Closing out a year in which Democratic party loyalty and unity became elevated concerns, in large part because of Senator Lieberman’s doings, CQPolitics has come out with its annual survey”CQ Vote Studies for the 110th Congress.” The study provides percentage ratings for every member of congress for “Presidential Support,” “Party Unity” and “Participation,” with interesting implications for Dems regarding party-building and future cloture votes.
A couple of highlights — while four Republican U.S. Senators (Allard, DeMint, Ensign and Kyl) scored a perfect 100 rating in terms of “Party Unity” — defined as “the frequency with which they vote with their party on occasions when a majority of Republicans oppose a majority of Democrats,” no Dems scored 100. Akaka, Bingaman, Boxer, Clinton, Kennedy, Lautenberg, Murray and Reed lead the Dems with a 99 score, and many others were in the mid/high nineties.
Dems scoring lower than Lieberman’s 81 included: Bayh (65), Carper (80), Johnson (80), Landrieu (69), Nelson-NE (72) and Pryor (79), though none of them endorsed McCain, as did Lieberman. Lincoln and McCaskill tied Lieberman at 81. President-elect Obama scored a 95 (albeit with a low ‘participation’ rate), Veep-elect Biden achieved 97 and Majority Leader Harry Reid got 84.
The U.S. Senator with the lowest party unity score is Republican Olympia Snowe at 39, with no one else of either party very close (Collins 46). Come on over, Olympia. It’s time to come home.
Eight House Dems scored a perfect 100.
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
