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Waiting out a filibuster is a high-risk, high-stakes game for the majority party in the Senate. The risk is high because the likelihood of minority defection is low. The stakes are high because, when the Senate is deadlocked and nothing gets done, the public will punish the incumbent majority at the polls.
Now, if you’re someone who is up on congressional procedure, follows the news fairly closely, and supports the legislative agenda of the majority party, you would no doubt blame the minority’s obstructionism for congressional failure. And hey, you’d be right. You’d also be in select company. According to this Pew Research poll, only 26% of Americans know that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. Actually, “know” might not be the right word. 26% answered correctly when asked whether it takes 51, 60, 67, or 75. The most popular, and most honest, answer was “Don’t know,” at 37%. Of the 63% who thought they did know, or who just wanted to take a stab at it, 41% got it right.
The point here is not that people are stupid. The point is that there’s a systemic crisis of accountability in American politics today. As Matthew Yglesias recently suggested, the voting public cares about results, not about congressional procedure. If the majority doesn’t get the job done, then maybe the other guys will. Switch parties and repeat. Cyclical dysfunction, made to order.
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which is exactly why Dems should just nuke the filibuster altogether (I believe Republicans refer to it as ‘the Constitutional Option,’ right? haha). Certainly among political types heads would explode, but most Americans wouldn’t care. And, hey, even if they failed the hysterics from the chattering class would at least serve to educate the rest of the country about this stuff.
ps. i responded to the comment you left over at my place
I agree with Lee. People want results. I can see where the filibuster maybe was a a good idea to stop truly heinous legislation but the way it’s threat is deployed today on legislation that GOPers supported 15 years ago is nuts. Harry Reid appears to be not too popular among the citizens but maybe that’s because he is perceived as weak. If he actually broke the filibuster and said “Democracy now!” then maybe he’d get some credit for it.
I wouldn’t be too sure that folks won’t notice or care if the Democrats were to nuke the filibuster. A move like that could be perceived as changing the rules in the middle of the game–which is in fact exactly what it would be. Americans may not know how many votes it takes to break a filibuster, but they understand that there are rules of procedure. And changing the rules to reach an outcome that couldn’t be achieved otherwise is paradigmatically unfair conduct. That’s playground stuff that everyone would recognize. “Cloture” doesn’t mean much to the public at large, but everyone understands cheating. And if it’s not widely believed that the current rules are unfair or undemocratic, then nuking the filibuster is going to look like cheating.
That said, I’m planning to write some more about the different ways we could abolish the filibuster.