Bringing back the Senate to decency

Mark Schmitt asks the right question here. For voters trying to determine whether the next president will be able to achieve universal health care or end the war in Iraq, the key question is not what the candidates' campaign policy proposals say or how many years of experience they have. It is: Who will be able to "bring the Senate back to decency"? Will the next president, like Reagan, be able to remake the Senate, bringing in new members from states like Colorado and Kentucky to reach an actual progressive majority of 56 or 57? And after getting within range of 60, will he or she be able to make the cross-party alliances to draw a handful of Northeastern or Midwestern Republicans out of the stance of massive resistance that they adopted in 1993? And will he or she be able to be as creative as Reagan or Bush in recognizing that small and subtle institutional changes -- as simple as using a rule that?s been forgotten -- can turn the power of the Senate from obstruction to a force for positive change? Sirota wrote a piece for us along the same lines, too. Without canabalizing an article that is working its way through editing now, I think there stands a good chance that Democrats will widen their teeny --and on foreign policy non-existent -- Senate majority with solid progressives. And my off-the-record impressions of people close to some of those campaigns is that they genuinely believe Obama would help them immensely down-ticket. More broadly, we spend way too much time analyzing the presidential race and way too little time understanding these crucial Senate and House races. Some of those battles are way more interesting, too.