Don’t think the Republicans won’t try them. The process of choosing a new senator from MA is going to be complicated (via Steve Benen):
But the effort to find a quick replacement for Mr. Kennedy may prove complicated. In the week before his death, reaction in Boston to his request ranged from muted to hostile. The state’s Democrats found themselves in the awkward position of being asked to reverse their own 2004 initiative calling for special elections in such instances.
It would be a mistake to think that Senate Republicans won’t make the most of the the loss of one Democratic vote in the Senate. Remember: anything less than 60 votes for passage is nook-yoo-ler.
Jim
Caroline has phoned her real estate agent.
Napoleon
I thought I heard (on NPR?) that someone ran a poll and a majority of Mass. citizens approved of changing the rule to get someone appointed stat.
Regardless, they need to get a replacement in asap.
MikeJ
Time to bring Ensign up on ethics charges How many republicans do we need to get rid of to make 59 work?
PaulW
Headline banner on my blog:
Dead Kennedys Get New Member
Should be a shoo-in for MOST TASTELESS HEADLINE EVER Award… >:-)
General Winfield Stuck
They can kiss my Atomic Ass.
dmsilev
Senators like to blather on about their personal relationships with each other and the comity of the body and so forth. If there’s any truth to that blather, one long-time GOP Senator (say, Orrin Hatch) would vote for cloture on health care, casting the vote that Teddy cannot.
And pigs will fly over a frozen Hellscape.
-dms
PeakVT
There’s really no option but using the reconciliation rule now. The bill can’t be put off until next year.
Keith
60 votes? I thought we’d already moved to the 75 vote threshold last week.
PaulW
Keith, the GOP wants it to be 80.
Tom65
Fuck ’em. Harry Reid needs to grow a set and drop this 60-vote bullshit.
Demo Woman
@dmsilev: The repubs will ban together. There will blame the defeat of the health care bill on Kennedy’s absence. Oh yeah, McCain already started that.
I think that if MA reverses itself, Vicky should take the seat. There will still be noise on the other side but it would be over shadowed by the support the public has for Kennedy’s wife.
KCinDC
MikeJ, the answer is 1. With 98 senators, 59 is enough to reach the 3/5 threshold to break a filibuster. Of course, one of those 59 might have to be Byrd, and I wouldn’t count on his being able to show up.
joe from Lowell
Caroline has phoned her real estate agent.‘
It doesn’t work like that anymore. This isn’t the 50s, or even the 80s.
KCinDC
100 => 60
99 => 60
98 => 59
97 => 59
96 => 58
95 => 57
94 => 57
93 => 56
92 => 56
91 => 55
90 => 54
Brien Jackson
Ya know what would be really nice? If there were someone in the Senate who could seize the moment to create a real emotional swell for reform in Teddy’s memory. I wonder if Caroline wants to be a Senator. Oh…
As far as the short term goes, I don’t know if it means anything really. Susan Collins and, especially, Olympia Snowe have a pretty strong incentive to see something called healthcare reform get passed, and with only 59 Democrats, at least one of them could claim credit for its passage plausibly. And Snowe is even on the Finance Committee, so she’s very well positioned to do something, preferably before Kennedy can be replaced. So I’m not sure it changes the politics of the Senate that much, and if anything at least Snowe may want to see the process speed up now.
Now what will get in that bill is a different matter.
demkat620
I imagine David Broder will have a column tomorrow calling on the Democrats to celebrate Teddy’s life and honor his service by waiting until his successor has been seated to attempt any HC reform.
“If that means January, then so be it. It will be more bipartisan.”
Napoleon
@demkat620:
. . . or maybe the WaPo editorial page will call for Congress to gut Medicare in his honor so at to “make it sustainable”.
Ash Can
@dmsilev: Based on what I’ve read about their relationship, I do think that’s entirely possible. And if that doesn’t happen, well, hell’s bells, let the Republicans filibuster. Or, I should say, make them. Make them occupy the chamber around the clock. Make that brave, noble Eric Cantor stand there reading the Baltimore phone book aloud at 2 in the morning. And while that spectacle is going on, keep the Dem senators visible and available outside the chamber, saying to any camera or microphone willing to stop and linger, “There. See that? That’s what our Republican colleagues think of the American people.” And then the Prez can assemble a news conference and say “Well, we wanted Congress to do it, and a majority of them did do it. The misguided few are now trying to thwart the will of the many. We’re left with little choice but to take things into our own hands.”
I know that the influence of the insurance lobby is still worrisome. And the process is still riddled with pitfalls, landmines, and out-and-out assholes. But it ain’t over till it’s over, and the Republicans are not in an advantageous position.
sgwhiteinfla
Uhmmm I don’t know if people haven’t been paying attention but even with Teddy we probably woudn’t have gotten 60 votes for cloture. Aside from the great emotion we all feel over the loss of such a great Senator and liberal leader, the truth is his passing just about insures that the Senate bill will now go throught he reconcilliation process which means all we will need is a simple majority. If you want to see comprehensive health care reform done before the end of this year, that will be what makes it possible. And again purely in a political sense, Kennedy’s passing makes it an easier sell to the rest of the caucus and in truth to the public who has been told erroneously time and again by the GOP and cable news that we have 60 votes in the Senate and therefore it should be easy to pass a bill.
ironranger
The serious people on Morning Joe were wondering if the R’s would be more willing to work with the Dems on healthcare reform due to Ted Kennedy being such a great guy, so nice to them and all. Yeah, right. They think we are idiots that we would believe that was a sincere, honest question. The vultures started circling hours ago.
eric
Truth be told: if you are Obama and you already planned to use reconciliation, this was Kennedy’s last gift to health care. This will take up the oxygen (along with Jackson’s murder) for the remainder of August. It will recast the debate generally about why this is important and will focus on the good things government has been able to accomplish in the form of Teddy’s accomplishments as a legislator.
I do not think it will make the batshit GOP any less batshit, but it may provide the media with a shiny new object.
They will talk about the political caculus and not death panels. All wonky stuff is a win for Obama.
Obama and the dems knew this was coming. there is no way they were planning on having 60 votes. That is why you say Schumer last week starting the process in earnest of laying the groundwork for reconciliation.
eric
eric
@sgwhiteinfla: as you can see below, i think you are correct. ;)
arguingwithsignposts
@Ash Can:
Dickweed Eric Cantor is in the house. But you can replace him with Dickweeds Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Mike Enzi, Ensign, Hatch, McCain or any of a number of other idiots who get paid way too much to be such idiots.
Ash Can
@arguingwithsignposts:
D’OH! Thank you for the correction. As for me, obviously more coffee is in order, stat.
eric
@arguingwithsignposts: yo yo yo, or as DJ Steele would say it Eric Cantor is da’ houze.
gopher2b
@PeakVT:
I thought Feingold’s comments from yesterday were odd. Now it makes sense.
JGabriel
PeakVT:
Why not? I would certainly prefer it to pass this autumn, but there shouldn’t be any political repercussions if it passes during, say, the first three or four months of 2010.
Sure, after that you get into the heavy duty mid-term election season, but I’d say we have until the end of the first quarter next year to pass health insurance reform, if we need it.
If I’m wrong, someone please tell me where? (Like I even need to ask…)
.
ellaesther
It’s kind of hard for me to express the sorrow, the honest and genuine sorrow, that I feel over my deeply held assumption that literally not one Republican Senator will have the common decency to stand up and do the right thing here.
Is it too much to ask for one person to know the right thing, and to do it?
The Saff
@arguingwithsignposts: I see anyone of these assholes on my teevee and I instinctively start yelling at them. God, what a pompous bunch of fail in every last one of them.
Hunter Gathers
@JGabriel: Bills that are ‘put off’ are essentially dead. The climate change bill, for example.
eric
@The Saff: Let’s not forget the honor the GOPers in the Senate showed Wellstone when he died. Eff those mother-effers. Every last one of them. They are whores of Babylon, and they know it not.
eric
Sloth
I think that if MA reverses itself, Vicky should take the seat.
Vicky says she doesn’t want it – which about makes her the best choice if (and believe me BIG IF) that law gets changed.
JGabriel
@JGabriel:
Never mind, I see my own error now: If we wait until January, we lose our opportunity to pass it via reconciliation — probably until 2013, at least.
Peak VT, et. al., are right. We have to pass health insurance reform this autumn.
.
lamh31
Damn ya’ll Joe Biden is breaking my heart! Greg ya’ll need to get the video of Biden’s statement. He looked like he would cry at any moment.
MikeJ
Teddy’s suggestion for changing the law would make anyone who was seated ineligible to run in the special election.
cmorenc
I’m taking a big “gulp” and hope hope hope that what many progressives have said is right:
– If true health care reform (with something like the public option) gets passed, within a year the GOP will be politically fucked for at least 30 years once the public realizes the result is welcomely inviting after all, just like things were after FDR got social security passed over similar screaming objections. In other words, democrats get the overwhelming share of positive credit, with the GOP looking like a club of Ebeneezer Scrooges who haven’t yet been visited by the three ghosts of Christmas.
And that the following nightmare scenario doesn’t come to pass instead:
– The version of “reform” that gets passed winds up being, like the earlier Wall St. bailout, one that quickly proves to facilitate outsized handsome rewards to the insurance industry but not so much at all really to ordinary citizens, except that it winds up exploding the deficit to catastrophically unsustainable levels, which quickly in 2010 and 2012 ushers in a 30-year period of strong GOP dominance in Congress and the White House. Maybe Sarah Palin herself never gets to be President or Vice President, but a slicker, not quite as obviously stupid version thereof (can you say Mitt Romney perhaps?) gets there, and the entire Supreme Court within ten years looks at best like Alito and Roberts, but with at least one or two new Scalias and Thomases added in. The GOP-dominated government manages to finally successfully strangle the EPA to effective financial and regulatory death, and the FDA, Agriculture Dept, Interior Dept, Forest Service etc. become far more literally privatized captives of industry than in even the fondest, feverish, most corrupt dreams of the Bush Administration.
PeakVT
@gopher2b: What comments were those? I missed them, apparently.
@JGabriel: I was implying that controversial bills don’t often get passed in an election year. Thus HCR would have to wait until 2011, when the composition of Congress might be worse (it might be better, but that’s unlikely). This is conventional wisdom; I haven’t seen any stats presented on the topic.
Legalize
Just a thought: The wingers can no longer claim that the Dems have “60,” so everything falls on them, yadda yadda yadda. I know that practically speaking, for purposes of a quarum, 59 is no different. But “60” is one of those supposedly magic numbers. Cue the senators from Maine? I wonder if their constituents will call on them to step up.
Sloth
@MikeJ:
Yeah, I know – that’s why she’s just about perfect. She doesn’t want the job.
pablo
Flip the circumstances. Would the Republicans change the Mass. succession law if it benefited them?
In a heartbeat.
That’s the difference, they don’t even pause, while the Dems wring their hands!
Rob C.
Does one less vote really matter? Even at 60 seats, the Democrats are getting slapped silly by the Republicans. And Obama has turned out to be a colossal wimp. So what’s the big deal? The Republicans could have one Senator to 99 Dems and the Dems would still figure out ways to get beaten up.
I’ve had it with them.
T. O'Hara
How do the republicans get the blame for this? Should they spot the democrats five votes or something? Why?
Shygetz
Blame? Blaming the Republicans for being ruthless opportunists is like blaming the sun for being hot. Not blame, just fact–Republicans will take every advantage they can from Kennedy’s death. The only rational response is to be equally ruthless at cutting them down.
General Winfield Stuck
Because shut the fuck up. That’s why.
handy
Yeah, good luck with that.
lamh31
Here’s the video of Biden:Joe Biden Remembers Ted Kennedy
Watch it, and try not to feel his pain.
Sloth
How do the republicans get the blame for this? Should they spot the democrats five votes or something? Why?
The republican’s get the blame for preferring to start an unnecessary war and killing thousands to reforming healthcare, they get the blame for choosing the profits of a few healthcare insurance execs over the health and lives of thousands of people. They get the blame for stonewalling everything they see, trading short-term political gain for the well-being of this country. The get the blame for equating an attempt to bring healthcare to millions of people who don’t have it now, with the nazi death camps.
But yeah, you are right, the democrats definitely own getting HCR passed.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
T. O’Hara:
Getting kinda defensive there, aren’t ya O’Hara? Doug’s statement is merely a recognition that politics ain’t beanbag and that the GOP will will take advantage of any parliamentary rules that favor it.
If you think it means more than that, if you think it implies that Republicans are evil dishonorable malefactors, propelled by heedless self-interest, and mean enough to take advantage of a widow in her grief, one has to wonder why even a conservative such as yourself automatically assumes the GOP has earned such a reputation?
.
SGEW
@lamh31:
Thanks for the link. That was beautiful.
Notorious P.A.T.
“Is it too much to ask for one person to know the right thing, and to do it?”
Either of those is too much for a Republican politician. Both of them together? A monkey banging away at a typewriter will write a great American novel before that happens.
Da Bomb
@Rob C.: Okay, how has Obama proven to be a colossial wimp?
Purely conjecture and heated emotion on your part perhaps?
feebog
HCR never had 60 votes in the Senate. Not even close. The Dems knew all along that reconciliation was the only route they were going to be able to use. This needs to get done this year, not next, and not in 2011. Now. Dems need to ram this thing home, and then take credit for the mid-terms.
Lihtox
I forget who it is who has been praising Texas’ replacement scheme, but it sounds like a good one: let the governor appoint a replacement immediately, followed by a special election. Have the MA Dems tell everyone that they are adopting the Texas system, and make the GOP talk about how stupid Texas is. :)
ellaesther
@lamh31: @SGEW: What SGEW said. I particularly teared up when Biden said that Sen. Kennedy’s lasting legacy will be “how he helped people look at themselves and at one another.” Ta-Nehisi Coates once wrote something about how the failure to take discrimination seriously is “less a lack of empathy than a lack of imagination” — we have to be able to imagine the other person’s suffering, and Ted Kennedy appears to have been better than most at both imagining it himself, and engaging the nation in imagining it about each other.
I struggle with what to make of the whole Chappaquiddick thing, but to quote Helen Prejean (the Dead Man Walking nun): “People are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives” — and in Kennedy’s case, there was a hell of a lot more than whatever the worst thing was.
Davis X. Machina
if you think it implies that Republicans are evil dishonorable malefactors, propelled by heedless self-interest, and mean enough to take advantage of a widow in her grief, one has to wonder why even a conservative such as yourself automatically assumes the GOP has earned such a reputation? Matthew 7:16.
But “60” is one of those supposedly magic numbers. Cue the senators from Maine? I wonder if their constituents will call on them to step up.
Faxed, on alternating weeks. I took a mess of returnable bottles to the redemption store, took the money, and set up an account here just for that purpose.
Uhmmm I don’t know if people haven’t been paying attention but even with Teddy we probably woudn’t have gotten 60 votes for cloture.
No Democrat will vote against cloture. One Republican will vote against. Six Democrats against the conference report, plus Lieberman, one Republican for. Go to your bookie now.
The Saff
@ellaesther: One of the things that Biden said that got me was, “He was never petty. He was never small.” Like I mentioned on another thread, Kennedy was a true statesman.
Davis X. Machina
Hmn…. blockquote issues on para #1 above.
SGEW
@The Saff:
“He made all of us larger.”
(Also: Joe Biden is the only person whose overuse of the word “literally” doesn’t bother me. He’s gotten much better about using it correctly, too!)
joes527
@Da Bomb:
Well… that time he went bowling was pretty embarrassing.
Da Bomb
@ellaesther: I fully expect the wingnuts to jump on the whole Chappaquiddick incident. It will be hyprocrisy at best.
They praised Strom thurman when he died, and instead of a skeleton. he had a whole cemetery in his closet.
Kennedy was a human being, people make mistakes. He seemed riddled with guilt about it too. I think that’s another reason why he fought for “the litte man”, so he could make amends. All great political/social movers and shakers have suffer from some fallibility, but they tend to rise above it. Maybe that’s why we see them as infallible.
someguy
Why not just pass health care reform as a budget matter? Sure, you won’t have authorizing legislation, but who needs that? Just budget for it, earmark the crap out of everything that the House feels is mandatory (like expenditures for various oversight committees and panels and funding for a new public option) and keep the thing out of the Senate entirely, except in the conference process.
Chickenshits.
Da Bomb
@joes527: LOL!
He’s a b-ball guy. They aren’t pretty good at playing any other sports than B-ball or video games. Which video games wouldn’t constitute as a sport.
So just b-ball.
geg6
As I mentioned at the end of Anne Laurie’s thread and will re-post here, our very own John Cole’s senator must read this blog:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/2009/08/byrd-calls-for-health-care-bill-to-be-named-after-kennedy.php
Makewi
Senate rules clearly state you need 60 votes to end debate on a bill. Seems like yet another problem for actually passing health care reform.
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
No problemo. Reconciliation Process. 51 vote majority. See you in Hell Makewi wi wii.
Makewi
@General Winfield Stuck:
Reconciliation rules require the 51 votes be applied to budgetary matters. At best, you’ll get the spending passed that way and it will cost dearly to do so. That won’t be enough to get it done.
Byrd thinks its a horrible idea to go that route, BTW.
nicteis
The “liberal” NYT claims this would be “reverse” the 2004 initiative. Of course, it would do no such thing. There would be a quick special election, exactly as the 2004 initiative mandates. It’s just that Massachusetts would also have representation in the interim.
I’ve been hearing this GOP spin from “liberal” pundits all week, I guess ’cause them liberals always loves them some irony, even if they have to lie a little to squeeze some irony out of a straightforward state of affairs.
Yeah, in blue Massachusetts we don’t want a Republican governor to appoint a Republican senator. Just like in red Kansas I’ll bet they don’t want their Dem gov to appoint a Dem senator. We get contrarian from time to time, in one-party states, because we want to keep the local power brokers a little bit honest. It doesn’t mean we want the opposite of our views to be empowered at the national level. It’s not partisan in either case. It’s an expression of that thing they call the will of the people.
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
depends on what the parlamentarian rules. Funding with a PO outline is quite doable. And Byrd didn’t like it when Bush and Reagan used it either. And once people realize there are no Death Panels, and they have a real choice, and all the other lies propagated by you fools, then the price will be the GOP’s to pay.
Makewi
@General Winfield Stuck:
I don’t like it either. I like the 60 vote rule, no matter who is in power. I know you want to keep blaming this on the GOP, but really that just prevents you from actually solving the issues that confront you. Which is ok with me, except that I really do think that some reform should be undertaken to ensure better care for those who aren’t likely to get it.
I wonder what the possibility of failing even the 51 votes for reconciliation would be.
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
I’m not blaming the GOP for The RP, I’m just saying that it equals out the several times the GOP has used it to pass consequential legislation. And leaves less room for them to cry foul. Though I’m sure they still will.
And if the dems don’t get 51 votes, or fail even to try, then the fallout with the dem base will be theirs to bear, and it won’t be small. But that’s not going to happen.
Makewi
@General Winfield Stuck:
What consequential legislation are you talking about? Everything passed via that method has had strictly to do with budgetary measures. Tax cuts, while of consequence, absolutely fit the category of budgetary. I’ve already said that maybe the Dems could get the budget for a “program to be named later” passed this way, but that still leaves them no better off, because they still have to get that named program through.
Even so, I think the process should be scrapped. Period. The 60 vote rule is a good Senate rule, and it should apply to everything having to do with passing bills.
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
Bush’s tax cuts weren’t the only use of the RP by the Gop. And using it for HC reform is not out of line for it’s use by by both parties since it was enacted as a senate rule.
Makewi
@General Winfield Stuck:
I guess we will need to see what the parlamentarian rules on the matter, should the Democrats decide to try to get the whole bill passed this way. Supposing the ruling allowed it to proceed, the next step would be seeing which provisions were stripped out on points of order
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
Points of Order in the Senate are waivers and require a 60 vote majority to be sustained. If the dems muster the 50 votes, tiebreaker by VP Biden, to move forward with RP, then it is likely most if not all POO’s will fail.