Bobby Fisher Stole My Lunch Money

60 is not the magic number in the Senate.  But, you’ve likely heard a lot of noise from Dems and Friends about how they can’t pass things like health care reform, despite controlling the White House and Congress.  The reason they give is that they don’t really control the Senate; even though they have a majority, they have trouble reaching the 60 votes needed for cloture (a vote to end debate in the event of a filibuster).

So, they blame the Republican minority for getting in their way.  Trouble is that the Republicans haven’t filibustered anything.  In fact, I haven’t even heard of a Republican making a hard threat of a filibuster.

If the Dems want to be able to blame Republicans for blocking legislation supported by a majority of the Senate, they need to make a genuine effort to bring the measure up for a vote.  If they really think their bill is important, then force a the Republicans to go through with a filibuster.  Filibusters are hard to do and can fail on their own, without a cloture vote.  And, the Dems can get themselves on the record of having actually tried, rather than whining about the big mean Republicans.  This is like the big football player crying that he can’t get to his classes because he’s afraid the chess geek might beat him up.

…Except that the big football player wouldn’t be a Democrat.  So, it’s like whatever sort of athlete would be a Democrat.  I guess…a soccer player. And I guess a chess geek could probably glance at a soccer player and get him to fall over and fake an injury.  Pretty much the exact thing the Dems are doing when the much weaker Republicans give them the stink eye.

One of the reasons I’ve been really disappointed with the Dem leadership is that after controlling both houses of Congress in 2006, they didn’t even try to change anything.  They just assumed Bush would veto anything they really wanted and didn’t try for anything harder than a non-binding resolution.  The better strategy would be to pass a bill and force Bush to veto it and thus have a solid record of exactly what they would do if they had control of a united capital.  Although, the way things have gone in the past year, Dems probably didn’t want anyone to see an irrefutable record of what legislation they would pass if they held the White House.

PS: The chess geek would totally be a Republican, because check geeks fight communists.