Democrats can save the Senate or ruin it: Ross Baker

I have studied the U.S. Senate my entire professional life. All of my academic leaves since 1975 have been spent in the offices of senators — Democrats and Republicans. All of my research is based on interviews with senators. I wrote a modestly successful book that compared the Senate with the House and found the former to be a superior institution because of its historic responsibility to be the more deliberative and thoughtful chamber. One need only think back a week to the Obamacare repeal debacle in the House to appreciate the difference between the two.

Now the Senate Democrats want to take a step that weakens the Senate, impairs its ability to temper the impulsiveness of the House and, worse, further advantages the presidency at the expense of Congress — a lethal blow to the hallowed doctrine of separation of powers.

I understand the Democrats' anger at the unconscionable treatment of Judge Merrick Garland last year based upon a bogus doctrine put forth by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that no Supreme Court nominees be confirmed in the last year of a presidency. I also get the seething resentment in the Democratic Party base at the reckless acts of President Trump and its desire not to reward him with a seat on the Supreme Court, even though his nominee seems to fall well within the normal range of choices that would be made by a Republican president.

The Democrats could do a lot worse, and they will when the next vacancy occurs. By forcing McConnell to invoke the "nuclear option" of killing the filibuster, which blocks Senate business until 60 of the 100 senators vote to move on, they will lose on Judge Neil Gorsuch and on the next seat if it comes up during Trump's time in the White House. They will have handed the president two justices, and they will disable the Senate's emergency brake on all judicial nominations.

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What makes my opposition to the Democrats' filibuster of Gorsuch so painful is that I find myself in opposition to the two senators with whom I have felt the closest: former Senate minority leader Harry Reid, who first invoked the nuclear option in 2013, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, the longest-serving Democrat and a revered figure who, I know, has agonized over his decision to give the Democrats the 41 votes to block consideration of the Gorsuch nomination. But I can't allow my fondness for these two friends to constrain me from speaking out against what I consider a historic mistake.

When the men who wrote the Constitution created the Senate, they gave senators terms of six years to shield them from the very public indignation to which they are now, apparently, about to succumb. This reveals in these Democrats a sad lack of fortitude in the face of pressure. They are, moreover, yielding to the same fear that has intimidated so many of their Republican colleagues: becoming the victim of a primary election challenge from the most ideological members of their own party. It makes a person wonder whether a seat in the chamber is so precious that the overturning of a device that makes the Senate the Senate can be contemplated, much less acted on.

Were the Democratic senators to heed my advice and pull back from filibustering the consideration of Gorsuch, I could not promise them that it would initiate a golden age of bipartisanship; the cleavage in this country runs too deep. But those with the courage to reconsider would have the satisfaction of knowing that they did not erode the foundations of an institution that has always served as a bulwark against an aggressive presidency whose encroachments right now are very much to be feared.

Ross K. Baker is a distinguished professor of political science at Rutgers University and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

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