General Question
Is my crazy ass political hypothetical even within the realm of possibility?
OK, here goes. Here’s what I know. The Dems have 57 Senate seats locked down, one is in limbo (Obama’s former seat) as we don’t know if Blagojevich will be impeached and his successor will appoint, or if Blagojevich will move to fill the seat or if there will be some sort of special election called, so there’s probably a 99% chance it will end up staying a Democratic seat, but we can’t say with 100% certainty. But let’s assume for a moment that stays a Dem seat, the count is now 58.
Minnesota is counting disputed ballots and awaiting a challenge on a lawsuit regarding wrongly rejected absentee ballots, and no matter what happens it will probably end up in the courts, and of course the Senate itself could intervene. If I had to bet on this one, I’d say I have very strong reasons to believe Franken is going to win in the end and it’s going to give the Dems 59 to 41 (assuming you count the 2 independents that caucus with the Dems).
So, let’s use those assumptions for now and say that at least, from the standpoint of an observer, it is actually not only possible, but possibly likely that the Dems will end up with 59 seats. And there was a LOT of talk about getting to 60 before Chambliss beat Martin in the Georgia runoff, but clearly now, hopes of 60, at least until 2010 are dead, right? Well, this is where my crazy ass hypothetical comes in.
Let’s look at what else we know. First off, Obama is appointing his cabinet right now. We know that he has appointed Democratic Governors and Senators so far. We know that he said in his campaign that he’d put “some” Republicans in his cabinet, and so far he’s only put one, if he’s being sincere and doesn’t want people to call Gates a “token”, he’d probably need to appoint at least 2 more Republicans. In case you don’t see where I’m going with this, what if Obama appointed a Republican Senator to his cabinet? That would leave the seat open.
Now, another thing I know is that what happens when a Senate seat is vacated varies from state to state. When the campaigns were going, there were questions about “what happens to the candidate’s Senate seat if he becomes the President, could it switch parties?” And the answer was no, because in Illinois, the Governor appoints whomever he wants (as we’re all painfully aware in light of recent events), and the governor being a Democrat would undoubtedly appoint a Democrat (of course we assumed Blagojevich had at least SOME integrity at that point). But in Arizona, the governor was a Democrat, so if McCain had won, the question was whether this could be an issue, and the answer was no because under Arizona law, the Governor is bound to appoint someone of the same party as the person vacating the seat.
So, my assumption is that it’s theoretically possible that there could be a state with at least one Republican Senator, where the governor is a Democrat, who would be able to replace a vacating Republican Senator with an incoming Democratic Senator.
Given the assumption that Obama might appoint as many as 2 more Republicans to his cabinet, and given that he has personal relationships to both Dems and Republicans in the Senate having worked with them, and given that he has shown he likes to appoint Senators to his cabinet, it seems “theoretically” possible that Obama COULD appoint a Republican Senator to his cabinet in a state where that seat would then change hands due to a sitting Democratic Governor.
My question then is, do any such seats exist, and if so, are any of the people in these seats where this is theoretically possible moderate enough and experiened enough in one area where Obama could appoint them to a cabinet post and expect that person to do a good job (by Obama’s standards)? Is this even within the outside realm of possibility?
Now, I don’t think Obama cares as much about 60 as most Democrats, and I don’t think it’s as meaningful a number as many made it out to be because there can always be dissenters on either side, and that does require the independents to side with the Dems. Plus it seems the best way to keep fillibusters to a minimum might be to actually require the fillibuster (instead of having Reid vote for cloture, creating a procedural fillibuster), which would actually force Mitch McConnell to stand up there and read from the phone book for 19 hours. And of course Dems can keep fillibusters from happening in the first place by threatening to blockade Republican favored legistlation that might otherwise have bi-partisan support. So I don’t see 60 as all that big of a deal, and I don’t think Obama does either, and hence I doubt he would specifically go after this strategy.
But what if…? Given the current layout, is there any real world scenario anyone can come up with where it could work?
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