In Senate, 57 may be all the Dems need

Fifty-seven is the new 60.

Despite both sides using the prospect of a 60-seat Democratic majority to motivate donors, with two weeks to go in the 2008 election, Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) have both set the bar for the 111th Congress at the 57-seat mark.

{mosads}Ensign on Tuesday repeated something Schumer has said previously — that a 57-seat majority is effectively filibuster-proof, because the majority party can pick off three votes from across the aisle on a given issue with relative ease.

Experts say it isn’t quite that simple, because Democrats will likely have unseated a number of GOP centrists in order to get to 57, and they would also have some centrist and conservative-leaning members who might buck the party frequently.

Ensign’s comments came during a Tuesday breakfast with Schumer at the National Press Club, where the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman set a three-to-five-seat loss as the high bar for his committee.

Democrats currently hold a 51-49 majority. Most experts see three or four races clearly favoring Democrats, with another half-dozen as toss-ups.

“It’s not even the 60 number that is going to be the magic number, I think,” Ensign said. “I think if the Democrats get to 57 or 58 seats, on a lot of issues they will be able to override the Senate filibuster.”

Those remarks track closely with what Schumer told The Hill in March, when he said that if Democrats got “55, 56, 57, 58, you will pick up enough Republicans on any single issue.”

Schumer, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman, still maintains 60 seats is a tall order and sounds as though he’d be happy in the high 50s.

On Tuesday, he recounted someone suggesting to him that a mere six-seat gain would be a disappointment.
“What? Fifty-seven seats? We haven’t had that since 1979!” Schumer said incredulously.

Though Democrats had 57 seats for a short time in 1993, neither party has had that many for a full Congress in more than a quarter-century, and the level of partisanship in the chamber has only grown since then.

Even when Democrats had 60-plus votes in the 1960s and 1970s, a block of Southern conservatives would often bolt, voting with Republicans, and the filibuster wasn’t used as a partisan tool.

In other words, there is not a ready historical example of a party in the upper 50s faced with the constant threat of a filibuster.

{mospagebreak}Schumer and his Democratic colleagues have decried the high number of filibusters in the 110th Congress by the new Republican minority and suggested in donor appeals that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama needs a 60-seat Democratic majority in order to enact his agenda.

Republicans, conversely, have used the filibuster-proof concept as a stopgap, suggesting it is the party’s last line of defense against the “liberal agenda.”

{mosads}Sarah Binder, a filibuster expert at George Washington University and the Brookings Institution, said the effectiveness of a 57-seat majority depends on how cohesive those 57 are and how many centrists are left in the GOP conference.

“If the Republican caucus in the Senate gets smaller, it gets more conservative,” Binder said, mentioning vulnerable Sens. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) in particular. Another centrist, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), could also be in jeopardy.

Beyond that, Binder said, it will depend on which direction Obama’s policies trend ideologically.

Jennifer Duffy, a Senate race analyst at The Cook Political Report, also sounded skeptical that Democratic legislation would sail through with such a majority.

She noted Democrats could add a Southern Democrat who would likely vote with Republicans on many issues in former Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, who is facing Sen. Roger Wicker (R).

“That might be a correct statement if Gordon Smith and Norm Coleman are still in the Senate and Ronnie Musgrove isn’t,” Duffy said. “But I don’t know that that’s the way it’s going to happen.”

Duffy said three other Southern Democratic Senate candidates — former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, North Carolina state Sen. Kay Hagan and former Georgia state Rep. Jim Martin — are also unlikely to be reliable votes.

“Even if they get 60, they [would be] bringing in some real moderates who aren’t going to be with them a lot — at least, not if they want to see a second term,” Duffy said.

Donald Ritchie, an associate Senate historian, said Democrats would need something like the “Gang of Five,” which was led by Sen. Robert Stafford (R-Vt.) in the 1980s. The group wielded power by crossing over and voting with Democrats on environmental issues.

“There could be a ‘Gang of Three’ in the next Congress,” Ritchie said.