What’s up with the House Dems?

I’ll begin with the qualification: I have no inside information and am not working at the legislature this session, so have been out of the normal gossip loop. I would generally consider myself on the dissidents’ side, but that isn’t helping me understand what’s going on. All I know at this point is the rundown on apparent negotiating positions of the two House factions from Star-Advertiser reporter Derrick DePledge.

Can it be true, as DePledge reported yesterday, that even at this late date, the dissidents are demanding control of Finance, Judiciary, and Consumer Protection & Commerce, the big three in the committee lineup, along with five other committees? If so, it seems to me that this just isn’t a serious proposal. Given legislative procedures and structure, no one would give up all these committees.

A negotiating position? It’s a bit late in the game for this kind of posturing, it seems to me. The dissidents are short on votes, holding just enough to play the spoiler in the organization process. They’ve grown in resolve in the past couple of years but not in numbers.

So what’s going on? The problem here is that we don’t know. But I’m bothered by the prospect of the anti-Say group simply walking the plank, refusing to budge and letting events take their own course, including a forced marriage of the majority Democrats and the Republicans. That’s a strategy that would split the party and, in the process, expose all Democrats to public criticism and potentially spell disaster for the state.

After all, these are the same Republicans who have proposed “a constitutional amendment requiring two-thirds’ votes in the House and Senate for any tax increase,” DePledge reports today. If you’re paying attention, that’s exactly the approach that created political gridlock in California and crippled that state’s economy before finally being dumped by voters in the recent election. It’s just about the last thing Hawaii needs to be debating.

So the problem is that the dissidents, in their brinksmanship, are strengthening the hand of the small minority of Republicans. That’s not a pretty picture.

Compounding the perception problem is that dissidents have failed to make a coherent public case to justify their position, making it hard to generate much public support for their political uprising, and allowing Say’s group to characterize their move as purely a power grab.

This should be a good day for the Democratic majority. Right now, it doesn’t feel that way.