It's as if some members of the Senate (lookin at you Bayh) don't even understand what it means to be a member of a party or how government works.

alas bernie, that would require a basic grasp of civics by most voters so they could distinguish between cloture and procedural votes. john "i was for it before i was against it" kerry proved that we probably aren't blessed with such an electorate.

As one of Bayh's constituents, he makes me sick. What a loser.

Why do you continue to call them "moderate"? That makes them sound reasonable. Call them DINO's, or conservative dems.

Or assholes.

Evan Bayh is my Senator and he is a dick.

And his wife, Susan, sits on the Board of Directors of WellPoint, one of the largest or largest health insurers in the country.

I cannot find the data on her stocks sales but I certainly seem to remember her profiting immensely on her stock options.

"Susan Bayh owns from $500,001 to $1 million in employee stock in WellPoint, the Indianapolis-based insurance giant on whose board she sits."

http://www.indystar.com/article/20090613/NEWS05/906130414

Is it just me or is this simply un-friggin-believable?

I think Sen. Bayh (D-DINO) should have a giant can of whup-ass opened on him starting now. With people like him in Congress, it's almost like Bush never left town.

The problem is that voting on a filibuster and come to be seen as the equivalent of voting on the bill under consideration, thus leading to what we have now where it essentially takes 60 votes to pass a bill instead of 51.

"On February 2, 2006, Congress passed the Senator Bayh-sponsored long-term care legislation that would make long-term medical care insurance available to more patients.

On February 3, 2006, Susan Bayh exercised options on 20,001 shares of Wellpoint.

On May 17, 2007, two weeks before it was announced that Wellpoint’s mega-CFO was stepping down for unspecified non work-related issues, Mrs. Bayh exercised options on 3,334 shares of Wellpoint.

According to SEC records, the pre-tax profit on the sale of Wellpoint stock from February 2006 to the present was approximately $1.045 million."

http://hoosierpundit.blogspot.com/2007/07/looking-closer-at-susan-bayh.html

The problem is that voting on a filibuster and come to be seen as the equivalent of voting on the bill under consideration, thus leading to what we have now where it essentially takes 60 votes to pass a bill instead of 51.

It never worked that way when the Democrats were in the minority - for some mysterious reason.

"It's hard to overstate how absurd this is. If legislation Bayh doesn't like comes to the floor, he can vote against it."

It is hard to overstate how ignorant you are.

If you don’t want a bill to pass then you don’t want a bill to pass. The leadership can put all sorts of pressure on you but it is still up to you. If you want the bill to pass then you work for its passage. If you want the bill to fail then you work against its passage.

At this point, the cloture vote IS the vote that counts.

The lobbyists and the leadership don’t really care how you vote on the final bill. They care how you vote on cloture.

Do you honestly think the cloture vote is NOT the vote that counts?

It never worked that way when the Democrats were in the minority - for some mysterious reason.

That's because there are more DINOs than RINOs.

If we agree that any senator can vote for or against a bill, but that a member of the Democratic caucus must vote with the caucus on cloture votes, then I think that any member who fails that requirement should be stripped of senority on committee appointments. That still mmay not do it as I am not convinced that they will be able to get Kennedy and Bryd to the floor to vote when needed.

Bayh's not a sheep, he's a lemming.

The real divide in Congress is not between the majority Democrats and the minority Republicans.

The real divide is between the majority of bought-and-paid-for tools of Big Business who seek to legislate and govern in the corporate interest, and the minority of honest public servants who seek to legislate and govern in the public interest.

Voting for cloture, and voting against the bill itself, works fine when you're only trying to impress the voters about which side you're on.

The problem with Dem 'centrists' like Bayh is that the audience they're trying to keep happy on votes like these is the business interests, and they can't be fooled by voting 'yea' on cloture, but 'nay' on the bill itself: they know the score, and they know which vote actually matters.

This is what it's about, and it's all that it's about: Bayh, Nelson and friends want to keep their freedom to vote against cloture in order to keep sucking up to business interests, while giving their constituents the shaft.

Then they can go home and tell their constituents that they would have voted for the bill, but it never came to a vote.

Time for Durbin to challenge Reid for the leadership post.

Poor Evan still has his feelings hurt because he didn't get to be the vice-president.

Sure, the guy's a tool, but I'm not overly worried about the obstructionist tools on the Dem side who might think about voting against cloture on big Obama/Dem bills. There's how many of them, 3 or 4? That makes them easy targets not only for progressive organizations but also for 90% of their Democratic collegues. Any Dem senator who considers voting against cloture on health reform is setting him or herself up for a shit tsunami, and they can count on their current term being their last. Plus, I can't imagine they'll find the remainder of their tenure in the Senate all that appealing if they obstruct the big stuff by supporting filibusters. The great majority of Democratic senators understand full well that the voters expect them to deliver on real health care reform. They won't look too kindly on any of their brethren who prevent them from taking action, because it will make them vulnerable in the next election as well.

64 or 65 is the new 60.

We need more decent D's in the Senate, 60 is meaningless.

Why can't Move On or other group organize a fund to help real Democrats who are willing to go against Bayh (and Nelson, etc) in primaries? I'd contribute. There are only a handful of these obstructionist Dems, and they can be isolated. There is no doubt that if one of them goes down in defeat to a primary opponent, it will inspire more party loyalty. And please, no rhetoric how its better to have Bayh or other weak Democrat than a Republican. Evan Bayh might as well have been a Republican, from his votes on Iraq, and other key issues under Bush.

Dammit, it's not even adherence to the Democratic party that ought to make these folks vote for cloture. It's that it's undemocratic (small D) not to, absent some overriding constitutional or other consideration. Helping a minority deny a vote on a measure that a clear majority supports is simply undemocratic. Supporting a filibuster should not be business as usual, but should require an extraordinary justification.

but surely if harry reid liked arm-twisting, this wouldn't be a problem.

i'm saying that acerbically: i think this kind of asshole position by bayh is immune to arm-twisting. this is about serving business interests (as someone noted up above) and trying to cloak himself in a veneer of reasonableness.

not to mention the extent of narcissism on display: this kind of positioning gets to make bayh a big player in his mind. what an ass.

Personally, I think (hope?) Bayh is simply paying lip service to the more conservative of his constituents. If he indeed supports a filibuster, I'll be the first in line to contribute to any dem willing to primary against him.

I recall the first Senator Bayh, a Liberal titan among titans in the Senate at a time when Indiana was much more conservative than it is now. Evan Bayh is no Senator Bayh.

There are problems with trying to dis-elect Evan Bayh. He has amassed such a massive warchest (est $15M) that not even the rethugs in the rethug state of Indiana will run a meaningful candidate against him. No dumbocrap in the state has either the name recognition or the money to be successful against the asshole.

Time to do away with the filibuster, or better yet, the Senate altogether. Neither of them were ever intended to be as they are now, and neither of them are really necessary.

What msmolly said at 3:06 pm.

The thing to do would be to find a more progressive candidate to run against Bayh as an independent in the general election, even if that means a Republican wins. In fact, that's the point, to show the others they'd better get with the program, or prepare their resumes for the private sector.
Obama and the White House and the rest of the Congressional Dems would go crazy. Well, too damn bad.

What msmolly said at 3:06 pm.

Bayh demonstrates how deeply owned he is by special interests by saying he can't go against the opposition party when they want to prevent anyone from even being able to vote on an issue in the senate. I can't go against the minority when they want to obstruct my party??? What hypocrisy.

A filibuster should be "rare" not the daily routine...that is pure obstructionism just to prevent the majority party from having any successes. Bayh shows the 2 things I hate most about him...his face.

Another thing to look at is just what makes the Republicans able always to must 40 for cloture.

Particularly in healthcare.

It's time to start running adds saying that Senator X enjoys such-and-such coverage as part of his own special federal program but wants to deny you the same. It wouldn't hurt to look into the health coverage conservative pundits enjoy, also.

BTW: Once upon a time, if you wanted to filibuster, you had to stay up there reading the telephone book 24/7. It's time to revive that. People should have to jump through hoops in order to effect a filibuster, not to oppose it.

On the other hand, if there's some sort of legislation that would turn, say, Missouri into a garbage dump, of course the senators from Missouri are going to oppose it. That's what the filibuster's there for. But make it difficult - real difficult - to filibuster. You should have to do a real Jimmy Stewart.

If he wants to filibuster the bill, then let him. Let him read from the phone book while the sergeant-at-arms locks everyone inside the Senate. Let's have an actual filibuster for as long as those tired old men can keep yapping. I bet he'd last no more than 6 hours.

Bayh is a horse's ass. Time to run anyone we can find against him, democrat, republican, cat, dog, parakeet, ... doesn't matter. Time for the democratic party to do a little house-cleaning.
And we could begin by removing the ridiculous appellation of moderate in referring to this clown.

Bayh is just saying that his vote has to be bought, in order to assure party cohesion on cloture motions. Like a good little ratficker, he sees the whole filibuster thing as a way to triangulate against his own party.

Let the bidding war commence ...

I am reminded of Will Rogers: "I belong to no organized political party, I am a Democrat." The minority Republican Senators achieve dispprotionate power by voting in lock step, yet guys like Bayh feel they have total freedom to go their own way while ignoring any obligation to represent the Democratic party. If he feels he can't regularly vote with the party on cloture votes, he should leave the caucus.

The healthcare reform bill must be particularly difficult for Bayh. However, this issue isn't small -- it was a major focus of a presidential election and it was debated nationally from the primaries through the general election.

I won't tell the Senator how he must vote, but if he's to be a part of the Dem caucus in fact as well as name, then how can he side against them on a cloture vote. It's not as though this issue or this bill are unfamiliar to the public (even in Indiana). It's not as though the Republicans haven't been working with Dems to make the legislation sound. Even the most debated aspect of the (likely) bill, the public option, is widely accepted and desired by the public.

I don't see how anyone who claims to be a Dem could vote against cloture.

If he has other problems and is hesitant to vote for a bill, then he should seek to amend it (or speak with senators on the relevant committees who could do that on his behalf).

This is an important piece of legislation which must be acceptable to the vast majority of Americans in order for it to be successful. Now is the time for anyone who has hesitations and objections speak out. Hinting at objections isn't enough.

I'm sorry, but this is stupid. It's an example of Benen's excessive partisanship.

Look: if someone is opposed to some law, for whatever reasons, then it's rational and acceptable for them to oppose it in whatever (legal) fashion they choose. Including failing to override a filibuster.

If the GOP had a majority in the Senate and was attempting to, say, privatize Social Security and some moderate Republican refused to vote with the majority to override a Dem filibuster, would Benen call that absurd? Of course not; he'd say that the GOP Senator was right to oppose the privatization and was right to use the tool available for him to ensure that the bill isn't passed.

I completely agree with the complaint against the filibuster-as-norm. This is an absurd situation. The filibuster itself is absurd. But it is just nonsense to argue that someone opposed to a bill is for some reason obligated to allow it to come to a vote if he/she has the ability to see that it doesn't. That is, unless and until the rules of the Senate are changed so as to eliminate such procedural challenges.

But that won't happen because most people believe that procedural challenges are useful and necessary. Whether that's true or not, who knows?

Keith -- great post. It is absurd for Benen to suggest Americans of either party or no party at all, must choose ALL the policies of the GOP or ALL the policies of the Democratic Party.

Politicians may be "selected" by the party establishments but they are elected by constituents.

Benen's logic further suggests that we may not need real people to hold office. Let's give voters a choice of either of two platforms and the winning platform is codified.

How many hundreds of thousands in payoff money does La Famiglia Bayh get each year from the health insurance industry, funneled to him through his wife's "job"????

It's time for a grass roots movement for term limits. These guys get in there and entrench themselves to the point where they are vulnerable to corporate lobbyists willing to make them the elite moneyed ruling class that they have become. (If I see Boehner's California/Florida-like fake tanned face one more time, I'll puke).

Not only that, but how is it that Kennedy and Byrd, both who had great careers, are putting the peoples' interests at a great disadvantage because they are too ill to serve? My heart goes out to both of them, but Byrd is 91 for heaven's sake! McCain will be there until he's 91 too. Soon we will have 100 year olds still in there. At some point the country needs to be turned over to the younger generations.

Same for the SCOTUS.

Keith and M,

So it is fine for Republicans to be beat up by their party leadership till they vote in lock step like a bunch of lemmings, but if the D's try to enforce a little bit of party discipline it is all wrong? What a pile of horse shit. Bayh is free to vote against cloture as often as he wants. But if he does he should do the right thing and resign from the D caucus. He wants the right to call himself a D well reserving the right to vote R. Maybe once or twice a session is OK, but not on a serious issue like health care reform. He needs to decide if he is really a Democrat, an independent, or a republican, and then stop being a hypocrite.

Keith Ellis, I understand your argument to be "all's fair in getting your desired result - use any trick in the book."

But it's a fairly trivial matter for any single member to make conducting Senate business impossible. I don't know if you've ever seen Bob Dole at work, but if he wanted business to stop, he could effortlessly and instantly make a series of motions and create an recursive tangle of parliamentary procedure requirements so impenetrable that they'd have to take the guy with the gavel out on a stretcher.

Or, if you're not as clever as Dole, you can brute-force it. A quorum call is always in order. Always in order. With enough determination, a single member could do so much to run out the clock on a session of Congress that only the most essential business could take place.

The Senate does not, and cannot, operate on an "any trick in the book" basis, and never has. Members respect limits on tactics of opposition/obstruction which are largely set informally as a matter of Senate culture and tradition. (Often these are discussed under the heading of "comity.") If they did not, the conduct of business in the Senate would be a war of all against all.

It's entirely appropriate for Steve to argue forcefully -- and correctly -- that the Senate's standards of acceptable conduct should not allow the privilege of unlimited debate to be abused in order to create a de facto supermajority requirement entirely foreign to Senate tradition.

It's precisely this heaping of opprobrium on bad actors and calling-out dishonorable behavior that goes against "comity" that the Senate polices its own conduct. It's entirely appropriate for private citizens to do what they can to influence this process.

(Gah. That came out all pretentious. Sorry.)

"It's entirely appropriate for Steve to argue forcefully -- and correctly -- that the Senate's standards of acceptable conduct should not allow the privilege of unlimited debate to be abused in order to create a de facto supermajority requirement entirely foreign to Senate tradition."

But was Benen arguing this, really? I have zero confidence that he would be arguing this position if the politics of this were reversed.

Allow me to be clear that I both strongly oppose this new supermajority business-as-usual and strongly support a public option in health care reform. Indeed, as a practical matter, I support stronger Dem party discipline and utilizing whatever resources are available to party leaders to achieve it.

But Benen was making an argument of principle, not practice. He selects, at this particular time and place, this one procedural matter and argues that Bayh is wrong in principle for taking the position Benen criticizes. I find this very suspicious and likely self-serving.

Yes, as a practical matter utilizing any and every procedural trick available to obstruct would be disastrous. I was not arguing otherwise. Rather, I was arguing that A) failing to vote for cloture is not an obscure and widely disliked "trick" by which to oppose legislation; and B) an argument that consistently opposes procedural obstructionism in principle is unlikely to persuade anyone, probably stupid, and almost certainly not one Benen would have applied against his own partisan political interests.

As a point of fact, I agree with the sorts of arguments that Yglesias often makes, and which others above repeat: there is far too much procedural obstructionism built into the American system and we'd be better off without much of it.

But I read Benen every day and while I usually agree with his positions, I very often see a great deal of self-serving partisan hypocrisy in his arguments. He applies standards against his opponents that he demonstratively does not apply to his allies. He could have merely argued that it would be better for the party if the Dems were as disciplined as the Republicans. But that wasn't enough for him; just as it is not enough for far too many people. Instead, he had to go the extra mile and argue that Bayh is, in principle, wrong to fail to follow his party's decision to vote for cloture on a bill Bayh opposes. It's gilding the lilly�there's no real need to argue that Bayh is wrong as a matter of principle unless it's an irresistable temptation, as it is for so many, to villify in a deep sense anyone and everyone with whom one substantially politically disagrees.

And this bothers me because, sadly, I think that currently this sort of rhetoric that habitually tars all dissident with the brush of essential wrongness is the dominant and oft-used weapon of the contemporary GOP. It's exactly why they have so much party discipline. Their views are Manichean, illiberal, deeply intolerant of dissent, and fetishizing of authority. It's a terrible habit of mind to emulate; it is a terribly wrong lesson to learn from the GOP that this is the best way to behave.

We Dems are much more tolerant of dissent. That is often a political liability; but it is in a deeper sense both a virtue and a strength. The Democratic Party is the party of traditional liberalism; traditional liberalism finds virtue in dissent. And traditional liberalism is the historical winner in this contest; no less today than in the past. I'll support some institutional reform in order to reduce the influence of the DINOs such as Bayh. But I won't support the argument that party discipline is itself a higher form of virtue. That's the argument of my enemies, not my allies.

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