Anyone Can Win Senate Debates

Shortly after President Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Senate Democrats vowed to do everything they could to prevent her confirmation. Democrats fear that Republicans will shift the Court’s ideological center of gravity rightward for a generation or more if they replace Ginsburg, one of the Court’s leading liberal justices, with Barrett, a conservative jurist who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Notwithstanding such fears, Democrats concede that there is little they can do in the post-filibuster Senate to stop Barrett’s confirmation. Senate watchers likewise portray Barrett’s confirmation as a foregone conclusion. And while reports initially acknowledged that Democrats have some procedural tools to slow the process, the consensus appears to be that they are powerless to stop it.

The perception of inevitable defeat has led Democrats to view the Barrett debate through an electoral lens. That is, Democrats hope to leverage their defeat in the debate to win control of the Senate on Nov. 3. But they do not expect to prevent her confirmation. Cory Booker, D-N.J., remarked last week in the Judiciary Committee, “This goose is pretty much cooked.”

This view reflects a superficial understanding of how the Senate operates. A closer look at that process suggests that Senate minorities- like Democrats in the Barrett confirmation debate- may overcome their disadvantaged status vis-à-vis Senate majorities by using parliamentary procedure to redefine the narrative in which a debate unfolds. That means that Democrats may use parliamentary procedure to make it harder for Republicans to confirm Barrett. The key to doing so is for Democrats to shift the larger narrative in which the confirmation debate unfolds from one that disadvantages their preferred outcome (i.e., blocking her confirmation) to one that advantages it.

Strategic Thinking

The way in which a debate begins does not inevitably determine how it ends. This is because senators settle on a specific outcome by acting and reacting to one another as the debate unfolds. Senate minorities can therefore influence outcomes by using parliamentary procedure to shape the process that precedes them. To do so effectively, senators must think strategically about the debate’s dominant narrative and how they can redefine it to make winning easier. 

A debate’s narrative is important because it advantages the minority or the majority side. Senate minorities can overcome their outnumbered status by expanding their coalition. This happens when they persuade some of their opponents to join their side. It could also happen when Senate minorities create a situation in which a subset of their opponents’ feel pressured to join their side. Either way, senators must think strategically to change how a debate unfolds over time.

Precise Goals

Senate minorities are also more likely to win a debate if they articulate their goals precisely from the outset. Precise goals help senators to continually assess the progress they are making towards achieving them as the debate unfolds. They also help Senate minorities to identify internal divisions on the majority side in a debate. The commitment of rank-and-file senators can be brought into sharper relief by juxtaposing it to alternative outcomes stated precisely and publicly. Senate minorities can push their colleagues to adjudicate certain issues by forcing them to take public positions on questions related to their preferred outcome. Armed with this information, Senate minorities can then use the procedural tools at their disposal to target those senators they deem most likely to switch sides in the debate by persuading and/or pressuring them to do so.

Coalitions

Senate minorities must expend considerable effort to win debates because they begin them outnumbered by the majority. Changing the balance-of-power between the two sides over the course of the debate requires Senate minorities to expand their coalition.

Senators can use one of two strategies to expand their coalition. First, they may adopt an alliance strategy. In this strategy, senators inject a new proposal into a debate with the goal of fracturing the opposition. The alliance strategy works when a subset of the majority party prefers the minority’s proposal to the debate’s expected outcome.

Second, senators may adopt a redefinition strategy. In this strategy, senators reframe the debate so that some of their majority-affiliated colleagues feel pressured to join their side. The redefinition strategy is effective when senators are able to shift a debate’s dominant narrative to one that persuades senators’ constituents (and/or other key stakeholders), who are otherwise indifferent to its expected outcome, to take an active interest in the Senate’s deliberations. The resulting attention pressures majority-party senators who are only marginally committed to their side’s preferred outcome to reassess their position in the debate.

The possibility of senators changing a debate’s narrative exists because Senate debates unfold over time. A debate’s outcome is determined by senators’ preferences, the particular way in which they aggregate those precedents as the debate unfolds, and the larger environment in which the Senate deliberates. Senate minorities may therefore leverage the larger environment to change the process to advantage their preferences regarding the outcome vis-à-vis their opponents’ preferences.

Senators can do so by using parliamentary procedure at various inflection points in a debate to redefine its dominant narrative. The cumulative effect of such efforts, if done well, will be to replace the expected outcome in a debate with an unexpected one. This requires a disciplined, targeted, and sustained effort on the part of a Senate minority to create sufficient pressure to upset the Senate’s internal balance-of-power between it and the majority. 

Both the alliance and redefinition strategies work because Senate majorities and minorities are not cohesive voting blocs. They are instead comprised of unique individuals with varying levels of commitment to a given outcome and who represent separate constituencies. Consequently, senators affiliated with one side of the other in a debate want to win for different reasons. By extension, senators’ commitment to winning on all sides varies.

Senate minorities can win a particular debate even though they begin it outnumbered by the majority if they exploit their opponents’ internal divisions. That is, Senate minorities may use parliamentary procedure to pressure senators clustered around those divisions to join their side.