Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid speaks on Jan. 23, 2013, in Washington
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
Angus King was the reason Democrats thought they could kill the filibuster. Last year, the liberal-minded former governor of Maine ran for the U.S. Senate. He was an independent when he?d run the state, a character who requested Rolling Stones songs at his inaugurals, banging the cowbell when the band played ?Honky Tonk Women.? He?d be an independent in Washington. On the trail, though, he sounded ready to join Sen. Harry Reid?s caucus. If Washington was broken, it wasn?t Reid?s fault. It was because Republicans were mangling legislative procedures like the filibuster.
?As I understand it,? he told the Washington Post?s Ed O?Keefe last summer, ?all you have to do is have Mitch McConnell call Harry Reid and say, ?I?ll filibuster,? and there you go, it needs 60 votes. That?s ridiculous. The Constitution doesn?t say that ? my view of the filibuster is either you?ve got to lower the vote edge or make people really filibuster.?
King won easily, replacing a Republican moderate and boosting the Democrats? majority to 55 seats. Filibuster reformers, led by Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, suddenly had the numbers to outvote a shrunken group of ?old bulls? and moderates who weren?t ready to force a majority-rules reform through the Senate. Whenever reporters asked, Merkley would say he had 51 votes for reforms that would force the minority party to actually stay on the floor and filibuster bills and nominees.
Until today. Democrats woke up to a deal crafted by Reid and McConnell based largely on the work of veteran senators who did not want to change the 60-vote threshold for breaking filibusters. At an early afternoon meeting, Reid sold the caucus on the deal and on the hope that a bipartisan compromise was de facto better than a more aggressive package passed with only Democratic votes. When it ended, reporters asked King if the deal was good enough.
?I think it?s real progress,? he said. ?My quote would be [from] Mick Jagger. You can?t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.?
Let?s go with it: Did the Democrats get what they need? Ever since 2009, when the majority party started struggling to confirm judicial nominees and pass immigration or climate change bills, its newer senators have wanted to turn the filibuster into what voters probably think it is?sweaty, tired hold-outs reading from the phone book, burning with passion to stop bills. In 2011, before the start of the 112th Congress, Merkley and Udall pushed for reform and were shut down by Reid. One year later, on the floor of the Senate, the majority leader apologized to them. ?The rest of us were wrong,? he said. ?If there were anything that ever needed changing in this body, it?s the filibuster rule, because it?s been abused, abused, and abused.?
Liberal pressure groups banded together to help Merkley and Udall. The ?Fix the Senate Now? coalition, composed of labor unions and groups like Common Cause, held daily 10 a.m. phone calls to strategize. As recently as this weekend, the coalition?s legislative whips were pestering senators at preinaugural events and reminding them that they had 51 votes if they were willing to break the Republicans. The only reason they were even talking about this was that the Republicans knew Democrats had those votes.
It was during this final push that one activist reached Chuck Schumer. The New York senator broke the news: Reid didn?t actually want to ?go nuclear.? He was reluctant. He preferred to push McConnell into a smaller deal. The next few days of wrangling (with a pause for inaugural revelry) were all about the leaders reaching consensus and the membership learning to accept it.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=d95c2c87664abf44dbcad91c65fea106
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