Minnesota Recount

Here is a New York Times report on the impending recount in the Minnesota Senate race between Republican incumbent Senator Norm Coleman, and his Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party challenger, comedian Al Franken.

Christina Capecchi writes the following:

Stakes are high because with three Senate races yet to be decided,
Democrats still have a chance of winning the 60 seats needed to break Republican filibusters in Washington.

I'll reiterate something I've written previously, that the notion of 60 members of the Democratic Senate caucus being a magic number is overblown.

It's not comparable to the question of whether one party gets 51 Senate seats (0r 50 along with the tie-breaking vote of the vice president), and is therefore the majority party. That is generally a one-time thing at the beginning of a Congress (two rare exceptions that occurred in 2001 don't invalidate my analysis). On the other hand, the breaking of a filibuster via a cloture vote (which requires 60 votes) is on a case-by-case basis throughout the two-year term of a Congress.

On some votes, the Democratic leadership is likely to lose the support of some members of its own caucus. They may also pick up some Republican votes on some issues.

The enlarged Democratic majority (or "Democrat majority", as the lame-duck president once said, in a remark that was almost controversial enough to start nucular war) is not irrelevant. But the notion that, if they have 59 votes they'll be stymied but, if they have 60, they'll be able to do anything they want, is an oversimplification.

That idea brings structure and drama to journalists' accounts of the still-undecided Senate races in Georgia, Alaska and Minnesota, but I don't think it is totally accurate in describing the situation.