10/12/20
The Senate is in play this election year, and not just because partisan control is up for grabs, though it is: Analyses by both RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight make the Democrats favorites to recapture the majority, currently held by the Republicans, 53 to 47. In a more profound sense, voters are being asked to confront and consider the upper chamber’s institutional role under the Constitution, which is rapidly evolving into a partisan issue. Until now, there was broad acceptance of the Senate’s countermajoritarian function, and of the multiple ways that its two-members-per-state design, coupled with six-year terms, encourage continuity, deliberation and compromise. The contrast with the House of Representatives, which turns over biennially and allots power according to population, was taken for granted. Republicans still generally favor the status quo; it won’t change if they keep the majority. Democrats, however, are furious at how Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has exploited Senate procedures to promote his agenda and thwart theirs. Eager to enact an ambitious policy agenda and confident of winning the House and the presidency, they increasingly favor structural Senate change. Undoubtedly, the GOP-controlled Senate looms as an obstacle to major legislation, including most recently a fiscal stimulus package for the virus-ravaged economy. Can the chamber be rendered less dysfunctional and more responsive under Democratic control, while preserving its “unique” features?
That would depend on there being a sufficient number of senators who still believe that politics is a repeat-player game in which today’s majority is tomorrow’s minority, not a zero-sum proposition. Small states and their senators will play a crucial part: Of the 50 states, 22 possess six or fewer electoral votes. This group encompasses 14 red states but also eight blue ones with 15 Democratic senators among them. One exit strategy might be a deal between small-state Democrats on the one hand and the GOP leader on the other, whereby McConnell would allow votes on Democratic legislation in return for preserving the filibuster, at least in modified form, and not admitting new states. To imagine such a deal is to admit how far-fetched it is: The Republican base would react with fury; Democrats who did business with McConnell, rather than give him a taste of his own medicine, could be inviting primary challenges. And what would the position be of a President Joe Biden, longtime man of the Senate, from tiny Delaware, all but surely a one-termer who has a history of negotiating with McConnell — and has pointedly not called for an end to the filibuster? All of the above is speculation, to be sure. But the clear lesson of American history, especially pre-Civil War history, is that national political division sooner or later mutates into conflict over the Senate, followed by conflict within it. The deeper the division, the more dangerous the conflict.
