The Democrats vain hope that Republicans will someday see the error of their ways and reach across the isle to work with the Democrats is utterly idiotic. The Republican obstructionism works. The base loves it. And while Independents might initially see the Republicans as the obstructionists, over the long term they will view the Democrats as weak, ineffective and unable to govern. There have been several good articles in the Washington Post on this over the past two weeks.
The Democrats might have just lost the war today with the blocking of the Campaign Finance Bill. It will be a long time before the Democrats again have the horsepower to thwart the massive influx of essentially anonymous corporate money, and the corporate money will work hard to make sure the Democrats never again have the votes.
The Democrats simply cannot sit passively by while the Republicans destroy them with the filibuster. And they don't have to.
Esra Klein outlines an interesting way out of the filibuster trap in today's Washington Post: How to End the Filibuster With 51 Votes
Klein speaks of the Constitutional Option now being pushed by Tom Udall.
The constitutional option derives from Article I, Section V of the Constitution, stating that "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings." And in Klein's own words:
In order to fulfill this constitutional order, the Senate must be able to, well, determine its rules. A filibuster, technically, is a way to stop the Senate from determining something by refusing to allow it to move to a vote. Because stopping the Senate from considering its own rules would be unconstitutional, the chair can rule against the filibuster, and the Senate could then move to change its rules on a majority vote.
Klein notes one caveat: this rule change must happen at the beginning of a new Congress or the Congress automatically agrees to the prior standing rules. And Klein notes:
This is not a radical theory, or a partisan one: Both Richard Nixon, then the vice president and thus the president of the Senate, and Robert Byrd, then majority leader and considered the greatest parliamentarian to ever walk the chamber, have argued in favor of the constitutional option.
And and Klein continues by noting that while this procedure has never been used in the past, it has "almost" been used at many times in the past. He says "almost" because in all prior cases, when the other side saw that there was a real possibility of this tactic being employed, they suddenly negotiated in good faith and came to a compromise.
In 1975, reformers again were ready to wield it against the filibuster, and this time, a motion to uphold the constitutional option passed and a motion to table it failed. And again, a compromise was brokered, this time bringing the number of votes necessary to breach the filibuster down from two-thirds of the Senate to three-fifths. The option was also considered for various reasons in 1953, 1957, 1961, 1963, 1967, 1969, 1971, and 1979.
As Klein notes, the real role of this tactic is to get people like the party of "NO" to focus on the good of the nation rather than political games. The option is to simply lose all to a 51 vote majority.
A final point to consider is that a Republican Senate majority would never - NEVER - allow the Democrats to block them the way they have blocked the Democrats. The Republicans would and will use this tactic against the Democrats in a heart beat. So the Democrats really have nothing to lose in taking strong measures to save their party.