Opinion: How to use McConnell's playbook

View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. Friday, February 10, 2017 [The New York Times]( [NYTimes.com/Opinion »]( [Opinion]( Friday, February 10, 2017 It’s important not to forget the extraordinary lengths that Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders went to to stop Barack Obama from governing. In the months immediately after Obama’s election, McConnell told Republicans they could outwit the popular incoming president as long as they stuck together and [opposed his policies]( en masse. In the ensuing years, Republicans took unprecedented steps, [such as]( threatening to renege on the United States’s debts. And in Obama’s final year, McConnell led Senate Republicans in another unprecedented tactic: [a blanket refusal]( to consider any Supreme Court nominee from the opposing party. There is a legitimate debate about whether McConnell and his allies were simply escalating a fight that both Democrats and Republicans had started in earlier years. Many Republicans like to make this case, citing the defeat of Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination and Senate Democrats’ treatment of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. But even if you agree with that case, there is no question that Congressional Republicans did take obstruction [to a new level]( during the Obama years: The debt-ceiling fight and last year’s Supreme Court mess have no precedent. Given this, Democrats would be making a terrible mistake to de-escalate the partisan fight unilaterally, out of a naïve sense of wishful thinking — that if only they’re nice enough, Republicans will rediscover niceness in the future. Democrats need to play by the same rules that McConnell did (even if, unsurprisingly, he’s now trying to [rewrite history](. They need to do so for the sake of the climate, the budget deficit and the Americans who would otherwise lose health insurance and voting rights. But Democrats also need to do so for the sake of reducing partisanship in Washington. I realize that sounds odd: Be partisan in the name of reducing partisanship! Yet Republican leaders will step back from the McConnell approach only when they realize that it brings a cost to them as well. On today’s Op-Ed page, the political scientist Sarah Binder [offers a playbook]( for Senate Democrats on how to hang tough. “By dragging feet, sticking together and driving wedges between Republicans and Mr. Trump,” she writes, “Senate Democrats can focus attention on controversial parts of the president’s agenda and force Republicans to cast potentially unpopular votes.” How? The strategy depends on a sophisticated understanding of Senate rules, and Binder lays it out: Refuse consent. Threaten to filibuster. Offer amendments. Read the piece. And if you agree with it, think about [calling your senator](. The full Opinion report from The Times follows, including Thomas Edsall on the [large benefits of desegregation](. 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