Jonathan Bernstein: “I hate to get too speculative about 2021, but in this case it’s necessary. Because the flaw in Republican reasoning, if this is what they intend, is that the most likely justification for Senate Democrats to use the ‘nuclear option’ and eliminate the legislative filibuster would be the scenario that Republicans seem to be setting up: a deep recession, only minimal stimulus since March 2020 and incoming Democratic majorities unable to provide further relief because of Republican rejectionism. Faced with the choice of procedural complaints if they act, or the possibility of economic (and perhaps political) disaster if they don’t, Democrats might have the votes to go nuclear even if they have the slimmest of majorities.”
“In other words, too much rejectionism might backfire badly. There’s a lengthy agenda of Democratic policy preferences that might have the votes in a simple-majority Senate but that don’t have the urgency, especially among moderates, to push the party to go nuclear. After eliminating the filibuster, many of those items might well pass. Meanwhile, without the need to attract Republicans, a partisan stimulus might be very large, and very effective. Especially if it coincided with large-scale distribution of a vaccine.”
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