The vote tally in the Senate is presently 54 Republicans, 44 Democrats, and 2 independents, both of whom caucus with the Democrats.
Let’s assume that the Republicans all vote against the Iran agreement. Both independents will vote “aye”. IMO there were several potential defections among the Republicans but the two most likely candidates for that, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Mark Kirk of Illinois, both running for re-election in states that were carried by Obama in 2012, have made public statements that strongly suggest they will vote against the agreement.
Chuck Schumer has said he’ll vote against the agreement. That suggests 55 “nay” votes. Of the other Democratic senators running for re-election in 2016 I think that Bennett (Colorado) will vote for the agreement and Blumenthal (Connecticut) will vote against. That’s 56.
Several ranking House Democrats have already gone on the record as opposing the agreement.
That’s why the president’s truculent attitude about the agreement, so evident in his statement the other day, puzzles me. He can’t afford to lose too many votes in the Senate and getting up on his high horse and, if there are any Senate Democrats teetering, verbally abusing them might not be the best strategy for courting their favor.
My auld mither told me you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Apparently, President Obama’s mother did not do the same.
I still believe the math is in the President’s favor.
It’s already a given, of course, that the House and Senate will both vote to disapprove the deal. The Republican majority guarantees that and you aren’t going to see many, if any, defections in the GOP camp. The right fight will be the veto override, and there Republicans would need to get 44 Democrats in the House and 13 in the Senate to agree with them. That’s not going to be easy, especially in the House. Right now, I’d but the odds of a veto override at under 10%.
One other factor to keep in mind is the possibility of a filibuster in the House. If Democrats can get 41 votes on a cloture motion on the initial disapproval resolution, then they can block it from going to a final vote. Schumer’s decision to vote against the deal makes that a little less likely, but it’s still possible.
….”you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
Honey has rarely been an ingredient of President Obama’s leadership recipe shared with his opposition. Much like GWB’s statement about terrorists — “You’re either with us or against us” — so goes our president when wading through differences of logic or opinion. He also gives scant credence or honest recognition to those opining about any variations of strategy forward — whether it involves domestic or foreign policy issues.
Although far less bombastic than the current presidential candidate, Donald Trump, both men appear to share equally tiny platforms on which they comfortably sling aspersions, denials, even falsehoods regarding how they perceive the world and other less agreeable cohabitants. Ironically, while counterinsurgencies, pushing alternative policy positions, are immediately slapped down, it is often these strident gestures, creating more drama, which people find enticing (similar to honey) captivating and holding followers for unreasonable long periods of time. That’s why I view “The Donald” in much the same way as I viewed “The One” — both being rigid extremists (with extremely thin skins) whose differences reside mainly in which far ends of the political spectrum their appeal is generated.
“I still believe the math is in the President’s favor.”
Of course it is!
The Federalist writes about what many people have already said, that Schumer’s opposition to the Iranian deal is nothing more than window dressing, in appeasing his hawkish and Jewish constituencies.
The same calculated political maneuvers were present in the passage of the PPACA — where enough dems were allowed to vote “no” in order to save their seats, while barely enough voted “yes” to assure it’s unilateral passage. Public polling is showing a similar pattern, whereby a majority of people are skeptical of this agreement’s veracity. However, the legacy of the president must be preserved at all cost!
I agree with that, Doug. The way I count it, there will be a bipartisan vote against the agreement in both houses that may be as high as 3/5s but will fall short of 2/3s. I think that between four and eight Democratic senators will vote against it.
In addition the polling on this issue is moving the wrong way. More people supported the deal a month ago than do now and a lot more people did in April than did a month ago.
I suspect he either knows he has enough votes or knows it will fail, and has nothing to lose. It is interesting though that Republicans can compare this deal with the Holocaust, or claim that it will make us the leading financier of terrorism or that Obama wants to make sure Iran has nukes, and it is Obama you accuse of extremism in his rhetoric.
Steve
Bacevich.
At American University on Wednesday, President Obama defended his Iran nuclear agreement and depicted the issue at hand as a choice between “diplomacy or some form of war.” To walk away from the deal was inevitably to plunge into armed conflict.
“Maybe not tomorrow,” Obama warned, “maybe not three months from now, but soon.”
The consequences of a bad deal with Iran
The consequences of a bad deal with Iran
In fact, the choice is not war or peace. It’s same ol’ same ol’ versus something completely different. Hidden within the Iran deal are the seeds of a radical shift in United States policy in the Middle East, a shift that holds great promise while entailing equally large risks.
At least since 9/11 and arguably for two decades before that, two propositions have informed U.S. policy in the Mideast. The first is that U.S. interests there are best served by the United States establishing a position of unquestioned preeminence. The second is that military might, wielded unilaterally if necessary, holds the key to maintaining that dominant position. Call it the Big Enchilada policy, with attitude.
As implemented, however, that approach has yielded almost uniformly unfavorable results. Iraq and Afghanistan provide exhibits A and B, of course. But Libya, Somalia and Yemen don’t look much better. Even so, some hawkish types argue that trying a little harder militarily will produce better outcomes. Their ranks include a platoon of Republican presidential candidates vowing if elected to get tough on the ayatollahs.
When it comes to the Middle East, will the United States persist in failure or will it try something different?
–
Now it’s possible to chalk up some of the Republican hyperbole to the perceived imperatives of domestic politics. When Mike Huckabee accuses Obama of marching Israelis to “the door of the oven,” he’s actually signaling his fealty to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These days, to become a viable Republican candidate, this is just one of those things you have to do. It’s like promising to close down the IRS, prohibit abortions or repeal Obamacare. It’s nakedly cynical posturing.
Yet in another sense, the hawks have every reason to be exercised by the implications of Obama’s Iran gambit. If successfully implemented, the agreement that terminates Iran’s nuclear program will also end Iran’s isolation, allowing it over time to resume its place as a major regional power.
cComments
everyone that need to know ,knows .the nuclear thing is a myth .it is just about Iran coming out of the cage after 1978 revolution and wanting his place back on the game .no institution in the world have more P.H.D than C.I,A ,they know ,Iranian population are young, highly educated and done…
MIKE MAZDAK
AT 8:37 AM AUGUST 08, 2015
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Obama is gambling that the dynamics of Iranian domestic politics — a young population more desirous of enjoying the fruits of modernity than in pursuing a revolutionary Islamist agenda — will result in Iran choosing ultimately to play a responsible and stabilizing role rather than an irresponsible and destabilizing one.
Should that gamble pay off, the result may take the form of an ironic reprise of the Nixon Doctrine. In an effort to lower the U.S. profile after Vietnam, President Nixon had looked to the shah of Iran to bear the burden of policing the Persian Gulf. As Obama peers a decade or more down the road, he may glimpse Iran playing a comparable role by choosing order over disorder and prosperity over antagonism.
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In that case, the Big Enchilada could take a break. Rather than vainly seeking preeminence, U.S. policy could pursue a multilateral approach. Rather than engaging in continuous and futile wars, it could gather its strength and find more productive ways to expend its limited resources. Instead of our problem, the Middle East could become their problem.
The debate over Iran serves as a proxy for a far more fundamental question. The real issue is this: When it comes to the Middle East, will the United States persist in failure or will it try something different?
This deal with Iran is the most prominent indication to date that Obama is serious about embracing the latter. This duck may be lame but he’s far from dead.
The White House wants the president’s American University speech to be compared to one that President John F. Kennedy made there in 1963 when he proposed limits on nuclear testing. A better comparison just might be to President Ronald Reagan’s willingness in the 1980s to reach out to the leader of what Reagan himself called the Evil Empire. His partnership with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev changed history. It’s the possibility that Obama might accomplish something similar that has his critics so upset.
Is voting “Present” an option? I think that is what I would do. I am stuck between Yishai Schwartz’ two-pronged conundrum that:
(1) “Given the hand the President was given–a collapsing Iranian economy, widespread regional support, and strong congressional willingness to increase economic leverage–the deal which has been produced is severely depressing.”
and
(2) “The likely results of Congress rejecting a deal would, at this point, be very bad.” Though “honesty demands we acknowledge that the choice at ‘this point’ is a creation of the White House. The administration is not simply using apocalyptic terms in presenting Congress with a choice; it constructed the choice in an apocalyptic matter.”
Advice and consent at a minimum means informing the President when his approach was flawed, not just for current purposes but for future treaties negotiated without contemporaneous Senate input. I suppose many Senators will continue to talk about the flaws in the deal , but ultimately vote to approve it because the President has given them little choice.
The “agreement” does not fit the definition of an executive agreement and it meets all of the standards Vattel laid out in defining what a treaty was. As such it is blatantly unconstitutional. The president could have enlisted more Congressional support than he’ll receive by involving Congress directly in the process.
He elected not to. What will happen is that Congress will lodge a bipartisan objection. That will be lambasted, both by the Administration and the president’s reflexive supporters, as partisan hackery when it will be precisely the opposite.
1) Dershowitz has an interesting take on what happens if the US rejects the deal.
“If the deal were to be rejected by Congress, and accepted by Iran, most of the sanctions—those imposed by the Security Council, by our Western European partners, by China and Russia, and even those imposed by the president without congressional approval—would quickly disappear. The crippling sanctions regime would end, and Iran would get much of the hundreds of billions of dollars of sanction relief it has been seeking. ”
http://www.newsweek.com/dershowitz-case-against-iran-deal-360911
2) Even Zero Hedge supports the deal. That alone makes me think I should reconsider.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-06/israeli-military-brass-and-american-jews-support-iran-deal
3) Explanation on treaty by Hopkins prof.
The Constitution says the Senate must approve any treaty the president wants to sign by a two-thirds majority vote. (As was alerted to us, it’s a common misconception the Senate ratifies treaties: According to official Senate rules, it approves or disapproves of ratification of a treaty. But we digress.)
The point is, getting 67 senators to agree on complex international negotiations is difficult. So in the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt figured out a workaround: He simply wouldn’t call his international negotiations treaties. There, problem solved. His “executive agreements” could now unilaterally be approved by him and only him.
“When is a treaty not a treaty?” Stevenson said. “When it’s not called a treaty.” Otherwise: “There’s no other difference.”
Naturally, other presidents picked up on this politically convenient avenue. According to some statistics, executive agreements are now signed in the United States more than treaties — by a ratio of 10-to-1. (Also: In the eyes of international law, there’s no difference between the two.)
“That’s the way the presidents have been since at least FDR,” Stevenson said. “If they think they can get away with it, they’ll do an executive agreement.”
Steve