Shouting “change” into a power vacuum

Sen. Elizabeth Warren almost addressed the elephant in the room during Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Charleston, South Carolina. Warren used her support for eliminating the Senate filibuster to draw a contrast with the current Democratic front-runner. Sen. Bernie Sanders opposes eliminating the rule:

Understand this: The filibuster is giving a veto to the gun industry. It gives a veto to the oil industry. It’s going to give a veto on immigration. Until we’re willing to dig in and say that if Mitch McConnell is going to do to the next Democratic president what he did to President Obama, and that is try to block every single thing he does, that we are willing to roll back the filibuster, go with the majority vote, and do what needs to be done for the American people. Understand this: Many people on this stage do not support rolling back the filibuster. Until we’re ready to do that, we won’t have change.

Former Vice President Joe Biden also opposes that change. Sen. Amy Klobuchar may or may not.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg followed up on Warren’s challenge with a biting observation:

I want to come back to the question of the filibuster because this is not some long-ago bad vote that Bernie Sanders took. This is a current bad position that Bernie Sanders holds. And we’re in South Carolina. How are we going to deliver a revolution if you won’t even support a rule change?

But debating ending the filibuster is shouting into a power vacuum. Unless Democrats take control of the U.S. Senate next year, it matters little which Democrat sits in the Oval Office. Mitch “Grim Reaper” McConnell will likely rule the Senate. No Democratic legislation — Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, free college, etc. — will move beyond his desk. He has sworn himself to it. Gleefully.

The larger debate we are not having is which candidate, if any of them, can bring enough money, organization, and voter enthusiasm to the fall races to help Democrats flip the Senate. As the Cook Political Report’s Feb. 5 projection at the top of this post suggests, Democrats have some ground to make up before realizing their dreams of “political revolution” or “big, structural change.” Without keeping control of the U.S. House and gaining control of the Senate this fall, Democrats nitpicking each other’s policies and positions on the filibuster is so much vaporware.

Ezra Klein gets to the nub of the problem:

Every Democratic debate so far has featured a lengthy argument over the details of Medicare plans that the next president will have limited, and if there’s a Republican Senate, no power to pass. None have featured a sustained debate over the questions that will actually decide what kind of Medicare plan — and climate plan, and gun control plan, and minimum wage bill, and infrastructure plan — will pass: which candidate is likeliest to sweep more Democrats into the Senate, and whether and how the various candidates would convince Senate Democrats to change the rules to make ambitious governance possible again.

The most recent revolution (for those who missed it) occurred with the Democrats’ “blue wave” in 2018. But taking control of the House was only Step 1. Wresting control of the Senate from the 18 percent of the nation’s population that controls a majority in that chamber is Step 2. Our fixation on November’s “main event” obscures that objective, or else assumes it will simply take care of itself with the right candidate atop the Democratic ticket. It will not.

Control of the U.S. Senate is on the line this fall. Plus, redistricting. TV talking heads will provide endless horse-race coverage of the presidential campaigns and threats of Russian interference in the 2020 federal elections. Meanwhile, control of state legislatures and 2021 redistricting is on the ballot. Even without the late Thomas B. Hofeller, godfather of the GOP’s 2011 state and federal district maps, Republicans will be working quietly to maintain minority control not just in the U.S. Senate, but in the House and state legislatures too.

In 2016, I argued here for setting a larger goal than winning the presidency:

I live in a state taken over by a T-party legislature that has passed one of the worst voter ID bills in the country, drafted absolutely diabolical redistricting maps, passed HB2 as a get-out-the-vote tool, and launches regular legislative attacks against our cities where the largest block of blue votes are. President Bernie isn’t going to fix that for me. Neither is President Hillary. And not in Michigan or Wisconsin either. We have to beat them ourselves. Here, not in the Electoral College.

With Super Tuesday 2020 fast approaching, stop second-guessing which candidate can beat Donald Trump. It will take more than money and good polling. Ask which can mobilize the kind of enthusiasm Barack Obama did in 2008. The metric I’ve used this cycle when people ask how to decide which of the Democrats can beat Trump is this: Which candidate would you knock doors for in the heat of August?

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. 2,600+ counties contacted, roughly 900 “opens,” over 400 downloads. (It’s a lead-a-horse effort.) Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.