The Alito filibuster vote and the power of the primaries

Yesterday's 72-25 Senate vote against a filibuster of Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court shows just how powerful an influence the Democratic presidential primaries can have on legislative behavior.

All five Democratic senators who are considering running for president in 2008 -- Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, and John Kerry -- backed the filibuster. More revealingly, when we analyze the relationship between estimated ideology from the 108th Congress and the vote on the filibuster, we find that Clinton, Feingold and Kerry were likely to vote for the filibuster just on the basis of ideology, but Bayh and Biden were not (predicted probabilities are .13 and .33, respectively).

Will the vote help endear Bayh and Biden to the Democratic base? Probably not; I doubt either could win the nomination (Biden is a blowhard and Bayh is too conservative). But it helps keep their hopes alive. For now, that is enough.

Comments

[mwfolsom]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I'm sick of Joe Biden, Senator MBNA, and its nice to see I'm not alone. How he can think his race for Pres is going anywhere is beyond me.

I guess besides being a blowhard he's delusional to boot!

M-