Life in the MiddlePub Date : 2021-11-11DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0006
Neilan S. Chaturvedi
{"title":"Behind the Scenes","authors":"Neilan S. Chaturvedi","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 6 looks at the behind-the-scenes influence senators exerted on three bills debated and voted on in 2013: the debt-ceiling bill known commonly as “No Budget, No Pay,” the “Gang of Eight” comprehensive immigration reform bill, and an agriculture bill. It looks at interview data collected in 2013 from legislative directors for nineteen senators examining responses that answer the question of whether back-room dealing is how moderates use their power. That is to say, do legislators consider moderate preferences in an effort to build a large enough coalition to pass legislation? Interview data suggest that while leaders do try to protect moderates, coalitions are built with the opposing side, not with centrists. Indeed, legislators rarely view moderates as the most powerful senators in the Senate, and are seldom lobbied for their vote.","PeriodicalId":330273,"journal":{"name":"Life in the Middle","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124960945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Life in the MiddlePub Date : 2021-11-11DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0004
Neilan S. Chaturvedi
{"title":"Legislative Decision-Making","authors":"Neilan S. Chaturvedi","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 4 examines the logic used by moderates in determining how to vote on legislation. Using interview data from six retired senators, Chapter 4 examines the pressures they face, both within the chamber with party leadership and outside the chamber with constituents and interest groups. While conventional wisdom would dictate that moderates vote only for legislation that they find palatable, and vote against all else, using data collected by Project Vote Smart capturing the issue positions of many senators, we see that all too often this is not the case—centrists get “railroaded” by leaders and vote with the majority, even when the legislation goes against their stated position. Using voting decisions on key votes and publicly stated positions by senators, the chapter then creates a logic model that illustrates how moderates decide how to vote on legislation.","PeriodicalId":330273,"journal":{"name":"Life in the Middle","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125475642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Life in the MiddlePub Date : 2021-11-11DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0007
Neilan S. Chaturvedi
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"Neilan S. Chaturvedi","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 7 summarizes that while moderates are often considered to be the power players in Senate politics, in reality they are minimizing their traceability to salient legislation. Indeed, moderates rarely offer amendments or speak in support or opposition of legislation, and frequently vote against their preferences. Behind the scenes, while they work about as hard as their colleagues, they are frequently unsatisfied with the legislative outcome and are not viewed as particularly influential by their colleagues. With increased polarization, the skyrocketing use of the filibuster, and leadership concerned more with winning elections than legislating, we should expect to see fewer broad coalitions built as moderates are unwilling and incapable of playing a pivotal role. Still, moderates are not ineffective legislators—they are about as effective as their colleagues; they are simply not the pivotal players that the media and political science scholarship views them to be.","PeriodicalId":330273,"journal":{"name":"Life in the Middle","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128534146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Life in the MiddlePub Date : 2021-11-11DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0002
Neilan S. Chaturvedi
{"title":"Marginalized in the Middle","authors":"Neilan S. Chaturvedi","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 2 lays out the theory for why moderates so often fail to take on the mantle of being the pivotal voter. Theoretically, as the Senate loses moderates and becomes more polarized, the remaining moderates should gain power and become pivotal to every vote. This chapter argues that in the polarized era, moderates are cross-pressured as they are elected from states in which the opposition is the majority party or from swing states that have a roughly equal number of partisans from both sides. As a result, moderates must balance a volatile coalition of voters by avoiding traceability on most issues. Chapter 2 argues that in the onstage legislative game, when senators can shape and defend legislation, they should remain inactive and invisible. In the behind-the-scenes legislative game, where senators negotiate and push their influence behind closed doors, they should seek consensus but avoid driving legislation too strongly.","PeriodicalId":330273,"journal":{"name":"Life in the Middle","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132645873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Life in the MiddlePub Date : 2021-11-11DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0005
Neilan S. Chaturvedi
{"title":"Behind the Scenes","authors":"Neilan S. Chaturvedi","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 5 looks at the behind-the-scenes maneuvering by senators on three bills debated and voted on in 2013: the debt-ceiling bill known commonly as “No Budget, No Pay,” the “Gang of Eight” comprehensive immigration reform bill, and an agriculture bill. It looks at interview data collected in 2013 from legislative directors for nineteen senators examining responses to how much time and effort legislators put into each bill and their overall satisfaction of the outcome. While conventional wisdom would expect to see moderates prioritize the No Budget No Pay Act and the immigration bill, spending most of their time and resources on these bills and report satisfaction with each bill’s final content and legislative process, I find that on average, moderate respondents were less likely to report satisfaction with the overall outcome of the legislative process, despite the time and effort put into the process.","PeriodicalId":330273,"journal":{"name":"Life in the Middle","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130996783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Life in the MiddlePub Date : 2021-11-11DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0003
Neilan S. Chaturvedi
{"title":"Floor Action","authors":"Neilan S. Chaturvedi","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197599723.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 3 focuses on the legislative early game. Given the individualistic and “Wild West” nature of floor activity in the Senate, we should expect to see senators who want to make an impact propose amendments. Through an in-depth examination of the debate around Congressional Quarterly’s designated key votes from 2003 to 2013, as well as an examination of the 2009 floor debate around the Affordable Care Act and 2003’s Medicare Modernization Act, this chapter illustrates that partisans and leaders were prolific in the amendment activity, while moderates neglected the activity. Still, the argument could be made that moderates win the early game behind the scenes, so the chapter then turns to floor activity on speeches—the logic here is that if moderates are happy with the legislation, they should take to the floor to defend it. Again, we see that moderates eschew this behavior as well.","PeriodicalId":330273,"journal":{"name":"Life in the Middle","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129808518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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