Sorry, Hawks: Democrats Won’t Pay a Political Price For Iran Filibuster

Opponents of the Iran nuclear deal have all but accepted they cannot block the accord, as a growing number of congressional Democrats signal they'll supply the votes to sustain President Barack Obama's veto of a planned resolution of disapproval.

The question now is whether the resolution will even make it to Obama's desk. While passage by the Republican-controlled House is certain, Democrats in the Senate are planning to stop a resolution by using the filibuster to require a 60-vote super-majority to send it to the president. Republicans have 54 members in the Senate. Just two Senate Democrats have declared against the deal—New York's Chuck Schumer and New Jersey's Bob Menendez.

That means Republicans need four more Democratic defectors to secure the 60 votes needed to ensure passage of the disapproval resolution. 

It's unclear they will get there. Already, 31 Senate Democratic caucus have declared themselves in favor of the Iran nuclear deal. Two more are leaning in favor — West Virginia's Joe Manchin and Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal. If Obama can get to 41, his party will be able to spare him the political embarrassment of having to use the veto to enact an historic international deal over Congress' disapproval. It takes just one more than one-third of the votes in either chamber of Congress to sustain a presidential veto, and it's no longer in doubt that supporters of the Iran deal can do that.

Faced with the prospect of seeing the disapproval resolution blocked in the Senate, those who support it are now making the argument that Democrats will pay a political price if they filibuster, essentially daring them to do so.

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“I'm hoping Democrats filibuster the vote. As an opponent of the deal who seeks to delegitimize this deal, nothing could be better,” Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told Bloomberg View's Josh Rogin and Eli Lake.

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