Can't Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

Even though the Senate Majority Leader didn’t really give the Democratic amendments to the Keystone bill a “vote,” he did allow more debate on the amendments than the Democratic majority probably would have in previous Congresses. In fact, the allocation of debate time was so comparatively generous, and so appreciated by some Democrats, that Sen. Schatz (D-HI) “told the GOP leader he ‘wanted to applaud, but I’m on Team Blue.’”

This is a nice little window into how the modern Congressional party works. According to Frances Lee, party members in Congress view their party as more than just a group of people with similar ideology — they’re members of a “team,” and partisans view other partisans as teammates. She looks at proposals that shouldn’t be ideologically divisive and finds support for that hypothesis.

I think this is borne out here as well. Even though McConnell hasn’t fully thawed Senate floor rules, they’re less frozen than they were under Senate Democrats. That pleases Senate Democrats, but they won’t give McConnell credit for it, because he isn’t on their team and they can’t be seen praising the opposing side. So even though McConnell has probably annoyed his own party by giving Democrats a platform, Democrats likely won’t offer him any public credit or goodwill for it.