can someone explain why the senate doesn't require real filibusters anymore?

[yurbud]

It seems to me that the Democrats are using it as a figleaf to evade real change.

The GOP went farther than threatening to require real filibusters--they threatened to do away with it altogether.

Is there nothing Democrats will actually fight for and take risks for on our behalf? Why is instant knee-jerk action only reserved for continuing wars and bailing out Wall Street sociopaths?

but I digress.

Can someone explain why they don't do real filibusters anymore? Is it just laziness or an excuse to carry more corporate water and have a procedure to blame instead of obvious corruption?

[polichick]

1. Probably an excuse to carry corporate water - convenient cover. nt

[Fumesucker]

2. Clearly, it would not be "bipartisan"..

And our current administration values bipartisanship above everything.

[Kablooie]

3. Jimmy Stewart made it look too strenuous.

[HughMoran]

4. Lazy old men

...or you can believe it's some crazy conspiracy now that we need it (but could've cared less until recently.)

[KrR]

5. Byrd

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/11/how_robert_byrd_jr_created_the.html

[notesdev]

6. That would be ungentlemanly

and since it's all a dog and pony show, it's not like they really care enough to offend each other.

[timeforpeace]

7. Senate collegiality supposedly trumps partisanship. Seems to during Dem as well as Repuke majorities

[yurbud]

19. if it was really collegiality, when a progressive proposed something, they would be too polite

to oppose it.

[onenote]

8. because they fear (with some reason) that it could backfire

First, "real" filibusters place more of a burden on the side opposing the filibuster -- the Democrats would have to make sure there was a quorum or the debate stops, so Democrats would have to be prepared to have 50 Senators present around the clock.

Second, the public at large doesn't really understand the process -- hell, a lot of DUers don't understand it (as demonstrated by a thread started earlier today by someone asking if Kucinich could filibuster the bill in the House). With as little understanding of the process, the responsibility for all work on other matters stopping -- such as, for example, the defense appropriations bill -- would fall on the Democrats. The result would be that the Democrats would end up caving and that would look even worse in terms of the reaction of the largely uninformed public. A good rule in politics is to try to avoid fights you can't win. While it would be nice to believe that a filibuster of the health care bill would blow up in the repubs face, its far far from certain that would be the case.

Real filibusters, historically, had a pretty good success rate -- either the bill was killed or major compromises were made to get it passed. The breaking of the filibusters that held up Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s is not a good comparison because those filibusters were broken by bipartisan efforts coordinated by the Democratic and repub leadership.

I would actually like to see the Democrats force a real filibuster in this case, but I'm not particularly surprised that the leadrship (and presumably a significant number of Democratic Senators) don't want to go there.

[Hippo_Tron]

10. The civil rights filibuster was broken because Mansfield watered down the bill...

To get moderate Republicans to vote for Cloture. People have this absurd notion that it ended because all of the filibustering senators collapsed on the floor, or some other such nonsense.

[Hippo_Tron]

9. Simple game theory, credible commitments

Before the change in Senate rules, the majority leader's hand was forced by the rules to play a strategy that would not otherwise be credible. He was required to shut down senate business by the rules as long as a filibuster continued. When given the option not to shut down the senate it simply isn't a credible commitment to shut down senate business over one piece of legislation unless the legislation is so unambiguously important to the majority that they value it more than all of the rest of the senate business that could be conducted that year. Furthermore, defeating the legislation has to be worth less than conducting all senate business to the minority in order for them to fold.

Republicans have an extremely high payoff for defeating health care reform because it would basically mean that Obama's first two years are a failure. They will stand on the floor and filibuster until the midterm elections, I guarantee you.

Even with the Senate rule change the outcome would be no different in this case. The only difference is that the Republicans would actually have to filibuster. But since they would actually filibuster it would do nothing for health care. Watching a bunch of Republicans having to filibuster for a year isn't worth getting no bill at all and getting nothing else through the Senate.

[clear eye]

15. I'm not sure about your scenario.

"They will stand on the floor and filibuster until the midterm elections, I guarantee you."

It would get pretty hot for them in the MSM and out in the grassroots pretty quick, I think, as the whole country checked in each day to see if the Republicans had decided to let Senate business go on by allowing health care reform.

Of course the current bill of mandate w/o guaranteed coverage, capped profits, or affordability is not going to get up much of a rooting interest in the public. If an even half-decent bill was at stake, like the early House bill, forcing a real filibuster would work pretty well, IMHO.

[Hippo_Tron]

16. Sure it would work that way in an ideal world

In the real world enough of the MSM will say the Republicans are heroic for stopping evil gubmint socialism. Furthermore, the senate rules allow the Majority Leader to allow senate business to continue as well. That's the point I was making earlier. Before then if a filibuster was going on the Majority Leader could go on TV and say "look my hands are tied, they are the only ones that can allow senate business to go on by stopping the filibuster". Now he has the option to let senate business go on and if he doesn't use it he will get blame as well as the minority.

[clear eye]

18. Ahh. So that's what's gone wrong and changed the # of filibusters

from 37 to 139 per session.

It's a heckuva lot less costly and easier to "filibuster" when you are doing it in theory only as the rest of business goes forward, and only have to start up if the offending bill is brought back to the floor.

Odd that when Rachel Maddow asked the person she was interviewing last night if there was a rules change that affected the amount the filibuster was used, whoever it was (can't remember) didn't say so.

[Hippo_Tron]

20. We're talking about the biggest item on the Democrats' legislative agenda

If the old system was in place this would be one of those 37 things that would get a real filibuster.

[Hippo_Tron]

21. In this particular instance it's not about the number

Health care is the biggest item on the Democrats legislative agenda. Under the old system this would be one of the 37 things that would be filibustered. But yes you are correct that the number of filibusters is now significantly higher.

[inna]

11. Kayfabe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe

(I first saw this term today, in another DU thread. Seems to fit this particular pattern pretty well. :shrug: )

[unblock]

12. they became an embarassment to the institution. all senators felt like fools explaining it

and why important legislation was being held up because someone was reading the phone book.

and for you young 'uns, a phone book is a massive printed and bound version of microsoft outlook vcards in an entire geographical area.

[bridgit]

13. cause both houses of congress have too many gold bricks, that don't like to really work...

between elections

[clear eye]

14. Excellent question.

Only thing I can think of is that they don't want to be blamed for having gotten nothing done for the whole session. But since the opposition will clearly be the one at fault, that fear would simply be cowardice.

[asdjrocky]

17. Because they are all very good friends.

They don't want to actually hurt each others feelings, even if it might benefit the American people.