59 > 60

With­out 60 in the Sen­ate, Demo­c­ra­tic lead­er­ship can actu­ally step up to the plate and take a hard line via rec­on­cil­i­a­tion — pass­ing a bet­ter bill in half the time — with­out piss­ing off the mod­er­ates and cen­trists who got their chance to make a deal (but didn’t work fast enough).

From here, a 59-​​seat Demo­c­ra­tic major­ity looks bet­ter than a 60-​​seat one: it rep­re­sents an unde­ni­able man­date, but thanks to the Repub­li­cans’ Phi­los­o­phy of No it is exempt from the fil­i­buster rule in much the same way a 55-​​seat Repub­li­can major­ity was under Bush. Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is now the only viable option to pass major poli­cies, and it will be used.

19 January 2010 – 9:20 pm | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Politics | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (293)