Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania has some advice for his fellow Democrats skittish about health care reform in the wake of the Republican upset in that Massachusetts special election.
“My message to those Democrats is don’t be afraid,” Rendell told ABC News. “Listen, you got elected because you wanted to do something to change the quality of people’s lives -- here we have a chance to do something historic and if it means some of us are going to lose because of that so be it. At least you will have lost your office fighting for something and accomplishing something.”
He tells his fellow Democrats in Washington, DC, to “get that best bill as strong and as tight as you can then send it back to the Senate and let’s see if they (Republicans) are going to filibuster.”
“Make them filibuster,” he told ABC News in an interview for Good Morning America this morning. “Make them go before America people. Make the American people look at a modern day spectacle of what a filibuster would entail. I think it’s time to call their bluff. I think it is too easy to throw up your hands and say, ‘We don’t have 60 votes.’ Remember its 51 votes for passage, they have to filibuster. Make them filibuster.”
Rendell's strategy would be a sound one, if this were 1950. Sadly, when it comes to Congressional politics, it isn't 1950 anymore. Back in the days when the Republican's held Congress and the Dems were threatening to filibuster judicial appointments, I wrote about the sorry state of the modern filibuster: Capraesque It Isn't:
What has also been interesting is the attraction that Frank Capra's classic film Mr. Smith Goes To Washington still invites after almost 70 years. In part this is because this is the only well known depiction of a filibuster in the entire history of popular mass media. There are no docudramas out there depicting an actual historical example of a filibuster, largely because as actually used they have proved far less heroic. In fact it is a seedy little practice.
But Capra's portrayal still carries a great emotional impact. In many ways the filibuster in Mr. Smith is a classic immigrant fantasia. It is the iconic ideal that in America a single person can stand up to the entire world. Often times the immigrant has left their homeland because all of the pressures of that society threatened to crush them. It isn't that those types of pressures do not exist in America, as Jimmy Stewart's character could tell you, but it is that the political ethos of this country allows just enough space for a single man to hold his ground and, just maybe, win against all odds. Someone with the sensibilities of an immigrant, such as Capra, would naturally gravitate to stories that portray just those moments and wrap them up in a patriotic fervor. The total effect is warm, comforting, uplifting, and, (sadly) totally irrelevant to the political discussion of today.
The truth is the filibuster portrayed in the movie bears no resemblance to its modern incarnation. It actually isn't a filibuster at all anymore. Other business continues as if nothing is happening. Those engaging in the "filibuster" are not kept on the Senate floor. (That would presumably keep the Senators from pricey cocktail parties in Georgetown, and nobody would want that...at least nobody sitting in Congress.) A real filibuster, like portrayed in the film, is a dicey proposition. To decide on that course of action one had to weigh how it would be viewed by the public at large. You would be stopping the entire legislative process and could be vilified for that, but maybe the risk would be worth it if you could just get enough attention focused on your issue. Maybe with the benefit of the spotlight you could sway public opinion in your favor. It was risky, but honest.
Today, the "filibuster" is merely a dishonestly labeled minority veto.
Unlike your average talking head or New York Times op-ed writer (I'm looking at you Krugman) my position doesn't flip-flop just because the control of Congress has switched parties. What I said in 2005 holds just as strongly today. If the Democrats really wanted to show guts now they would change the filibuster rules back to the Mr. Smith era rules and take their chances. If Republicans had guts back in 2005 they should have done the same. Make the opposition hold the floor; force them to bring the other business of the Senate to a halt; force them to make the cost/benefit and risk/reward analyses; make them put their ass on the line. Then, and only then, does the moral force of a filibuster come to the fore.
The only thing required is guts, which is one thing lacking in Washington these days.
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