The Senate: A Republican Victory In Defeat?

It’s time for a small confession: I was hoping we would not capture the Senate. I wanted to see us get really close, like 49 to 51, but I did not want to cross that magic threshold to 50 votes in 2010. I wanted that to happen in 2012, when we could have made it closer to 60 to 40. Why you ask?

First of all, let me explain that this is not sour grapes. I have held this view from the beginning of the election season, though I haven't shared it here. Secondly, let me add that I rarely believe in winning through losing. There are some instances in our history where this has worked (cough cough John McCain cough cough), but it’s almost always best to win. Yet, this is one of those. Here’s why:

The Rational Public: The American public can be rather poor at understanding the things that don’t make sense. Or, said different, the American public is very practical and has little sympathy for excuses that are based on legalese or technicalities or things that don’t make common sense, i.e. the filibuster.

The filibuster is not something that makes sense in America-proper. For Americans, if you want something done, you do it; you don’t first seek the permission of a small minority who can hold you up at every turn. If a CEO wants to sell a plant, they do it. They don’t have to overcome a filibuster by their other officers. If parents want to move, they do it. They don’t have to overcome a filibuster by their kids. And so on.

But the Senate doesn’t work that way. With only a small majority in the Senate, the Republicans would have struggled to pass anything. The public would not have understood this, and would have turned on the Republicans for achieving nothing.

Moreover, the Democrats would have been insulated from the charge of being obstructionists because on bill after bill, eight or nine Democrats would have joined the Republicans, secure in the knowledge that their votes wouldn’t actually help the bill pass. This would have allowed the Democrats to continue to claim that they are an ideologically-broad party, i.e. a big tent, and that it’s the Republicans who are the extremists. Not to mention that those 8 or 9 would have been people like Ben Nelson who badly need to improve their conservative/independent “street cred” before their re-election campaigns in 2012.

At the same time, we would have been treated to the spectacle of RINOs fighting to create bills that might attract Democrats. Thus, as far as the public would have been concerned, the Republicans would have been to blame for doing nothing even though they held the majority, and they would have been accused of compromising their principles and having learned nothing from the election. At the same time, key Democrats could claim to be conservative/independents, even though it was all a smokescreen.

By not winning the Senate, all of that goes away. Now it will be up to the Democrats to create legislation, and they will be stuck with the obstructionist label from both sides as Obama demands they move left, which they cannot do because of the House and the filibuster, and the House demands they move right, which they cannot do because of Obama and their base. That is the worst of both worlds.

Obama’s Dilemma: With the Senate remaining in Democratic hands, Obama also faces a huge problem. Everyone is asking if he can now become like Bill Clinton and revive his dead presidency. He can’t.

Whereas Clinton lacked principles and only wanted to be loved, Obama thinks he is entitled to being seen as a genius and he has shown no flexibility in his personality or in his political career. Thus, barring something we haven’t seen, he lacks the personality traits that will let him make this kind of shift. The Democrats winning the Senate only makes this worse. Clinton had no choice but to move to the right after 1994 because Republicans held the legislature and the Democrats were demoralized. Attempting to stand in the Republicans’ way would have been pointless, so he let them have their way and he claimed credit for the most popular parts of the Republican agenda. Obama faces a different landscape: he still has power through the Senate and his people will expect him to use it. That means Obama cannot move to the right like Clinton did.

Nor can he talk to the right, but stay to the left to satisfy his base. If he talks to the right, the House will call his bluff and send a bill to the Senate that includes everything he says he wants. The Senate could kill it, but that would mean standing in the way of the things Obama claims he wants. That risks alienating both sides and the public at large.

Thus, Obama must continue to talk to the left and act to the left, and that means the Senate must grind everything to a halt for the next two years. But that is really bad politics. At a time when the public wants “something” done about the bad economy, grinding everything to a halt will be a really hard sell with the public. Moreover, this won’t inspire his base because they will still wonder why the President and the Senate can’t deliver on their pet peeves. . . . “can’t you just jam gay rights into the budget bill?”

Had the Republicans won the Senate, this math would be very different. Obama could have jumped far left to please his base and vetoed everything, or he could have moved to the right to please the public. Either choice would have been better than where he is right now -- stuck in no man’s land clinging to rhetoric no one believes and policies no one likes.

That’s why I think we won by losing in this instance. What do you think?