Spinning the F-word

The Democrats in the Senate attempted to force a vote on a bill (the "Reed-Levin Amendment") that would have required a reduction in troops in Iraq beginning 120 days after enactment of the law. The Republicans blocked Reed-Levin from coming up for a vote, by means of a parliamentary procedure in which they voted against something called "cloture".

Cloture is a term in parliamentary procedure in which the senators agree to end the debate and call for a vote on the bill being debated. When the cloture motion was made, 52 senators voted for cloture, and 47 voted against it. Since a successful cloture motion requires 60 "yea" votes, the cloture motion was defeated despite garnering the support of a majority of the senators. As a result, there was no vote on Reed-Levin.

This is called a "filibuster". Filibusters have a long and illustrious history in the Senate, and have featured prominently in the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and in an episode of "The West Wing", among others. Clearly, they have dramatic potential.

As an aside, I should note that I have nothing against filibusters, although personally, I dislike today's way of doing it. In the old days, in order to mount a filibuster, a senator (or group of senators) had to hold the floor continuously -- that is, keep speaking without sitting down, and without yielding the floor to the opposition -- until the Senate either gave up on calling for a vote on the bill being debated, or successfully voted for cloture. In other words, a filibuster caused the entire Senate to grind to a halt, which gave the filibuster some of its power and effect. Today, there's some kind of gentlemen's agreement that allows the Senate to, in effect, hold several debates at the same time, so that the filibuster doesn't stop other bills from being debated and voted. Hence, the filibuster becomes just another obscure parliamentary tactic, rather than a Hail Mary parliamentary spectacle, the last refuge of a beleagured minority. End of aside.

My point in giving this brief history of filibusters is that, properly explained, they're not hard to understand, and can actually be interesting.

Which brings me to the Democratic Party's inability to spin what happened with Reed-Levin and the media's appalling lack of balance when describing the Republican filibuster of Reed-Levin. Filibusters, you may recall, last made serious headlines when the Democrats in the Senate used the tactic to block the Senate from voting on some of President Bush's judicial nominations. Then, the F-word was all over the news, as the media parroted the Republican talking point -- "Let's just have a straight up-or-down vote" -- and lambasted the Democrats as intransigent children having a temper tantrum. The Republicans at the time were so incensed that the Democrats would use the filibuster this way that they threatened to rewrite the rules of the Senate to effectively do away with the filibuster altogether -- the so-called "Nuclear Option".

That's right, America. We had a knock-down drag-out full-on front page partisan brawl over a parliamentary procedure. And Americans ate it up! I believe that largely as a result of Republican propoganda at that time, most Americans now assume that filibustering is a bad thing.

So what do the Democrats do to spin the Reed-Levin issue? Right. They studiously avoid the word "filibuster".

The DNC's website headline? "Republicans Block Levin-Reed Amendment To Withdraw Troops". And the lede isn't much better: "After an all-night debate on Iraq, Senate Democrats tried today to end a Republican block on a vote on the Levin-Reed amendment..." Boring.

The same is true around the party. Here's Hillary Clinton:

When the Senate votes on motions to allow debate on both the Feingold-Reid and Reed-Levin Amendments, I will vote for cloture on both.

Ho hum...And on and on. Here's Majority Leader Harry Reid:

Reid: Republicans Continue To Block Democrats' Efforts To Change Course In Iraq, Make America More Secure

And Joe Biden:

BIDEN Decries Republican Refusal to Vote on Iraq War on Senate Floor Today

Even Carl Levin, one of the eponymous co-sponsors of the bill, shies away from the F-word both in the headline and in his remarks:

Senate Floor Statement on the Cloture Vote on the Levin-Reed Amendment

...

If the Republican Leader’s procedural roadblock succeeds this morning, we will be denied the opportunity to vote on an issue which just about every American has strong feelings on: whether or not to change course in Iraq by setting a timetable to reduce the number of our troops in Iraq. Because of that procedural roadblock, we will not be voting at 11:00 a.m. on the Levin-Reed amendment but on whether to proceed to the vote on Levin-Reed.

Of course, it stands to reason that if even the Democrats are avoiding the F-word, so will the media. To wit, you'd think that today, the headlines would be screaming about the Republican tantrums and intransigence that prevented Reed-Levin from coming to a vote. But you'd be wrong. The headlines today talked about Republican "blocking tactics" and how a majority of the Senate "rejected" a vote on troop withdrawal. Really. Even C-Span (!) got in on the act, with the headline "Senate Blocks Iraq Withdrawal Timeline, 52-47".

My point here is that the Democrats are doing a horrible job of explaining exactly what's going on. In fact, they're doing such a bad job of it that C-Span even got it all wrong: what actually happened was the 52 senators (mostly Democrats) voted to bring Reed-Levin to a vote, and 47 senators (Republicans and Connecticut for Liebermaniacs) voted not to, not that the Senate affirmatively voted against the withdrawal timeline. Put another way, the Republicans successfully filibustered the bill.

Thankfully, there was one notable, though unsurprising, exception to the mealy-mouthedness of the Democrats: Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin and Senate maverick, who used the F-word appropriately and boldly three times in a one-paragraph statement.

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On Republicans Filibustering the Levin-Reed Amendment

July 18, 2007

Today, a majority of the Senate backed binding legislation with a firm end date to redeploy our troops from Iraq. This shows how far we’ve come since August 2005 when I became the first Senator to propose a deadline to bring the mistake in Iraq to an end. If we had enacted my proposal when I first offered it, our troops would be home right now. Although a number of Republicans have finally acknowledged that the President’s Iraq policy is a failure, their filibuster of the Levin-Reed amendment shows they are still failing to back up their words with action. The Levin-Reed amendment is by no means perfect, but its binding provisions to end our extensive military involvement in Iraq are a significant step forward. With their decision to filibuster, the Republicans have prevented the Senate from voting to bring the open-ended mission in Iraq to an end, and have once again ignored the calls of the American people.

Sigh.