Posted 2:35 PM by steve

Patterico is suggesting what he calls the “conventional warfare option”, in which the "Republicans would force a floor vote on a non-binding resolution of support for qualified judges who are being filibustered. The vote would increase political pressure on Democrats, by concretely demonstrating that those filibustered judges enjoy majority support in the Senate".

The problem with this proposal is that is predicated on Senate Democrats being susceptible to being swayed by 'public opinion' - which I don't think they are. First of all, an awful lot of Senate Democrats are pretty much immune from pressure of any type. The Boxers, Kennedys, Kerrys, Sarbanes, Clintons and Mikulskis will never agree to allow an up or down vote to take place - and there's nothing anyone, anywhere could do to change this. Second, Senate Democrats who aren't up for re-election this cycle are also pretty much off the table as far as putting pressure on them - by the time they come up for re-election, in either 2008 or 2010, the public will have pretty much forgotten what happened or didn't happen to Bush's judicial nominees.

The only group of Senate Democrats for which pressure might be exerted are the relatively few who are (1) up for re-election in 2006, (2) from a red state, and (3) expecting to face a formidable Republican challenger. All the others get to do what they want.

And even for this small group of 'pressurable' Senators, how many of them will decide that yielding to 'public pressure' is worth alienating core Democratic interest groups? The 'public' isn't going to finance their next campaign, the liberal PACs will. The 'public' isn't going to mobilize campaign workers, liberal interest groups are.

The fact is that the 'public' matters a whole lot less than retaining the support of one's core groups. Bush didn't win because he won the 'public', he won because Rove's machine got more core voters to the polls. The Democrats know this, and they know they won't get their core voters to the polls on their behalf by giving Bush's nominations a free pass to the federal bench.

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