From a bargaining point of view, the move reveals that the majority values reaching 60 more than the minority values preventing it. But this is a puzzle. Why is it not zero sum? A few reasons, some generic, some specific to this situation.
- In fact, other things equal, the minority should be able to muster more goodies because, due to the smaller numbers, each senator internalizes more of the cost of losing the fillibuster. So there is even more of a puzzle.
- But the majority controls committee chairmanships which is a more efficient way to transfer value as opposed to bill-by-bill sweeteners.
- In the current climate the cost of losing the fillibuster is lower than usual because Republicans are lacking leadership and are generally adrift. Their best chance to rise again is to give Democrats enough rope to hang themselves.
- As pointed out by Tyler Cowen, Specter already had some private motivation to switch. He is among the most liberal of Republicans and his prospects for re-election are better as a Democrat than as a Republican given that he nearly lost the Republican Primary in 2004.
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April 28, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Mario
My guess is that the Democrats are simply overestimating the difference the change in labels will have on Specter’s votes. It is not as if the Democrats need his vote to retain or get control of Congress, after all.
For what it’s worth, I also think that Specter is underestimating Obama’s penchant for tossing people aside when they have ceased to be useful. I think he is expecting to vote as he always has and still receive full support in the Democratic primary. I don’t think this will be enough to avoid retirement.
April 28, 2009 at 10:43 pm
pacer521
interesting post!
http://politicsdecoded.com/2009/04/29/opinion-piece-fake-reform-and-its-negative-effect-on-washington/
April 29, 2009 at 8:13 am
Sean
Specter was moderate. Conservative Republicans penalized him for being moderate by funding a conservative primary challenger he could not beat(he was losing by 20+ points). If he wanted to continue to be a senator, his only choice was to switch parties. The essence of Jeff’s question still begs an answer: Why do conservative Republicans continue to shrink the party in order to make it more conservative? I think some of them actually think the election was a rebuke from the middle that conservatives had “lost their way” and weren’t sufficiently “pure”. In this dynamic game, the median voter elects the less prefered party to send a message to the other to purify itself. I don’t buy this game, but some Republicans apparently think they are playing it.
April 29, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Arlen Specter Revisited « Cheap Talk
[…] 29, 2009 in Uncategorized | by sandeep Jeff already wrote an interesting blog about Specter switching parties. Specter seems to have switched because he stands a better change winning in re-election as a […]