Alternate Filibuster Universe, Part II

Looks like my friend Booman saw the same Josh Green column that I did, and he concludes that the alternate universe would be even rosier than Josh Green predicts. Why?

[W]hat most people don’t understand is that the mere existence of the filibuster has a tremendous impact.

When the Democrats had control of Congress in 2009-2010, they still needed some Republican votes to overcome the filibuster. (The only exception was for a three month period between September 2009 and January 2010, when they did actually have the sixty votes they needed to pass ObamaCare through the Senate). Because the Democrats knew they had to attract some Republican support in the Senate, they passed bills in the House that were designed to win Republican support instead of what they would have done on their own in a parliamentary system. One example was the Cap & Trade bill that was based on Republican ideas and resembled McCain and Palin’s plan from their campaign.

As for healthcare, the role of the filibuster is more pernicious. Health care policy was discussed and built up in Washington think tanks during the 14 years between the failure of Clinton’s plan and the beginning of the 2008 presidential campaign. Obama, Edwards, and Clinton’s health care plans were all very similar because they all came out of the Washington consensus that had built up about what could conceivably pass into law rather than what would be the best way of creating a universal system. But the calculus of what could pass was done with the full knowledge that nothing would pass with less than 60 votes. In other words, just by existing, the filibuster took a single-payer system out of the conversation and out of the consciousness of the nations’s best health care thinkers. Anyone who continued to talk about single-payer, like Dennis Kuninich for example, were considered fundamentally unserious. And they were unserious. If they wanted single-payer, they needed to kill the filibuster first.

The truth is, if Washington hadn’t had to deal with the filibuster, the whole health care debate would have been different. Obama and Clinton and Edwards would have been calling for single-payer or would have lost to a candidate who was talking about it. The president would have been able to craft a plausible platform with progressive solutions and still be taken seriously. And he could have passed everything on his agenda in the first two years in office.

So, not only would the president have signed everything Nancy Pelosi produced in 2009-2010, but what Pelosi produced wouldn’t have had to be watered down to appeal to a few straying Republicans.

Booman then says we need to be careful what we wish for though…

Without the filibuster, a Republican congress would actually be able to do all kinds of things we don’t want like privatize Medicare and Social Security and outlaw abortion.

To that I say, good. What Americans are always denied in their evaluations of both parties are clear choices. I have heard from more than one Democratic leaning independent who occasionally vote Republican that, yeah, Republicans are anti-this or anti-that, but they would never actually repeal or end this or that, so therefore it is safe to vote for them.

Let Republicans end things near and dear to voters, and then maybe voters will care about politics and government and voting. And maybe if Democrats can provide what campaign on, then maybe voters will be loyal and thankful, rather than cynical and disspirited.