Losing choke point control

By Fester

The best spot to be in most bidding situations is to be the marginally decisive point. At that point, an individual has a great deal of power because their acceptance or decline of a bid means that the market for action has been set. They are veto players, they are chokepoints of activity, they are rentiers of political space. In the US Senate, the two dominant chokepoints is whomever will be the 50th vote for passage if the bill is a Democraticly favored bill (as Democrats can count on VP Biden to break a tie in their favor) or the 51st vote for a conservatively favored bill, and the 60th vote to break a filibuster or waive certain rules. Until last week the 60th vote was the far more vital chokepoint.

The occupant of that 60th vote varied on each issue, but the membership of the club that controls the 60th vote on Democratic priorities is fairly small. Its frequent members are Senators Nelson of Nebraska, Landrieu of Lousiana, Pryor and Lincoln of Arkansas, Bayh of Indiana, Conrad of North Dakota and for the Republicans the potential pick-offs on some issues are the two Senators from Maine, Snowe and Collins as well as the occassional chance of picking off a few others on idiosyncratic issues.

If Senator Reid follows through on his threat to impose harsh party line discipline on cloture, then the 60th Vote Club is functionally irrelevant and powerless:

So, I suppose it should come as no surprise that, Senate leaders are now asking members of the Democratic caucus to vote party-line on procedural issues, reversing the stance they took on caucus unity just last week.

Reid is actually putting himself on the line. "On procedural votes," he predicted, "we'll keep Democrats together."

Roll Call notes that Reid and his leadership does not anticipate keeping the entire caucus on the final vote, but wants it on the cloture vote:

�They may vote against final passage on a bill. They may vote with Republicans on amendments,� he said. �But on this idea of allowing the filibuster to stop the whole Senate, I think, we have persuaded them more often than not that they shouldn�t let the Republicans control our agenda. We ought to control our own agenda.�

If this actually happens, consistent party unity on cloture votes means that the Group hanging around the 60th vote are almost irrelevant.  They will either be voting for �I Love Puppies and Ice Cream� bills that will run up an 85 to 12 majority or they are on the losing side of a 56 to 43 final count.  In either case their negoatiating leverage goes down massively.  The new, marginally decisive Democrat moves from being Nelson to someone like McCaskill from Missouri who is far closer to the Democratic median and average position that any concessions on most issues to get her vote will be fairly small. 

So I can understand the gang that comprise the 57th to 61st votes throwing a hissy fit as this move would effectively render them powerless and their fundraising pitch perilous.