Note to Gonzone:

I understand, and appreciate, the sentiment but you should also remember that the tally of sixty votes is mostly symbolic at this point. In reality, the Democratic Party has-- at best-- only 58 votes when Franken arrives.

To get 60 votes, would require:

1. The return of Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Byrd to the floor. Both have been absent for an extended period because of illness and hospitalization. I don't doubt-- if it were truly important-- the two might be wheeled in on hospital beds or in wheelchairs. But, otherwise, they are not present and accounted for to vote in the immediate future. Will they be in the Senate chambers in time to vote for the Sotomayor confirmation in August? I hope so. But it may require some of the aforementioned theater to make it happen.

2. Overcoming the "Will Rogers Factor." As Rogers famously said, "I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat." Bloc voting is a strategy not unheard of within the Democratic party, but is typically a strategy more successfully employed by the GOP. Bloc voting would also require the participation of two independent senators (Sanders and Lieberman) who may or may not participate depending on the issue at hand (particularly with Lieberman, but don't rule out Sanders and his independent streak depending on the issue). It also requires creating an issue to vote on that pretends that Al Franken, Arlen Specter, Edward Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Blanche Lincoln, and Bill Nelson all belong to the same political party. They do on paper, but in reality they represent a pretty wide spectrum. The Republican party could probably disappear off the face of the earth leaving only the Democratic Party and the US would still be operating under a two-party system.

In reality, to get to 60 votes in the current set-up, Reid and the Democrats will have to continue to rely on the help of GOP Senators such as Snowe (ME), Collins (ME), and Hagel (NE). There are other GOP wildcards in the mix, too, depending on the issue at hand, including Voinovich (OH), Martinez (FL), Lugar (IN), and-- wait for it-- McCain (AZ). Each of these are consistently ranked as among the "most liberal GOP senators" based on voting stances taken in recent sessions.

Franken's election only reduces the number of Republicans Reid needs to recruit for a 60-vote coalition. It does not eliminate the need for a four-party (Democratic, Socialist, Independent Democratic, and Republican) coalition entirely. Miraculous recoveries by Kennedy and Byrd would help, but don't seem realistic at this time.

But, there's still 2010 on the horizon and some interesting seats that could be harvested for the majority are available.

You are correct that this is not a firm 60 vote super majority, especially considering the Blue Dogs in the Senate.
Still I think this should at the very least put a little spine in what has been a supine Senate Majority leader. For heaven's sake, wasn't he purportedly some pugilist of note? So where's the fighter for the people? Still backing mining corporations?
Time for some accountability for Reid still applies.

And if the GOP and Blue Dogs insist on filibuster and 60 votes for every vote, then let's make them do an actual filibuster, not just threaten it and scare our pants off. Up or down vote by gawd! [spit tobacco juice]

"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?"

Great analysis.

More here about the recent normalization of the filibuster

The most intellectually honest way to determine liberal and conservative in Congress is to use the Americans for Democratic Action scores for liberal and the American Conservative Union scores for conservative. Both have been ranking based on votes since the late 1940s. The National Journal rankings are particularly suspect and I avoid them. I've used ADA and ACU in several research projects.

Mark Harmon

Who determines who "ranked as among the 'most liberal GOP senators' based on voting stances taken in recent sessions"?

I should have linked that information in my first post. I was looking at web sites operated by right wing think tanks and their own scoring systems. The names I listed were named by various groups as RINOs by right wingers. I didn't look to see how liberal organizations were scoring them. While the right-wing think tank definitions of liberal and my definition of liberal will likely not match, the point is that these Senators have a habit of going all "maverick-y" on the GOP and crossing party lines at inconvenient times for the party's bloc vote mentality.

Here are a couple of lists from HumanEvents.com for 2008 (pre-November election) and for 2009.

I think it is interesting to note that of the top 10 on the 2008 list, four of those ten lost re-election bids that year (well, technically, one of them finally lost this week). These were Smith-OR (#3), Coleman-MN (#5), John Warner-VA (#8), and Stevens-AK (#10). Specter-PA (#4) defected to the Democratic Party earlier this year and guaranteeing that 50% of the 2008 "top 10" list would not be in office (or at least in office as Republicans) in 2009.

If you look at the American Conservative Union's lifetime scores, you'll see some differences from the single year scores at HumanEvents.org, but some of the same characters are in both lists. The ten "most liberal" GOP Senators in office in 2008 (based on lifetime scores by the ACU) were: 1. Specter-PA, 2. Snowe-ME, 3. Collins-ME, 4. Stevens-AK, 5. Coleman-MN and Smith-OR (tie), 7. Voinovich-OH, 8. Murkowski-AK, 9. Domenici-NM, and 10. Shelby-AL.

Lugar-IN has a lifetime score that puts him as the 11th most liberal GOP Senator. Based on the current ACU lifetime numbers, Martinez and McCain are safely out of the top 10, but entrenched pretty firmly somewhere in the top 15 or so. Interestingly enough, McCain had a pretty high "most liberal status" leading up to 2008 but it fell pretty sharply in the run-up to the campaign. I won't be surprised to see his liberal standing creep back towards the top 10 territory now that he is no longer trying to court the GOP base for a presidential bid.

Going back to the original topic of filibusters and other strategic maneuvering, what I saw from these RINO lists is that the Democratic Party seems to have the best success in picking off seats from RINOs. I think this may be reinforcing the entrenchment of the GOP in the Senate as the most conservative members seem to be surviving while the moderates are either jumping ship or going down in defeat. This actually hurts the Democrats in one particular way as it gives them less and less potential Senators to court for compromise negotiations, giving an ever-shrinking number of moderate/liberal GOP senators extraordinary power in calling the shots in how legislation is eventually written. Maine's two US Senators may very well be the most courted and influential members of the Senate in this session in the eyes of both parties. In a world where one or two GOP defections can make or break a filibuster threat, they represent the ultimate swing vote. A good strategy in 2010 for the Democrats might be to try to focus more energy on defeating the more conservative members of the GOP in the Senate and leave the moderates like Snowe and Collins alone.

I imagine the electoral defeats of these RINOs are based at least partially on a general lack of support within their own party, allowing them to become low-hanging fruit for the Democratic Party in the general elections. I want to look more into this line of thinking and see if my theory holds any water at all.