Counting down the last days of a Massachusetts senate race where Coakley may win or Brown may win, the realization becomes clearer and clearer that either way, the outcome will be a win-win for the Democratic Party.
If Coakley wins, Democrats will of course retain the 60 senate seats they need to prevent Republican filibusters on major legislation, beginning with jobs, that Democratic Senators will need to pass if they are to have a good shot at re-election in 2010 and beyond.
If Brown wins, Obama and Reid have a simple choice before them; They can allow Republican Senators to filibuster all major legislation during 2010, which is not a choice at all since it would spell disaster for Democratic candidates in both the Senate and the House in November, or they can change the senate rules on filibusters through means as simple as one recently advanced in a New York Times Op-Ed by Tom Geoghegan, http://www.nytimes.com/...
The president of the Senate, the vice president himself, could issue an opinion from the chair that the filibuster is unconstitutional. Our first vice presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, felt a serious obligation to resolve the ties and tangles of an evenly divided Senate, and they would not have shrunk from such a challenge.
Or through the strategy Jamie Court described in The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Rule 22 of the Senate, governing filibusters, can be changed or eliminated by a simple majority according to the US Supreme Court in U.S. v. Ballin (1892). Senate rules call for 67 to change the cloture rule, but Democrats should be able to rewrite the rules since they control the Rules Committee. Rule 22 can go out the door all together or be modified. Republicans under Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to blow up the filibuster in 2005 with far fewer numbers.
Or they could rely on the "Nuclear," or "Constitutional" option. A 2005 report by Betsy Palmer https://www.policyarchive.org/... highlights how this would be done. This strategy would have to wait until the new Congress convenes in 2011, and would therefore represent a retributive rather than a pre-emptive response to Republican obstructionism, Palmer explains it as:
One example of the "constitutional" or "nuclear" option revolves on the
argument that, on the first day of a new Congress, Senate rules, including Rule XXII,the cloture rule, do not yet apply, and thus can be changed by majority vote.
If Coakley wins, Democrats can pass major legislation in 2010. If Brown wins, Republicans have the choice in 2010 of allowing Obama to address our pressing concerns like jobs, education and climate change, or block these efforts and thereby force his and Reid’s hand. If Brown wins and Republicans continue to obstruct the Democratic agenda, Obama and Reid will have every good reason, and no reasonable choice but, to change the filibuster rule.
In fact, it might actually work out better in the long run if Brown wins, and the Democrats are forced to kill the filibuster.
cross-posted at MyDD