The Antidemocratic Democratic Majority

In his 1966 soul hit, Wilson Pickett told his lover that "Ninety-Nine and a Half Won't Do"; he needed all 100% of her love. Today, Senate Majority "Leader" Harry Reid seems to believe that fifty-nine and a half won't do; unless he has 60% of the Senate aligned on an issue, he won't bring a bill to the floor for a vote.

Funny, but I thought that anything over 50% was how democracy worked.

The latest policy issue to hit this anti-democratic brick wall is the healthcare "public option". Polls consistently show that a majority of the U.S. supports such a government-sponsored, non-profit public health insurance plan to provide some much-needed competition to the for-profit health insurance industry. A majority of U.S. Senators have expressed support for it. Yet the public option was stripped out of the Senate health reform bill as part of the Democrats' quixotic quest to win over enough conservative Democrats and/or "moderate Republicans" to reach the 60% supermajority needed to avoid a filibuster. That didn't happen, yet the public option remains out of the bill.

Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) is circulating a letter to Reid asking that the public option be brought to a vote under the reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority (51 Senators, or even just 50 if Vice-President Biden can then cast the tie-breaking vote). The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is asking us to call our Democratic Senators and ask them to sign the letter; 20 have signed it so far, including progressives Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Even one of my own Senators, the "born-again Democrat" Arlen Specter (?-PA), signed on Friday, no doubt as a result of my call to his office earlier that day.

Isn't it sad that, having elected a Democratic majority to the House and Senate, as well as a Democratic President, we now have to call and beg our members of Congress to actually use that majority to pass a bill?

Barack Obama was elected President in 2008 with 53% of the popular vote. Why should he now be required to muster a 60% supermajority in the U.S. Senate to get any new laws?

Let's see how this rule would have affected a famous vote from our past. On June 4, 1919, after several failed attempts, the Senate finally passed a bill guaranteeing the right of women to vote. After being ratified by the required number of states, this bill became the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

That bill passed the Senate with 56 out of 96 votes (we only had 48 states at the time), or 58.3% of the full Senate.

Harry Reid would have waited until he had a 60% supermajority, or 58 votes out of 96. With his brand of leadership, we might still be waiting for women to have the vote.

Some Senators, such as Tom Harkin (D-IA), are trying to change these rules (see his interview with the WaPo's Ezra Klein back in December for some interesting perspective). This 60% rule is anti-democratic in the way it's being used to thwart the will of the majority. It's got to go.