After Democratic Senator Chris Murphy launched a filibuster to do something about gun violence in the wake of Orlando, Republicans agreed to a vote on two key items: barring gun purchases by those on the no-fly list and increasing background checks. The Senate just voted on both.
The merit of the particular proposals is not our purview; the potential political ramification is. Democrats are endeavoring to retake the Senate and hope to use this issue against incumbent Republicans. In some ways, the Democrats have been successful. Some Republicans are in fact now flipping sides. But in some ways, the Democrats have not been successful. They’ve allowed endangered Republican Senators to take a vote that makes them seem reasonable and more electable (which only two took advantage of).
Now obviously it doesn’t make sense to avoid making good policy because it will make your opponents look good too. Yet the gun-control bill that emerges from the Senate, if one emerges at all, is likely to be DOA in the House regardless. Everything we know about how the House has operated makes that the outcome. So Democrats may be decreasing the salience of an issue with some voters in an exchange for a vote that will result in no change in the law. Republican incumbents can appear moderate with very little in the way of consequences.
Overall the Democrats’ filibuster probably was a good strategy but some Senate Republicans may take advantage of it to cast votes that will help them in their re-election fight. That should be acknowledged.
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The Scorecard is a political strategy and analysis blog. Our hope is to provide information and insight that can be found nowhere else into how and why things are happening in American politics. Unlike many political pundits, we will tell you who we think is going to win as an election approaches; we will tell you why; and we will give you a sense of our level of confidence. Ours is a holistic approach, one that takes in as many numbers as possible but is also willing to look past the numbers if need be. When we turn out to have been wrong, we will let you know. When we are right, we’ll let you know that too.
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Author Jason Paul is a longtime political operative who got his start as an intern in 2002. He has been a political forecaster for almost as long. He won the 2006 Swing State Project election prediction contest and has won two other local contests. He had the pulse of Obama-Clinton race in 2008 and has been as good as anyone at delegate math in the 2016 race. He looks forwards to providing quality coverage for the remainder of the 2016 race.
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