For the Last Time, People, the Senate Isn't Broken

I'm starting to get really, really frustrated with lefty columnists who continue to churn out articles denouncing the filibuster and the "undemocratic" nature of the US Senate. The Democratic majority is struggling to govern NOT because of antiquated institutional rules, but rather because they have been guilty of overreaching. Their agenda is out of step with the American public, which, as I have written several times, remains center-right on the ideological spectrum.

Barack Obama made a conscious decision in his first year to leave his campaign promises of bipartisanship and national unity behind, in favor of hyper-partisan, Chicagoan politics as usual. That's his prerogative as president...but it has led to widespread disenchantment among the independents and Republicans who crossed over to vote for him in the hopes that he would genuinely usher in a new era of HopeAndChange. As loony as all that talk was, a lot of people bought what candidate Obama was selling during the campaign.

By ceding his agenda to the hapless Harry Reid (Demagogue, Nev.) and Mrs. Hyper-HYPER-partisan herself, Nancy Pelosi (Nutjob, Cali.), Obama ensured that his poll numbers would tank quicker and more deeply than any first year president in the modern era. It has also ensured that Republicans will almost certainly make substantial gains in the 2010 midterm elections. And it has created the distinct possibility, a possibility that 6 months ago would have seemed unimaginable, that Barack Obama could be another one-term Democratic president in the Jimmy Carter mold.

The point is this: Obama and his liberal cohorts in the Senate do not have a mandate for their lefty agenda. It's an agenda that the American people reject- just look at the poll numbers on every major issue, from Gitmo to health care reform. The Democrats had trouble getting 60 votes for health care reform in the Senate because about 60% of the populace reject their approach! Moderate Democrats in the Senate knew that voting for a bill with a public option or an irresponsible expansion of Medicare in it would have sealed their electoral fate. Voting for the terrible bill that passed on Christmas Eve STILL may have sealed their electoral fates.

So, once and for all, let's get it straight folks: it isn't the institutional rules of the Senate that are preventing the Democrats from governing effectively. The Republicans did a fair amount of governing under the same constraints. Don't believe me? Just look at all the bitching Democrats did in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Republicans must have done something to piss them off. They did. They governed. They didn't always govern well, but they governed. Blaming the Senate rules all of the sudden for the Democrats' failures is silly and stupid.

To paraphrase James Carville, it's the agenda, stupid.