The magic number is 60. Sixty Democrats gets us a filibuster-proof majority. Sixty Democrats in the Senate to advance our legislative agenda. Build the caucus until we have the magic number sixty. You hear it over and over, and you heard it again when Joe Lieberman made a deal to caucus with the Democrats. Look: sixty. And a pony!
The problem is that in the minds of many, this number has become synonymous with the number of Senators in the Democratic caucus. This is a misconception, and even among those who understand the filibuster and know the intricacies of Senate procedure, it has become fashionable to still pretend as if we have that filibuster-proof majority, so long as we mollycoddle the conservative Democrats enough to negotiate their support on an issue-by-issue basis.
The one silver lining in the ongoing obstruction of health care reform is that it ought to put to rest, once and for all, the illusion that having any number of Democrats beyond a simple majority means anything if they won't commit to procedural votes.
The magic number 60 has nothing to do with who caucuses with us and who doesn't. The filibuster-proof majority does not rest on how many people in the Senate have a (D) beside their name. Having a filibuster-proof majority requires one thing and one thing only: sixty Senators willing to stand with the party on procedural votes, regardless of how they feel about the bill, whether they intend to vote against it, or even their political party.
We need fifty-one votes (which can include the VP's tie-breaking vote) in order to hold a majority and pass legislation. Beyond that, it is useful to have more Democrats only if they are willing to pledge to support procedural votes such as cloture. The part that needs to burn into the collective consciousness of progressives--to say nothing of the media--is that having more Senators to pass legislation on the final vote is meaningless if we can't even bring it to a vote in the first place!
I know to some of you it must feel like I'm stating the obvious, going over ground that's been covered endlessly here and elsewhere. But it bears repeating in this manner because we need to eradicate the widespread fantasy that having more Democrats in the Senate will accomplish anything by itself, and the resulting nonsense that we shouldn't do anything that would risk losing seats in the Senate, such as supporting primary opponents and working to defeat conservative Democrats.
The issue is not that they depart from their party's platform on specific issues out of deeply-held principle, or in reflection of the politics of their constituents. The Democratic party is a very big tent, and I think most Democrats understand that it's absurd to expect all Senators in the party to toe the line on every important bill. They should be free to vote their conscience on the final up-or-down vote, a vote to which their constituents can hold them accountable.
But the era of permitting them to obstruct their own party's legislation by refusing to even allow it to come to a vote must end. So-called Democrats who obstruct procedural votes on Democratic legislation should not be rewarded by the party for their betrayal. They should face the loss of all committee assignments, all leadership positions, and all institutional party support. They should be primaried--and that's something we can and should help with--and any primary opponent who pledges to back procedural votes (regardless of how they plan on voting in the end) should receive the full backing of the DNC and DSCC.
Filibustering your own party's legislation should be an electoral death sentence within that party. This ought to be a no-brainer, and the fact that it isn't speaks to the cowardice of our leadership and the structural flaws within the institution of the Senate. Nowhere is this more tragically true than in the ongoing obstruction of health care legislation--one of the centerpieces of Obama's campaign, an issue on which most of these Senators themselves ran and won. It is the party's core agenda.
These people need to be defeated. They are not Democrats, no matter what it pleases them to call themselves. At best they are conservatives who ran with a (D) beside their name--most, in truth, are bought-and-paid-for industry shills who are negotiating in bad faith while knowingly enriching themselves with the deaths of the uninsured. They don't care that a strong public option would save money and lives. They don't care that it (or better yet, single payer) would reduce the deficit. So long as they can continue to abuse their power to profit on the blood of Americans, free of any consequence, they will. It is absurd to fear losing their vote when we don't have it anyway, and never will.
Culpable in the deaths of thousands, they deserve jail cells. What we can and should give them is early retirement.