Incompetence

Is the filibuster trend I wrote about below a side-effect of Harry Reid's procedural incompetence? Ezra Klein thinks so:

 One dynamic enabling the GOP's continued heroic illumination of the Democratic Party's parliamentary weakness is that Reid rarely actually forces filibusters. He instead looks for a vote on cloture, loses it, and moves on. In this way, he's apparently made a conscious decision not to allow the GOP's obstructionism to actually appear obstructionist -- after all, nothing they do is really halting the Senate's business. Rather, he's apparently bought into the "you need 60 votes to get 51" concept, and is actually running the Senate as if that's true, rather than a procedural trick that has a public downside when exposed.

Well, sort of. The problem with forcing a "real" filibuster (for the majority party anyhow) is that it is done at the expense of all other Senate business. That means allowing anything in the works that might actually make it to the president (like, say, the minimum wage hike) to remain stuck until one side backs down or the Congress ends. It's quite possible that Reid is worried that the Republicans will filibuster past appropriations (or some other important scheduled event) and cost the Democrats the chance to shape those correctly or, perhaps, to force a filibuster on defense funding itself. The main take away should be that if the Republicans are really planning to obstruct everything of significance, then it's important to force them into a real filibuster on the right point of order.

And then, of course, there's the veto...