Folding Star of A Winding Road on the Senate

If you've read A Winding Road, you know that Folding Star focuses largely on the Senate. (If you haven't, what are you waiting for! Click on the link!) Folding Star's comments are always to the point and speak of the puzzlement, anger and delight we feel as we watch the happenings go down (sometimes up -- Senator Barbara Boxer has surely pulled her party up since the first of January).

In blog entries explaining what just happened, there's not a great deal of time to address what the Senate means and should mean. So we asked Folding Star to write up some thoughts on the Senate. We were expecting some quick jottings but we got this wonderful essay instead.

"I First Became Fascinated by the Senate . . ."

I first became fascinated by the Senate at an
absurdly young age. I was in the 9th grade at the
time, and I honestly can't tell you how the
fascination began. I suppose it might have been
stumbling across some Senate coverage on CSPAN that
first piqued my interest, or maybe something I saw in
a movie. I remember checking out books on the role of
the Senate and its history, and for a time I had the
crazy notion that I wanted to grow up to be a United
States Senator. Never mind that I hated with a passion
any occasion when I had to speak in front of a class
of 30 other kids I'd known to some degree or another
for years. Somehow, public speaking wouldn't phase me
in my quest for a Senate career!

I also recall informing my mother one afternoon that
I'd decided to run for the Senate when I was older.
Never one to discourage her children's dreams, she was
positive about my desire, but she did tactfully point
out that you need a lot of money to be in politics.

And there we have it. The gap between what fascinates
me about the Senate, really about our whole political
system, and what keeps it from being all that is
should be.

What the Senate should be is a body of women and men
who are wholly equal in power and status, along with
the House of Representatives, to the Presidency.
Congress as a whole declares wars, not any President.
The framers of the Constitution would never have given
that power to any single individual. The Senate,
meanwhile, acts as a check upon the Presidency in that
they alone can approve or reject any treaty; they
alone can approve or reject the Judicial nominations
of a President, the Cabinet nominations of a
President. Advice and Consent.

The Senate, ideally, should be a place of great
debate. It should never be a rubber stamp for any
administration, not even the most liberal. For
instance, FDR attempted to get around a more
conservative Supreme Court by 'packing' it, upping the
number of Justices from 9 to 12 so that he could
appoint 3 more Justices. The plan didn't get past the
Senate. While such a move would have (in the short run)
aided liberal causes, it would have set a dangerous
precedent.

I see the Senate, ideally, as an institution in which
debate thrives, and in which they take their
constitutional role with the utmost seriousness. A
body made up on intelligent men and women, of
thinkers. Of people who would see the inherent danger
in making the Senate nothing more than a rubber stamp
for an Executive branch ever growing in power, who
would never abdicate their right to declare war or
debate crucial nominations for as long as necessary on
the Senate floor, without being hit with charges of
partisan politics.

The Jeffersons and Madisons of our times should be
serving in the Senate today. People who know their
history and who truly care about change and progress
should find the perfect place for themselves in the
Senate. The Senate, as it should be, would have, in the
20th Century, boasted such names as Gore Vidal and
Howard Zinn, should they have decided to run (Gore
Vidal did run in the Democratic primaries for the
Senate from California in 1982 and in the general
election for the House from New York in 1960).

The reality, of course, is quite different. Because of
the way our electoral system in structured, the
members of the US Senate tend to be bought and paid
for by various interests long before they can reach
the Senate. It's in essence a club for millionaires,
or those who've sold their vote to people or
corporations with access to millions for their
campaigns.

That's not to say that progressives don't find their
way there. But most of the time, they're compromised
in some way. It's a fact of the system.

What the Senate means to me, then, is more based on an
ideal than on the reality, though I truly believe that
we CAN change the reality to bring it closer to the
ideal. In our history, we already have. Until 1913,
each and every Senator was chosen not by the people of
his (and it was of course only 'his' back then) state,
but rather by the state Legislatures. In other words,
it was your typical political machine,
you-scratch-my-back type of set up.

One of the key fights of the early progressive
movement, though, was for direct election of United
States Senators. And it was a fight that was won. Less
than a hundred years ago, we managed to bring the
Senate that much closer to the ideal with a bit of
electoral reform.

So reform is possible, and I hold out hope that by
making electoral changes, we can open the Senate up to
the sort of people who should be serving in it: People
who want to debate issues, not rush them through
committee without a floor debate because they affect a
big contributor. People who actually give a thought to
what Government is all about and who truly believe in
the words 'Of the people, by the people, and for the
people.' People who don't have to be millionaires or
in bed with corporate interests to get there to begin
with. Women and men of every race and religion that
make up America today.

The reform that needs to happen is actually quite
simple- we have to take the money out of politics.
Give all candidates equal time on the public airwaves.
Equal public financing of campaigns and the
elimination of any private money involved in them. No
campaign, from the Presidency on down, should be a
multi-million dollar business.

Once you remove the money from politics, it levels the
playing field completely. The average activist who
cares about the future of his or her country can run a
real campaign of ideas against that 5 term Senator.

In short, the Senate should be about ideas, debate,
and public discourse about the state of our country
and where it's going tomorrow and next year, and in
ten years. That's what the Senate means to me, that's
what it should be and what I hope it one day will be.

Now that I've dwelt on the idealism of what the Senate
means to me, let me talk about what my hopes are for
the Democrats serving in the Senate today.

In spite of my idealism, I am also a realist by
necessity. You cannot look at the political scene
today as someone who is a progressive liberal and not
be a realist. We've got far right Republicans in
control of the Congress and the White House for at
least the next two years, after having been in control
for the last two. We've got a Supreme Court that is
one Justice away from joining the far right
domination. (One moderate or liberal Justice, that is.
If we were to lose Rehnquist, Scalia, or Thomas, the
balance would remain the same. Bush would merely be
replacing one far right Justice with another.)

And, on top of that bleak picture of the three
branches, we've got a Democratic party that is torn
between embracing its true progressive values and
moving to the right in a misguided, self destructive
attempt to woo Republican voters!

In the period after the last election, in which the
Democrats lost a net total of four seats, when it
became evident that Senator Harry Reid of Nevada was
going to be Senate Minority Leader, I didn't feel very
positive about the 109th Congress.

My best hope at that time was that the Democrats would
at least manage to hang together enough to filibuster
the worst of the far right judicial nominees that Bush
would try to appoint, especially in the instance of a
vacancy on the Supreme Court, and to fight off the
worst of the second term agenda Bush was promoting.
With so many voices in the party, including former
President Clinton, advocating what amounted to a shift
to the right, and with the Republican-Lite Harry Reid
leading the Dems in the Senate, my hopes even for this
were faint.

However, in the month since this Congress came into
session, I've seen reason to begin thinking a bit more
positively. Beginning with Barbara Boxer's amazing
stand, along with Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones
of Ohio, challenging the electoral vote of Jones'
state on the grounds of overwhelming evidence of fraud
and voter disenfranchisement, I've seen the term
'opposition party' begin to take on more meaning than
it seemed to have these past four years.

In the weeks since, this feeling that some Democrats
are starting to understand what Opposition truly means
has grown. 12 Democrats and Senator Jeffords of
Vermont stood against the Rice nomination and 35 Dems
and Senator Jeffords voted against the confirmation of
Alberto Gonzales, saying no to the idea of rewarding
torture with promotion to higher office. What's more,
they stood up to charges of petty partisan politics
and insisted on debating these nominations on the
Senate floor, which is no more than their
constitutional obligation.

Most of all, I look at someone like Senator Barbara
Boxer who is not afraid to do what's right, even if
she's standing alone in the Senate, and I begin to
hope that what we'll see in the 109th Congress is a
growing sense of change, of opposition to all that
Bush stands for. I begin to hope that the Democrats in
the Senate will follow Boxer's example on more than
just these confirmation votes, will begin to act like
true Democrats again. That, in spite of those voices
pushing for a move to the right, they'll begin to
realize the they're there to represent the left.

In a party that should be lead in the Senate by
Barbara Boxer or Ted Kennedy, I begin to hope that the
Democrats will actually fight harder than ever before
to shut down not just the worst of Bush's agenda, but
all of it. That maybe they, like Kennedy, will begin
to call for an end to our occupation of Iraq and a
return home of our troops.

Those are my hopes for this Congress, for these
Democrats- that they will continue to fight for us,
that they will continue to recognize that the Senate
should be debating important issues, even if the Right
wants to have a name calling fit over it and act as a
rubber stamp for their boy wonder. Most of all that
the courage of those few like Barbara Boxer will
continue to inspire their colleagues on to acting more
and more like real Democrats again.

What do I think are the chances of all this happening?
Well, we face an uphill battle. Harry Reid is no
Democrat. At best, I'd call him a moderate Republican
who for whatever reason decided to run as a Democrat.
And he's in charge of setting the agenda for the
party. So we will face very real battles with Reid. He
didn't join the 13 who voted against Rice, and I think
we saw the effect that had- most sided with the party
'leader' and voted to Confirm, no matter how
disgraceful a choice that was. With Gonzales, Reid
joined those voting no, and all but six Democrats (and
three who did not vote) went with him.

Reid will be an obstacle to the progressives in the
Senate in many ways. But, he has pledged to stand firm
against Bush's worst Judicial nominees and his attack
on Social Security. So, in some crucial cases, Reid
will be the leader he won't be on many other issues.

And Reid doesn't stand alone. Let's not forget that he
was elected by the other Democrats in the Senate who
knew just how conservative he was. There are far too
many Senators who belong to the Center-Right and want
to see the entire party follow their lead. They'll be
feeling threatened by the stands that Barbara Boxer
and others are making.

We also can't forget that we're the minority party by
a greater number now. With Senator Jeffords caucusing
with the Dems, the balance stands at 55-45. The
Democrats not only have to all hold together, they
also have to win over at least 6 Republicans for a
majority vote. It's an uphill battle, there's no
question about it.

But watching Senator Boxer make her stand on the issue
of the Ohio vote, I felt for the first time in a long
time that there was at least one truly courageous
person in the Senate with progressive values, and I
think it's a start we can build upon.

The important thing, as always, is to remember that
these people are our voice and we need to constantly
remind them of it. When someone takes an amazing
stand, write them or call their office so that they
know you approve. If they do something completely
heinous, like the six who voted to confirm Gonzales-
the two Nelsons, Lieberman, Landrieu, Salazar and
Pryor, just for the record- let them know how much you
disagree with them. Let them know BEFORE a vote how
you feel, and again afterwards. Let them know, above
all, that we're watching, we're paying attention, and
we're going to hold them accountable come election
day. Nothing speaks louder to a politician than that.

And nothing short of we, the people, taking control
and demanding change, demanding electoral reform,
demanding that Democrats represent progressive values
again, will help make the Senate what it could be,
make our entire political system what it needs to be:
Of the people, by the people, for the people.