Today, while Speaker Pelosi’s Democratic House is passing direly needed and greatly progressive legislation, it cannot become law, and it will not be able to become law even if in 2020 Democrats take the Presidency or even if they swing a majority in the Senate in the upcoming election. Why? Because it is almost impossible in 2020 for Democrats to take 60 seats in the Senate. To do so would require flipping 13 Republican held Senate seats, and holding onto the Senate seat from Alabama. Winning an organizing majority of votes in the 100 seat Senate, however, is much more likely in 2020, and that majority gets to set the rules. But continuing to follow current rules that require 60 votes, on most issues, to end debate and call for a vote, and do so by requiring no real effort to filibuster by holding forth for hours and days on end, doom all the progressive legislation passed by the Democratic House. If anything can survive the Republican Senate’s 2020 minority’s obstruction and poison pills, it will be sorely watered down versions.
Senators tend to wilfully believe the Senate’s boast that it’s the world’s greatest deliberative body. Comity is valued, or at least it has been until fairly recently, above nearly any other value. Consensus, more than majority rule, drove the underlying dynamics of the Senate until the Obama era. Then, despite President Obama’s attempts to reach across the aisle time after time, Republicans largely fell into line with McConnell’s stated intent, before Obama even assumed office, to oppose everything Obama and Democrats proposed. For a very few months before the disastrous first mid-term election in 2010, Democrats were able to get legislation through with a cloture-busting 60 votes, but as soon as Democrats lost their super-majority with the Massachusetts by-election to replace Edward Kennedy after his death, all the progressive legislation passed by the House under Speaker Pelosi died on the vine. That will surely happen again if we don’t fix the Senate.
If left as is, frustration with “politics” in Washington will continue even if we surge to nominal victory in 2020. Democrats will get blamed for failing to solve many problems, Senate Republicans will see to that. Low-information voters will again seek out a snake oil con artist like Trump in 2024, or punish the party in power in 2022 if Democrats don’t clearly lay blame where it belongs, and the Republicans will once again take a wrecking ball to our country and to our democracy.
If we can protect that increasingly fragile democracy until 2020 and take the Presidency and Senate majority then, I think we really have very little time, and very few chances, to shore it up. Even that vanishing opportunity will fade if the current 60 vote rule on cloture is retained. However, if the 60 vote rule is dumped by Democrats, things could turn very unpleasant if they lose power once again as happened in 2016, when Republicans gained control over all branches of government. Only the Senate’s 60 vote rule over most issues, excluding court appointments, prevented probably permanent harm, if not an end, to our democratic experiment.
So how can Democrats do what must be done to save us, yet at the same time prevent even worse circumstances to occur in the future? Is there a way forward that can save the Senate for progressive legislation, but also save a bare Democratic minority as we have now from losing all influence and ability to stop Republican ransacking of the government?
Yes, I think there is. Currently, the Republican “majority” of 53 Senators in the Senate actually represents only 47.35% of the total US population (from the 2010 Census). Democrat’s 47 vote Senate “minority” actually represents 51.45% of the population, and if you look realistically at which party protects D.C. and Puerto Rico residents, Democrats represent 52.65% of the total US population. If Democrats focused on people, like most of our 2020 Presidential candidates say they do, Democrats could actually take back government and make it work for the people. If Democrats were to replace the 60 vote rule with a 60% representation rule to end cloture, Democrats would have the best chance of winning enough Senate seats to represent 60% of the US population, while Republicans have almost no chance to get to 60%. If and when Democrats lose an organizing majority of votes in the Senate subsequently, Republicans might replace the 60% rule by going back to a 60 vote rule, or they might abolish the super-majority cloture rule altogether. But it would be them “going nuclear” and not Democrats.
I get these numbers by taking the population of each state, awarding all of it to one party if it holds both state seats, or dividing it if the seats are divided. The table below shows the details. The “Dpop” line shows the percentage held by Democrats, while the “2020 gains?” line shows possible pickups in 2020. Add Dpop to 2020 gains, and you get to 60%. Thus gaining 7 seats (a 54 seat Senate majority) gives Democrats a 60% representation super-majority.
I think the first thing such a super-majority by population should do is add D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, along with passing a version of House Bill number 1 and passing card check and many other progressive legislative priorities that could transform the US and our politics, much like when California threw out the Republican blocking minority and transformed that state. But these are only possible if we address the filibuster. That, addressing the Senate rules, must be a presidential primary priority.
So any 2020 Presidential candidate who does not speak frankly, and strongly, about how to get progressive legislation through the Senate by amending the cloture rule, and who simply assumes their winning personality and persuasion will do it (it won’t!), will not get my vote in the upcoming primaries. And they shouldn’t get yours, either, no matter how otherwise attractive they may be, for they will be selling, as it were, a Democratic version of the snake-oil Trump sold in 2016 (“I alone can fix everything.”)
But I think there is a way forward. Achieving the 60% rule is not easy, but it preserves the consensus Senators claim they value. It represents a real majority and not a rotten-borough “majority” like we have now. It’s theoretically possible to contruct a 60 vote “majority” from a real minority of the population. A 60% rule vastly improves the equity of Senate votes by representing real people and not artificial boundaries. We would not have the absurdity of 12 tiny states with less than California’s population commanding 24 Senate votes, nearly a fourth of the entire Senate, while California with 12% of the entire population living there has literally 2% of Senate power.
State |
%USPop |
Republican Seats |
Democratic Seats |
Dpop |
2020 gains? |
AL |
1.5 |
1 |
1 |
0.75 |
|
AK |
0.2 |
2 |
|
|
|
AZ |
2.2 |
1 |
1 |
1.1 |
1.1 |
AR |
0.9 |
2 |
|
|
|
CA |
12 |
|
2 |
12 |
|
CO |
1.7 |
1 |
1 |
0.85 |
0.85 |
CT |
1.1 |
|
2 |
1.1 |
|
DL |
0.3 |
|
2 |
0.3 |
|
FL |
6.4 |
2 |
|
|
|
GA |
3.2 |
2 |
|
|
1.6 |
HI |
0.4 |
|
2 |
0.4 |
|
ID |
0.5 |
2 |
|
|
|
IL |
3.9 |
|
2 |
3.9 |
|
IN |
2 |
2 |
|
|
|
IA |
0.9 |
2 |
|
|
0.45 |
KS |
0.9 |
2 |
|
|
|
KY |
1.4 |
2 |
|
|
|
LA |
1.4 |
2 |
|
|
|
MA |
2.1 |
|
2 |
2.1 |
|
ME |
0.4 |
1 |
1 |
0.2 |
0.02 |
MD |
1.8 |
|
2 |
1.8 |
|
MI |
3 |
|
2 |
3 |
|
MN |
1.7 |
|
2 |
1.7 |
|
MS |
0.9 |
2 |
|
|
|
MO |
1.9 |
2 |
|
|
|
MT |
0.3 |
1 |
1 |
0.15 |
|
NE |
0.6 |
2 |
|
|
|
NV |
0.9 |
|
2 |
0.9 |
|
NH |
0.4 |
|
2 |
0.4 |
|
NJ |
2.7 |
|
2 |
2.7 |
|
NM |
0.6 |
|
2 |
0.6 |
|
NY |
5.9 |
|
2 |
5.9 |
|
NC |
3.1 |
2 |
|
|
1.6 |
ND |
0.2 |
2 |
|
|
|
OH |
3.5 |
1 |
1 |
1.75 |
|
OK |
1.2 |
2 |
|
|
|
OR |
1.3 |
|
2 |
1.3 |
|
PA |
3.9 |
1 |
1 |
1.95 |
|
RI |
0.3 |
|
2 |
0.3 |
|
SC |
1.5 |
2 |
|
|
|
SD |
0.3 |
2 |
|
|
|
TN |
2 |
2 |
|
|
|
TX |
8.7 |
2 |
|
|
4.35 |
UT |
1 |
2 |
|
|
|
VT |
0.2 |
|
2 |
0.2 |
|
VA |
2.6 |
|
2 |
2.6 |
|
WA |
2.3 |
|
2 |
2.3 |
|
WV |
0.6 |
1 |
1 |
0.3 |
|
WI |
1.8 |
1 |
1 |
0.9 |
|
WY |
0.2 |
2 |
|
|
|
|
98.8 |
53 |
47 |
51.45 |
60 |
|
|
|
|
|
|