Why Washington’s Democrats Are Weaker Than They Look

By Jim Geraghty

Thursday, May 27, 2021

 

E. J. Dionne thinks that Republican opposition to forming a January 6 commission will spur senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to embrace “filibuster reform.”

 

Manchin and Sinema definitely want to see Republicans get on board with the idea. They released a statement Tuesday which read:

 

The events of January 6th were horrific. We could never have imagined an attack on Congress and our Capitol at the hands of our own citizens. In the hours and days following the attack, Republican and Democratic members of Congress condemned the violence and vowed to hold those responsible accountable so our Democracy will never experience an attack like this again. A bipartisan commission to investigate the events of that day has passed the House of Representatives with a bipartisan vote and is a critical step to ensuring our nation never has to endure an attack at the hands of our countrymen again. We implore our Senate Republican colleagues to work with us to find a path forward on a commission to examine the events of January 6th.

 

But if Manchin and Sinema had wanted to add, “And if they don’t, we’ll nuke or modify the filibuster,” they could have. A threat like that certainly would have gotten everyone’s attention, but the two senators didn’t say that.

 

In fact, Manchin just said again on Tuesday it wasn’t going to happen. “Manchin, whose vote would be needed for Democrats to do away with the filibuster, told Forbes ‘no’ when asked if he would support nuking it, quipping, ‘I can’t take the fallout.’”

 

Another problem is that Sinema has been pretty adamant about her stance on preserving the filibuster for much of this year. “When you have a place that’s broken and not working, and many would say that’s the Senate today, I don’t think the solution is to erode the rules,” she told the Wall Street Journal after two constituent events in Phoenix in April. “I think the solution is for senators to change their behavior and begin to work together, which is what the country wants us to do.” Could Sinema change her mind? Sure. But blowing up the filibuster would also blow up most of her “sensible centrist who wants to work with the opposition” street cred along with it. And Arizona’s other senator, Mark Kelly, is bragging about his title as the “most bipartisan Senate Democratic freshman.”

 

This isn’t even getting into Democratic senators such as Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, who in 2017 opposed “any effort to curtail the existing rights and prerogatives of Senators to engage in full, robust, and extended debate as we consider legislation before this body in the future” and who has been pretty quiet on this issue since Democrats retook control of the Senate. Don’t think that Hassan wouldn’t get endless grief about flip-flopping on this.

 

How many of the current Senate Democrats want to be known as the senators who offered the deciding votes to shut out the Senate minority from the legislative process forever?

 

Left-leaning columnists keep threatening that Senate Democrats will nuke the filibuster, while actual Senate Democrats keep publicly insisting, “No, we won’t!”

 

Dionne is also pretty clearly cheering for Biden and Senate Democrats to give the Republicans a take-it-or-leave-it offer on infrastructure, and, if the GOP won’t sign on, pass their own bill, and either eliminate the filibuster beforehand or use the process called reconciliation, which only requires a simple majority. (Because bills passed through reconciliation must be entirely focused upon the budget, and infrastructure bills are usually just big spending bills, the Senate Parliamentarian is likely to approve the maneuver.)

 

But the $1 trillion-at-minimum question is whether Democrats have 50 votes for one particular infrastructure bill. They’re likely to get there eventually. But for now, the kind of bill that would appeal to Manchin, Sinema, and Kelly is probably much less expensive and expansive than the kind of bill that would appeal to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

 

Biden and his staff’s current situation of frustrating, drawn-out, slow-moving negotiations with Senate Republicans is saving the White House from managing frustrating, drawn-out, slow-moving negotiations among Senate Democrats. Liberal Democratic senators will see the choice to abandon bipartisan negotiations as a chance to get every spending proposal they’ve ever wanted in one bill. Democratic senators from red and purple states will be less enthusiastic. They can see the worries about inflation. If Democrats keep passing massive spending bills all by themselves, they’ll have no one else to blame if the economy isn’t thriving and creating jobs at a white-hot pace.

 

Also, in 18 months, a bunch of Democrats in those not-so-blue states have to face the voters again.

 

·        Kelly’s up for reelection next year because he’s serving the remainder of the late John McCain’s six-year term from 2016.

 

·        Colorado’s Michael Bennet is generally considered safe, but remember he won with just 50 percent in 2016.

 

·        Hassan is sweating whether she’ll face the strongest GOP challenger of the cycle, governor Chris Sununu.

 

·        Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto says she fully expects a tight race next year, whoever her opponent is: “I am also very, very cognizant of the fact that in the last election, Joe Biden won Nevada by just over 2 percent. It’s a purple state.”

 

·        Raphael Warnock represents Georgia, but so far, he’s voting like he represents Vermont.

 

Does this look like a Senate Democratic caucus that is ready to give Mitch McConnell the middle finger and pass Biden’s original $2.3 trillion infrastructure bill?

 

In light of all this, is it any wonder Biden is okay with extending the deadline for bipartisan talks? The vulnerable red- and purple-state Democrats need some bipartisan cover if they’re going to vote for another massive spending bill. And Biden would prefer to have a unified Democratic Party blaming Republicans for the inability to come to a consensus than to have a divided Democratic Party with one side of the Senate caucus blaming the other side of the Senate caucus for the inability to come to a consensus.

 

Chuck Schumer is largely bluffing when he says the Senate will pass an infrastructure bill in July, with or without Republicans. Democrats can go down this path, but it’s a risk that at least a handful of their senators don’t want to take, and when the Senate is split 50–50, the Democrats can’t afford to lose anyone. Those with long memories can remember when Democrats were convinced all the legislation they passed in 2009 and 2010 would protect them in the midterms.