It's time for all 60 senators who caucus with the Dems to adopt the Sanders Rule: EVERYONE in the caucus votes against GOP filibusters

Cenk makes his case for the Sanders Rule: "It's genius."

by Ken

We've been talking, of course, about the implications of the Democrats reaching, more or less, the magic 60 threshhold in the Senate. The consensus is that there aren't any implication, considering the lack of cohesiveness of those 60 senators the 58 nominal Democrats and the two Independents who caucus with the Democrats.

Why, just look at those two Independents. You've got probably the most upright person in the Senate, Vermont's Bernie Sanders, and perhsps the most lowdown, Connecticut's Holy Joe Lieberman. Both New Englanders, but it's hard to think of much of anything else they have in common.

It turns out that Senator Sanders has been thinking along the lines of our friend Lane Hudson, whose thinking we passed on in one of our ponderings of the Democratic supermajority. Beyond the importance of making sure that we make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid aware of our hopes and expectations,

he makes the eminently practical point that at the very least the leadership should be held to mustering its voting clout on cloture votes, requiring caucus members to toe the line on them. They would still be free to vote their conscience in the final vote on a bill, but they shouldn't be allowed to aid the opposition in preventing a final vote from happening.

The filibuster, which in all its configurations has always been understood as a last resort, reserved for matters of do-or-die principle, has been transformed by the new Republican minority into a strategy of first resort. Having no program of their own, except to screech "Hell no" at any proposal made by Democrats, they now threaten it routinely, indeed automatically. What they have wrought is a substantial transformation of the way the Senate does business, so that the most routine Senate business now requires 60 votes.

Our friend Cenk Uygur (of the Young Turks) wants everybody to know about "The Sanders Rule: All Bills Get Up or Down Votes." He first quotes the senator:

"I think that with Al Franken coming on board, you have effectively 60 Democrats in the caucus, 58 and two Independents. I think the strategy should be to say, it doesn't take 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. I think the strategy should be that every Democrat, no matter whether or not they ultimately end up voting for the final bill, is to say we are going to vote together to stop a Republican filibuster. And if somebody who votes for that ends up saying, 'I'm not gonna vote for this bill, it's too radical, blah, blah, blah, that's fine.'" (emphasis added)

and then comments:

I love this Sanders Rule. It makes perfect sense. This is the whole point of having 60 senators in your caucus. I don't need or want ideological rigidity on the Democratic side. I believe in the Big Tent. So, how people vote is up to them. But getting these bills to the floor to get up or down votes is absolutely necessary. This is part and parcel of being in the caucus. Not just in healthcare, but all of the bills must have up or down votes (but by far the most important thing right now is to include a public option in the healthcare bill that gets an up or down vote).

I know Democrats bend over backwards to accommodate the Republicans and appeal to bipartisanship. Although the Republicans never, ever seem to reciprocate, that is all fine and dandy, as long as we get to vote on the legislative proposals. They can have bipartisan proposals come up. They can have progressive or conservative proposals come up. But no matter what they should all get a vote, as long as there are sixty senators in the Democratic caucus.

If the Democrats don't use their 60 seat majority to break filibusters, then they are absolutely complicit. There are no excuses left. It's one thing to say you're voting your conscience on a bill (though a great majority of the time they are in fact voting their pocketbook by voting with the lobbyists), it's another to say that you will join the Republicans in upholding a filibuster. That is not acceptable.

Everyone who voted for a Democrat in the country should absolutely insist that they follow the Sanders Rule. All bills must get up or down votes. That's the least they can do with the overwhelming mandate they have been given to get us real change.

If they squander this - with control of the White House, a huge majority in the House, a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and all of the national polls behind them - then they were lying. They never intended to bring us change in the first place. The lobbyists will have won. And Obama's presidency will be like all of the others. A lot of bullshit promises and no change despite every conceivable advantage. If they can't get it done under these circumstances, then they can never get it done - nor did they ever want to.