It's sometimes shocking how little people understand the constraints that the separation of powers, the filibuster, and the veto place on the US political system. To change policy, the Democrats would need a 2/3 House and Senate majority to override a presidential veto. There's no way around that constraint. Indeed, Democrats can't even send legislation to President Bush without getting 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. (For more on these constraints, see my post on the gridlock zone, a concept from political science that systematizes these ideas.)
Matthew Yglesias offers a case in point -- liberals who complain that Harry Reid can't get anti-"escalation" legislation through the Senate, not realizing that there's little Reid can do without sixty votes:
Sometime in December, however, people seem to have gotten it into their head that something else would happen. That narrow congressional majorities were actually going to seize control of American national security policy in the face of determined opposition from the President of the United States supported nearly uniformly by his copartisans in congress. Thus, Matt Stoller includes on his list of "groups and individuals" who are "blocking real progress on Iraq," "Harry Reid, who failed to get a vote on a non-binding resolution in the Senate, and doesn't think his original war vote was wrong. It's Bush's fault apparently that Reid voted for the war. Like with his stance on Alito, Reid is giving the impression of action, but not the teeth."
Well, no. Look, Matt Yglesias leading a caucus of 51 Democratic Senators that includes Joe Lieberman, Bill Nelson, and Tim Johnson couldn't get much done in these circumstances either. Nor could Matt Stoller. It's not Reid's fault that there aren't 60 votes for a non-binding resolution on Iraq in the Senate... Blame Lieberman. Blame Jeff Sessions. And, again, ask yourself: If Reid's resolution is so useless, why is the GOP so determined to defeat it? And if it's so difficult to get 60 votes for this measure, what would the point be in proposing something more far-reaching that would only fail by a larger margin? The sad reality is that what Matt and I would like to see the Democrats accomplish is, under the circumstances, very difficult to achieve. Progressives should keep the pressure on for action, but we need to understand that objective circumstances matter. This is a slow boring of hard boards kind of situation, and it's extremely frustrating, but it's also George W. Bush's fault, not Reid's.
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