A recent artical by Mr. Yglesias said that it is possible the Democrats and Republicans could end up with 49 seats in the Senate with Charlie Crist and Joe Lieberman leading a centrist coalition wielding the swing votes needed for any legislation. They could be joined by...
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/...
Snowe from ME-R
Collins from ME-R
Castle from DE-R
Brown from MA-R
Murkowski from AK-R
McCain from AZ-R
Lugar from IN-R
Graham from SC-R
Shelby from AL-R
Pryor from AR-D
Baucus from MT-D
B. Nelson from NE-D
Landrieu from LA-D
Hagan from NC-D
Tester from MT-D
Bayh from IN-D Retiring
Conrad or Carper ND-D or DE-D
Begich from AK-D
Webb from VA-D
Warner from VA-D
With Crist leaning Republican and Lieberman being an Independent jerk we would have effectively 8 Republican leaning centrists and 8 Democratic leaning centrists with Lieberman just where he likes to be in the middle getting all the attention.
So in order to get anything passed you would need to convince 20 of the 21 centrists coalition to go along with your legislation thereby thwarting the will of the RW and LW in this country...and getting back to the mushy middle of legislation...Each side would be stuck with only 39 purist LW or RW members and could not fillibuster anything...
Essentially nothing would get done without the majority of the centrist coalition agreeing so legislation would not be RW or LW oriented but somewhere in the middle...
This would of course drive the RW and LW blogs and activists crazy as they would be both blaming their party's centrists as traitors to their party but hopefully it would re-establish the party regulars to nominate more centrist focused members and create a whole new era of cross-party cooperation...
President Obama could be in his element, inviting the centrist coalition to draft legislation with him in the Oval office and then present it to both sides saying...well who wants to work with us...RW or LW, we will move a litte either way...which is it...totally turn the tables on the system...
Who knows, maybe we would even get some good compromises on energy and immigration policy...could be interesting for the Moderates to have the power with President Obama to make policy again in this country...we will see...