Olbermann: With Franken now on the Health committee... are we sure that [Harry Reid] can muster 60 votes to stop Republicans from filibustering health care reform?
Dean: We don't need 60 votes from health care reform, all we need is 51. We have reconciliation.
More on that in a moment, first let me extend my congratulations to Al Franken on finally being sworn in to the Senate. Somehow Norm Coleman and his lawyers managed to drag this process out to nine months, effectively robbing Franken of six months of the six-year term he was elected to. For a while I was a frequent listener to Al Franken's show on Air America Radio, and I enjoyed listening to him quite a bit. By every account Franken is a serious political figure and a truly smart man, don't expect to see any SNL-style clowning around while he is in office.
Howard Dean points out that, in this case, the Senate can use a rule known as reconciliation to bar the posibillity of a filibuster. For some reason he seems to be the only person appearing on the news shows that knows this. In any event, aside from reconciliation, Harry Reid and the Democrats in the Senate should not allow the filibuster to be as powerful as it is. If the Republicans want to stop an issue from going to the floor for a vote, they should have to actually stand up and give marathon readings from a cookbook. Lately, Republicans have only had to threaten a filibuster and the Democrats bring a motion for cloture.
Look at this graph. since the Democrats took control of the congress in 2007, cloture motions have skyrocketed!
Apparently Harry Reid needs 60 votes before he's allowed to brush his teeth in the morning. If Republicans were actually filibustering half as often as we've had cloture votes, the Senate would be shut down entirely. What this graph shows is just how badly things have gotten out of Reid's control. An effective leader would figure out a way to rein all of this in. Aside from the cloture situation, there was the Blagojevich/Burris debacle where Reid showed that he's a weak leader. Before Blago named a senator, Reid declared that he would not seat anyone that Blago appointed because of the indictment. Then when Blagojevich named Roland Burris, Reid caved within two days. Somehow it took Al Franken six months to get seated, but we had Burris in within a weekend?
Unsurprisingly, Roland Burris is now under investigation for allegedly promising to hold a fundraiser for Blagojevich in exchange for the Senate seat. If Reid had managed to stick to his guns for a couple of months, we would have had a chance to find this out as well as get Blagojevich out of office before seating a Senator from Illinois.
Exhibit three is Reid's apparent inability to exert any sort of control over the so-called Blue Dogs or conservative Democrats. This really gets to the heart of the matter. Given the current makeup of the Senate and Congress, there are really only two groups that matter right now: progressives and obstructionist Democrats. Some of these obstructionists are motivated by their strong ties to corporate lobbyists, but some of them also seem to be living in a state of fear, thinking that it's 1994 and Newt Gengrich is about to sweep in and take over. If Harry Reid was an effective leader he would be able to get a handle on this fear.
I'm a big fan of Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer. Watching his show and reading his books, you realize that what he's really talking about is leadership. Dogs naturally have a pack mentality: there is a pack leader, and everyone else is a follower. A good leader shows the pack what the best way forward is, and the pack follows him because following the leader serves the interests of the whole pack. Somebody should send Harry Reid the complete Dog Whisperer series on DVD. In this case, passing important reforms of the type that the people voted for in 2008 ensures that the people continue to support our representatives. 72% of Americans support a public option in the health care reform package, and if we can't get help from Reid and his Democrats, eventually we'll start to look elsewhere.
Will having a 60th vote in the Senate change the game for the Democrats? Not if they don't learn to grow a spine and fight for the reforms we want.
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