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This comment by @jiwallner yesterday was about election security. But it would apply to gun safety legislation as well. Senate procedures do provide ways to force floor debates, and votes, on urgent legislation. They don’t guarantee majority support, and require some work...
...on the part of Senators who want the floor debates and votes. But the institution provides options. Current practice — as @jiwallner points out frequently — is to rely exclusively on unanimous consent requests made by the Majority Leader or his designee to begin...
...floor consideration of legislation. Current practice is also to complain when McConnell refuses to initiate consideration, or has a Republican Senator object to someone else’s unanimous consent request. The complaining is ineffectual, but it doesn’t take much work.
Now, here’s the point. There is a direct, inverse correlation between centralization of power within the Senate and the amount of legislative business the Senate is able to do. Power in today’s Senate is extremely centralized, and today’s Senate does very little legislation.
To change this, Senators have to challenge this: in the Senate, on the floor. Ideally, this challenge would be led or coordinated by the Democratic Leader, @SenSchumer, but it doesn’t have to be. Since ineffectual kvetching is a pastime of his, it probably won’t be, either.
Wallner singled out @KamalaHarris, which may strike some as unfair since she is running for President. For reasons that make more sense to them than they do to me, several other Democratic Senators are running for President as well. That still leaves over 40 Senators...
...all with large staffs, from which to get a group capable of organizing a series of procedural brawls on the Senate floor over whether to proceed to gun safety legislation. Or, election security legislation. Or both.
Democrats may well lose the resulting votes. There may be acrimony, and (worse) weekends spent in Washington once the Senate comes back in September. So what?
You can’t win victories if you won’t fight battles. For heaven’s sake, let @JohnCornyn have an opportunity to explain how dozens of people shot in El Paso is just the price of freedom. Give @senrobportman the chance to thank the NRA for making it possible for any American...
...to acquire the weapon that killed nine people in seconds last night in Dayton. Give @SenatorBurr & the other Republicans on the Intelligence Committee — who just last month completed a report documenting Russian interference in the 2016 elections — time to defend their...
...President and oppose legislation to make it harder for the Russians to give him the help he’s counting on next year. And make them vote.
If Democrats lose the votes, they lose. If they miss some fundraising calls and constituent meetings, these can be rescheduled. Republicans may remain united behind the fading NRA on gun safety; they may remain steadfast against election security as long as Trump opposes it.
There are worse things in the world. A lot of people in El Paso and Dayton experienced a lot worse just yesterday. Democratic Senators like @SenatorBaldwin @SherrodBrown & @SenStabenow are fond of telling constituents about their values; Brown in particular is very big on....
...what he calls “the dignity of work.” It’s about time he and other Democratic Senators did some. Instead of wringing their hands about how much attention Trump gets every day, maybe they should start acting like Senators and take attention for themselves.
This has been a long thread, & I apologize for thus testing readers’ patience. I dislike describing policy problems without suggesting solutions, or at least the beginning of solutions. Unlike some commentators, I take for granted that institutions like the Senate...
...that have been around for centuries have a certain amount of adaptability, or they’d have died long ago. If they’re not working as they ought to, it’s more likely the fault of Senators not using the Senate’s rules than of the rules themselves.
You can’t do everything in the Senate as the minority. But you can do more than cable hits & fundraising. Republican unity behind unpopular causes and an unpopular President is an obstacle. So, attack it. Test it. Make it hard.
Senators have more tools available to them than anyone in the country, but they have to be willing to use them. They won’t serve the country just sitting around counting on the voters and a new Democratic President to make them relevant again. That’s all. [end]
