General Assembly who refuse to vote on the “Human Life Amendment”.

As long as the filibuster remains a technical possibility, Republicans can continue to be the official excuse why the democrats aren’t able to pass their “progressive” agenda.

I believe Barack Obama is an intelligent man, and can make political calculations with the best of them. I also believe he learned from the first two Clinton years that if you over-reach, your majority status can easily become a memory. And I believe that, while there will be some serious moves to the left under President Obama, he will want to carefully pick and choose those issues, and pepper them with some center or center right initiatives to give him proper cover.

As such, Jim Martin may have to be a sacrificial lamb. Saxby Chambliss may need to remain in the Senate to provide the Obama administration the excuse to not do all the things the netroots believe must be done to make the world an eco/vegan/carbon-free/peta-friendly paradise.

And I’m fine with that.

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COMMENTS

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  • Common_Cents

    Do we need an operation chaos to give Obama a full mandate in order to give him no excuses?

    • Icarus

      Though the entertainment value of watching the netroots torture themselves as they realize that they’ve been betrayed would be excellent entertainment value.

      • c17wife

        We need to win this one. Period.

        • NightTwister

          I’d rather he got it the other way, by forcing Reid to eliminate the filibuster rule. That will show the American people just how far Obama will go to rule this nation.

          • Common_Cents

            My comment was tongue in cheek. I live in MN and am prematurely suffering from Frankenstein syndrome.

            I just hope the Obama legacy(read lingering damage/punishment) doesn’t last much longer than a decade or two.

          • Tamblin

            On some issues a filibuster isn’t allowed, on others the chances of the entire republican delegation maintaining a filibuster is low. On those issues where the reps do then Obama can point and yell obstructionist.

            Getting rid of filibusters would just be gratuitous. Changing them back to the way they used to be, i.e. a senator continuously talking, would probably be a good idea (personally I don’t think they ever should have changed to the current method).

  • Spiral

    The 60 vote filibuster should be eliminated.

    The Democrats use the filibuster more effectively than the Republicans do.

    When the Republicans use the filibuster the media brings this “obstructionism” to the attention of the public. Since most Americans don’t understand the details of Senate rules, Americans might think, “Gosh. Those Republicans are sore losers. They lose the election. But they still won’t let the country move forward.” Of course, the media gives them this line. So, many uninformed Americans accept it.

    But when the Democrats use the filibuster against Republicans, the media either does not cover it or the media will present the Democrat obstructionists as “profiles in courage” fighting against “the radical ideas of the Right” and preventing “tyranny of the majority.

    Did the filibuster stop Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid or food stamps for farm subsidies or the Department of Education?

    Nope.

    Did the filibuster stop any of Clinton’s judicial nominees?

    Nope.

    Will the filibuster stop any of Obama’s judicial nominees?

    Nope.

    But did the filibuster stop conservative nominees?

    Yes.

    Sure, the 60 vote filibuster does give the Republican leadership an excuse to make to the Republican grass roots. They can say, “We tried to implement the conservative agenda. But the Democrats wouldn’t let us. They filibustered us every step of the way.”

    They leave out the fact that the majority can overturn the filibuster using the Byrd Option whenever it wants.

    So, the federal court of appeals will move solidly to the Left because the Democrats filibustered Bush’s nominees but Obama’s nominees won’t be filibustered.

    Get rid of the 60 vote filibuster rule and replace it with a 51 vote filibuster rule.

    Then we can hold the party that wins a majority of seats accountable for their actions and policies. Excuse making would no longer work quite as well.

    • Spiral

      I would prefer that the Senate modify its rules to say that it takes 51 votes to achieve cloture (a vote on the underlying legislation or nomination).

      From 1917 to 1975, the requirement was 2/3rds of all Senators present and voting.

      Then the Senate changed the requirement to 3/5ths of all Senators chosen and sworn.

      Prior to 1917, the Senate had no cloture rule. This means that a single senator could prevent a vote even if nearly every other US Senator supported the underlying legislation or nomination.

      In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson criticized the 11 US Senators who filibustered the Armed Ship Bill designed to protect American merchant ships from German U-Boats.

      But since there was no cloture rule, the Senate could not end debate. They ended up using the Constitutional Option and creating a cloture rule of 2/3rds present and voting.

      • Spiral

        Here’s a article by Gold and Gupta on the filibuster rule

        The original cloture rule, adopted in 1917, itself appears to be the result of a threat to exercise the constitutional option. Until 1917, the Senate had no cloture rule at all, although one had been discussed since the days of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. The ability of Senators to filibuster any effort to create a cloture rule put the body in a quandary: debate on a possible cloture rule could not be foreclosed without some form of cloture device.

        The logjam was broken when first term Senator Thomas Walsh announced his intention to exercise a version of the constitutional option so that the Senate could create a cloture rule. His method was to propose a cloture rule and forestall a filibuster by asserting that the Senate could operate under general parliamentary law while considering the proposed rule. Doing so would permit the Senate to avail itself of a motion for the previous question to terminate debate–a standard feature of general parliamentary law.

        In this climate, Senate leaders quickly entered into negotiations to craft a cloture rule. Negotiators produced a rule that was adopted, 76-3, with the opposing Senators choosing not to filibuster. But it was only after Senator Walsh made clear that he intended to press the constitutional option that those negotiations bore fruit. As Senator Clinton Anderson would remark in 1953, “Senator Walsh won without firing a shot.”

        The same pattern repeated in 1959, 1975, and 1979. In each case, the Senate faced a concerted effort by an apparent majority of Senators to exercise the constitutional option to make changes to Senate rules. In 1959, some Senators threatened to exercise the constitutional option in order to change the cloture requirements of Rule XXII. Then-Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson preempted its use by offering a modification to Rule XXII that was adopted through the regular order. In 1975, the Senate three times formally endorsed the constitutional option by creating precedents aimed at facilitating rule changes by majority vote, although the ultimate rule change (also to Rule XXII) was implemented through the regular order after off-the-Floor negotiations.

        • Tamblin

          can serve an important role of a meaningful brake on the power of the majority, I just think using it should be the exception and not the rule (as it has become). Changing it back to the talk-y kind of filibuster rather than just a vote, means that it bogs down all sense actions and is something of a spectacle (not to mention requiring some personal sacrifice). That seems a reasonable balance to me.

          • Spiral

            Constraining the majority is worthy goal.

            But it seems that good legislation and good nominees end up getting defeated by the super-majority requirement than bad legislation and bad nominees.

            For example, John Bolton was filibustered for the UN position.

            Any guesses as to whether Obama’s UN nominee will be successfully filibustered?

            I thought so.

            So, the filibuster creates a “heads the liberals win and tails the conservatives lose” situation.

            Unfortunately, many moderate Republicans like things the way they are because, deep down, they want the federal court of appeals to move to the Left. That’s why Lindsay Graham and John McCain assisted the Democrats in sinking conservative judicial nominees under Bush. They wanted their objections to waterboarding to be made part of the “living constitution.”