Yes, It Actually Might Occur
.........Let's make the case for the Green New Deal's success. We'll do this by replaying a 7-step argument, by Robinson Meyer, published in The Atlantic; we'll be dispelling the negative vibe of that article with a 'we can do this' message (in green type).
1. A Democrat must win the White House in 2020.
Agreed.
2. Assuming a Democrat is president, Democrats must retain control of the House of Representatives in 2020.
Most likely; but assuming the end of the Trump era, almost certain.
3. Democrats must also win the Senate in 2020. ...[T]he party will need to win at least 50 seats to control the 100-member upper chamber. (The vice president can vote in the Senate in the event of a tie.) Thirty-five senators who caucus with the Democrats are not up for election in 2020. To control the Senate, the party must win at least 15 seats.
Where do those seats come from? Democrats are considered a lock to win seven states in deep-blue territory. Four more races in bluish states (Virginia, Minnesota, Michigan, and New Hampshire) will feature popular Democratic incumbents. And figure that Democrats win Colorado, which broke for Hillary in 2016.
That’s still only 12 seats, and Democrats need at least three more. So they'll likely try to capture at least three of the following eight states: Arizona (where a Democrat won in 2018), Alabama, Maine, Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, Texas, and Montana.
You have to give Dems (in a presidential election year, with an unpopular incumbent) the edge in at least four (Maine, North Carolina, Georgia and Iowa), while probably losing in one (Alabama). Reasons vary from ranked-choice voting in Maine, to a good candidate in Georgia, to Trump's Trade War, in Iowa and perhaps elsewhere.
4. Let’s say Democrats pull it off—but just barely. By January 2021, a Democratic president is addressing a joint session of a Democratic House and a meager, 51-person Democratic Senate majority.
Under current Senate rules, most federal legislation ["requires"] a 60-vote “supermajority”. Because the filibuster is enshrined only in the Senate rules, not in the Constitution, Democrats could repeal it with 51 votes.
In our thought experiment, the Senate will not have 60 Democrats, period. And party leadership will struggle to find nine Republicans who'll vote to end debate on a Green New Deal package. So if Democrats want to pass it, they'll likely have to choose to end the legislative filibuster.
This assumes Republicans are as intransigent as before. But what if Trump were to lose by a huge margin (say, 45/54, after a Watergate-like Special Counsel's report)? And what if there were, say, 52 Democratic senators? The chokehold of the radical Right would be lifted, and if a new era were dawning, Republicans would look longingly at the Filibuster. They would be the ones needing it, if the House, Senate and Presidency were in Democratic hands. Wouldn't a few outlying centrists agree to allow a vote on the Green New Deal in exchange for an agreement to preserve the filibuster? Especially so, if the Green New Deal were pared back to a conservation-oriented retrofitting-of-buildings, etc., effort that hired millions, and that invoked WWII-like mobilization? Here are seven relatively moderate Republicans who might agree to this deal:
* Lisa Murkowski -- Alaska
* Chuck Grassley -- Iowa
Ben Sasse - Nebraska
* Richard Burr - North Carolina
* Rob Portman - Ohio
* Pat Toomey - Pennsylvania
Mitt Romney - Utah
and four Rs from states who'll surely feel pressure from their soon-to-be-affected residents:
* Marco Rubio -- Florida
Rick Scott -- Florida
Bill Cassidy - Louisiana
* John Kennedy - Louisiana
(* up for re-election in 2022; pressure on)
I can't emphasize enough how a change in fortune at the top will cause Republicans to recalculate their odds of holding office. If the radical Right crashes-and-burns, the Center beckons.
5. Democrats do have one way to try to work around the filibuster. They might try to pass a Green New Deal through “budget reconciliation,” an odd loophole that allows roughly one bill per fiscal year to pass out of the Senate with a simple majority of votes.
If the current increase in anxiety over Climate Change continues, states like Florida will begin to freak out. This will make a scaled back Green New Deal palatable for enough senators who'll realize how History will judge them if they're still on the wrong side of the issue in 2021--let alone 2022 when many face voters again.
6. ... [The Democratic] party’s caucus [in 2021] will likely include several newly elected moderate Democrats—and it'll almost certainly include Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Manchin, who has deep ties to the coal industry, has not been a friend to climate policy. When he first ran for Senate in 2010, he cut a campaign ad where he shot a hole through President Barack Obama’s favored climate bill.
The vote might be close, and a few Democrats might defect, but with moderate Republicans looking forward to 2022, there'd likely be 60 votes to proceed--the actual vote itself could be as low as 50-50 and be a success. And, the promise of millions of new jobs might allow Manchin to get on board.
7. ...Democrats could change their own math in the Senate. Assuming they repeal the filibuster, [Democrats would only need 51 votes to add two Democratic-leaning states to the Union: the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico] [meaning] as many as four new [Dem.] senators.
If Republicans continued their obstruction, this would be a possibility, though statehood for DC and PR, to happen, would likely best be given a vigorous airing that would take at least a year or so. Given a huge victory (the presidency and senate), the Green New Deal would be passed immediately.
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