I remember reading Matt Yglesias or the Crooked Timber guys or some other high-brow types musing about how US-style governmental systems fall when major parties act like it was a parliamentary system. I’m starting to wonder if that’s what’s coming now. Jon Chait:
The most important and alarming facet of Lugar’s defeat, and a factor whose importance is being overlooked at the moment, is one of the reasons Mourdock cited against him: Lugar voted to confirm two of Obama’s Supreme Court nominees….
The social norm against blocking qualified, mainstream Supreme Court nominees is one of the few remaining weapons the Republican Party has left lying on the ground. But if Republican Senators attribute Lugar’s defeat even in part to those votes for Kagan and Sotomayor, which seems to be the case, what incentive do they have to vote for another Obama nominee? And then what will happen if he gets another vacancy to fill — will Republican Senators allow him to seat any recognizably Democratic jurist? Especially as the Supreme Court interjects itself more forcefully into partisan disputes like health care, will it become commonplace for the Court to have several vacancies due to gridlock, for the whole legitimacy of the institution to collapse?
Steve M adds:
I think the crisis could extend to the entire Cabinet. What happens if Eric Holder decides to resign? What happens if there are resignations at Cabinet departments Republicans want to eliminate?
I think a lot of earth is going to be scorched starting in 2013.
Our system isn’t set up to deal with what the national Republican party already has become, let alone what it is becoming. There are lots of levers a minority party can pull to stop the wheels of government, and there’s not much reason for Republicans not to pull them. It doesn’t hurt the party much politically to do so — the media will just tell us that both sides do it, that it all started with Robert Bork — whereas it does hurt individual Republicans when they won’t take part in the destruction.
Serious people would have us believe that Great Men look inside their souls and do what’s right, but that’s not how things work here on planet earth. People respond to carrots and sticks; this is especially true of politically ambitious types. When you’re a Republican, you get the carrot for blocking things, you get the stick for not blocking them.
You tell me what Congressional Republicans will do.
Bob2
Probably whine that Obama is causing it.
Don’t look now but Sully is being more histrionic than usual today about liberals.
Roger Moore
The filibuster is going to have to go. I assume that the Republicans will eliminate it if they get a majority in the Senate, and the Democrats need to do the same if they maintain their majority. Our government can’t function if an intransigent minority can stall things indefinitely just to throw a spanner in the works.
BGinCHI
The delicious meteor of Americans Elect will crash into the system and deliver a beautiful explosion of democratic reforminess.
Mark Penn will save us!
taylormattd
As a progressive blogger, I fail to see why this topic is relevant. Instead, we should be blaming the democrats for failing to also bullypulpit scorchedearth throwunderbus the filibuster.
JMG
People who don’t play by the rules can find the rules changed. A President who has 34 acquittal votes in the Senate can govern as a dictator if he so chooses.
Linda Featheringill
Maybe we’re not dying, we’re just Knocking on Heaven’s Door and have good things ahead of us. :-)
But seriously, the governmental system we have has been through some pretty rough storms before. It might well survive this particular tempest.
This particular federal design has been very good for capitalism as a whole and will probably totter along until capitalism itself collapses.
feebog
I wonder if the fact that Obama will be in his second term will make any difference. Of course Republicans will be positioning themselves for 2016, but if Dems take back the house and hold the senate, I think some good things could be accomplished. If Republicans take the Senate however, all bets are off. I don’t think any left leaning judge will be confirmed to any level of the court system, regardless of how qualifications.
Davis X. Machina
What will Republicans do? Look to 19th c. France.
A royalist or Bonapartist party in a republican parliament has no real interest in participation in government that isn’t legitimate. Their whole purpose for being is to shut the assembly down, and hasten the Restoration.
When the King comes into his own again, real government — courtiers jockeying for grace and favor, pensions and preferment, governorships and royal monopolies — can return. And parliament can go back to its real role — a talking-shop that occasionally votes the King credits for his wars. That’s what a Republican Congress is for.
The weirdest transformation of political terminology hasn’t been what happened to the word ‘liberal’ since John Stuart Mill — it’s what happened to the word ‘republican’.
ericblair
@Bob2:
That’s the intent. Up to this point, as Turtleface McConnell helpfully pointed out, the main point to gooper intransigence was to fuck things up and blame Obama for it. After Rmoney gets his positronic ass handed to him in November, they’ll have to move to plan B: refuse to do anything at all so that Obama will have to do an end run around Congress just to keep the lights on, and then Congress can go nuclear and start impeachment proceedings for usurping legislative power. Fun times. We need to take the House back.
jayackroyd
@Roger Moore:
So why haven’t Senate Democrats implemented the nuclear option? The GOP threatened to use it over the appoint of four federal judges.
I agree the Republicans, if in the majority, will get rid of the filibuster. So, I ask again, why don’t the Democrats?
Occam’s razor=>the leadership is actually okay with being blocked.
Linda Featheringill
@Davis X. Machina:
Hmmm. You have a point there. It bears thinking about.
jayackroyd
@JMG:
Indeed. And….?
Martin
Well, there’s a big thumb on the scale, unfortunately. The GOP and their supporters are perfectly content to throw their shoes into the gears of government while they are in the minority, trusting that the Dems and their supporters are unwilling to do the same when the balance of power shifts.
So long as the GOP can convince enough voters (or disenfranchise enough of their opponents) of their plan, they’ll succeed. The Dems won’t filibuster SCOTUS appointments, nor will they shut down the government just to be dicks, and we won’t tolerate it.
The GOPs game is a pure race to the bottom – whoever is willing to be most craven wins, and they’re counting on their side to carry it out. This is no longer a debate between conservatism and liberalism, or limited government vs activist, or states rights vs federalism. This election is purely a debate between governing and non-governing. If the GOP wins, both parties will be increasingly forced to play the non-governing role while in the minority. If the Dems win, it’s possible it’ll force the GOP to abandon the game. I think it’ll take repeated wins to get them off of this shit, but it’ll be a start.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Franken said that he and a few other juniors tried to get Harry Reid to at least bring up filibuster reform in 2011 class. “traditionalists” and “institutionalists” blocked it. I imagine we could all make a list of the usual suspects. I don’t see Mark Pryor, or for that matter Dianne Feinstein, voting for anything that might make Cokie and George cluck their tongues.
Keith G
Clearly this current generation of GOP Congresspersons will continue to do what they are doing until they are removed or someone puts their “balls” in a vice.
El Tiburon
Time to blow up the Filibuster. If the Dems don’t, the Republicans sure as hell will – although the Dems are much too timid to use it as they should.
taylormattd
@jayackroyd: hahahahahaha.
BGinCHI
@Martin: This.
When one side in a game isn’t interested in the integrity of the game, it can’t get played properly.
jayackroyd
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
New Democrats:
Dianne Feinstein (CA, by 2001)
Thomas R. Carper (DE, by 2001; co-chair from 2003)
Joe Lieberman (CT, founder)
Bill Nelson (FL, by 2001)
Mary Landrieu (LA, founder, co-chair from 2003)
John Kerry (MA, from 2000)[8]
Debbie Stabenow (MI, by 2001)
Kent Conrad (ND, from 2000)
Ben Nelson (NE, by 2001)
Tim Johnson (SD, from 2000)
Maria Cantwell (WA, by 2001)
Herb Kohl (WI, from 2000)
Martin
@jayackroyd:
Because once you do it, you can’t get it back. And since the GOP is driving the rules toward ‘shut it down’ as the only real minority position, if the Dems find themselves in the minority, they’ll have then lost their only tool in the arsenal.
pragmatism
but but but the U.S. Senate is the worlds greatest deliberative body. it is not troubling at all that the senate minority leader proclaimed that his job is to ensure that the president serves only one term. that, surely, is what the framers intended.
Roger Moore
@jayackroyd:
It’s not the leadership; it’s the rank-and-file. They like having the power to obstruct things in order to get their way. I think the leadership would be happier being able to tell some of the rank-and-file to stuff it.
Davis X. Machina
@Linda Featheringill: Bonapartists were simultaneously revolutionaries and monarchists — just like the GOP.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
Which is a stupid argument, because it assumes the Republicans won’t trash the filibuster the moment they think doing so will give them a temporary advantage. Yeah, right.
dedc79
Whatever happened to talk about the “nuclear option” and changing the filibuster process? Or is that only something that gets discussed when a Republican is in the White House and Dems are the one doing the filibustering?
If Obama loses, expect to hear the GOP instantly call for reforming the filibuster which they will surely characterize as anti-american or possibly even socialist.
This is all part of a recurring debate. Republicans have long ago thrown down the gauntlet. Are democrats going to follow, or is there anything to be said for preserving a system that will keep the GOP somewhat in check when they are in power?
amk
And Galbraith called India a functioning anarchy. teh irony.
kindness
That whole comity thing in the Senate has to be tossed. I mean as it stands, the Democrats offer up comity and Republicans take a big steaming dump on it and hand it back.
Get rid of the filibuster. I’m sorry it’s now an anachronism, but Republicans have made it so. Acknowledge reality and move on. Same with Senatorial Holds and unanimous agreement. The US government is not structured to function when an opposition party starts acting like a parliment. Accept Republican’s trashing of 200 years of history and move on to a functioning government.
Republicans suck. I’m sorry about that. Admit it and move on.
Paul in KY
@jayackroyd: The Republicans might not get rid of it (due to fact than 10 – 12 ‘Democratic’ senators behave like wannabee Republicans), thus they think they could get to 60 with the DINOs.
Marc McKenzie
There is a simple way to address this.
It’s this–make goddamned sure that on Election Day, the majority of Repubs are defeated and make sure that both the House and the Senate have solid Dem majorities. And also, make sure that President Obama is re-elected.
There is need to worry, but honestly, who the fuck didn’t see this coming back in 2010? The GOP got in bed with the Tea Party and basically announced what the hell they intended to do. And yet….and yet–there were those on our side of the fence who preached butthurt and didn’t vote to “send a message” and that having a GOP-controlled House and Senate would push the President to go more to the left. Fine–he does–but where the hell will the progressive legislation he would need to sign come from?
Let’s be blunt here–anyone who still says that there is no difference between the two parties in spite of all that has happened between 2010 and now–and with the GOP turning into something truly horrifying–is a fucking idiot. I’m sorry, but there are no other words I could use.
kindness
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’d love to see Senator Franklin in Reed’s job. He has a way of telling it like it is without looking like a crazy man.
Bulworth
I’m sure our “liberal media”, which has made bipartisanship the great and only goal of American politics, will deem Senator Mourdock to be Very Serious, full of Great Ideas…
amk
@Marc McKenzie: +1. Also. Too.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Why would Republicans get rid of it? I don’t recall Dems using it for anything important when Bush Jr. was filling the Oval Office with empties.
Scott P.
@jayackroyd:
You could probably find 30-35 votes for that. But if you get rid of the filibuster, you reduce the power of the Blue Dogs over the Democratic caucus. Why would they vote for that?
fasteddie9318
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
FTFY
jayackroyd
@Scott P.:
Um, there are no Blue Dogs in the Senate. That’s a House coalition.
Capri
I wasn’t party to what was being said behind closed Republican doors, but, in Indiana, what was on the air and in ads vs. Lugar were two things: His age and the fact he doesn’t keep a residence in Indiana. The second was the main thing, and what 95% of the negative ads concerned themselves with – the few times he returned to the State, he stayed in a hotel. Most Senators in his position at least keep a condo somewhere so they can claim an address.
The supreme court justice votes – not so much.
jayackroyd
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
TJOP
Martin
@Roger Moore:
Yeah, they probably will. If the Dems do it, then the game is on, and the GOP is going to plumb the depths of how far the Dems are willing to go. But what do the Dems gain right now by doing it? They get some appointments filled, and that’s about it. Nothing else that the Senate would pass by <60 votes is going to get through the House anyway.
And the GOPs strategy depends on their voters supporting it – which they have so far. But the constant shutdown escalation is taking its toll on their favorability, and the folks they are electing are laying the strategy ever more bare. I don't think it's going to hold.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
It’s not just the filibuster that’s the problem. The GOP position, hardened since Newt stopped the government in its tracks, is that Obama (and any other Democrat) must govern like a Republican, period. If he doesn’t, then the GOP will use every procedural method allowed to block Obama. For example, this recent continuing obstruction.
The GOP will be able to get away with this as long as a hard core of idiot voters see the Republicans as defending Amurrica against a Kenyan traitor, and others take the attitude that they don’t care what goes on in Washington as long as both sides finally agree on something and just “get stuff done.”
gene108
It’s deeper than just political stunts for political gain, it is an out right disrespect for any branch of government Republican’s don’t control.
When it turned out Nixon didn’t give a damn about the laws Congress passed, America’s illusions about its government were shattered and America was outraged.
When Reagan circumvented Congressional rules, because he wanted to fund the Contras in Central America, there was some dust up about it, but it didn’t topple his Administration.
When President Clinton took office in 1992, a bad business deal from the 1970’s was being touted as similar to the corruption of Nixon and Reagan. When Vince Foster committed suicide, some folks believe President Clinton or Hillary Clinton had him murdered.
When Bush, Jr. took office, the Executive branch grabbed as much power as possible and refused to account for any of its activities, going as far as to have former White House staffer Karl Rove refuse a Congressional subpoena with impunity.
Now this sort of disrespect for government, as an institution, is on full display in the Congress, where Republicans cannot bring themselves to accept the fact they do not control all the levers of power and can do whatever they want.
I just wish the pundit class would realize this is more than just political tactics, it is the Republican Party refusing to acknowledge the peaceful transfer of power and the power the victors have – to appoint justices, for example – that underscores our nation’s success, if they aren’t the ones in power.
WWStBreitbartD
So is Doug J. predicting that Republicans will lose the house or Democrats will keep the Senate?
ruemara
@Marc McKenzie: See, this is what the response is to all of this. The rest is the usual prog airing of grievances.
Mickey
Yawn, what bullshit. Just fucking vote! Is that so hard to understand? If hispanics are unhappy about what is going on in Arizona just fucking vote. Only something like 30% of eligible hispanics in Arizona are registered to vote.
I don’t just blame what is going on in Arizona to the neonazi racist fuckheads in the Gov’t down there. I blame it on the voters that put them there.
If you are not happy with all the anti-voter registration laws being put in place across the country…fucking vote! Vote vote vote! The US has the lowest percentage of participants in the voting process in the world. Not surprisingly they arguable have the most dysfunctional gov’t in the world now.
reflectionephemeral
Well, I used an Yglesias post on this point to talk about the US & Chile. Long story short, countries with separate presidencies & legislatures like ours don’t last. Chile did, til it collapsed (with a push, of course, but not from a totally stable state). The poli sci types who study this stuff attributed our longevity to our atypical, heterogeneous parties. No more. And now the anti-gov GOP is attacking the structures of governance. They are truly playing with fire.
Big Wayne
Remember when crazy motherfuckers thought we reached peak wingnut in 2008? What delusions.
We won’t reach peak wingnut until the GOP has armed itself with assault rifles and bayonets and are killing liberals and Democrats in the streets.
PeakVT
@jayackroyd: Usage of “Blue Dog” is drifting towards a generic term for all conservative Dems, regardless of what political office they might hold.
Narcissus
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with out systems of government. All of our current problems can be explained by simply recognizing that the GOP is nearing the completion of a generations-long transformation into a White Nationalist party.
redshirt
It’s already too late. If you haven’t already secured your end times bunker, well, best of luck fighting for scraps in the post apocalyptic US of Raptureland.
burritoboy
Davis,
The problem is that, unless your monarchists agree on an actual monarch, they’re just a incoherent collection of small factions – each faction backing one plutocrat or another for no particularly sound reason. They’ll fight each other until one faction emerges supreme, crowns itself and then reduces all the other plutarchs to subservience. Witness the fall of the mighty Florentine Republic, which becomes a small, no-account monarchy under the Medici.
That’s how republics always collapse – the plutarchs will always fail to recognize that wealth, by itself, does not legitimize political power – money cannot buy rule. Thus, Crassus will always be defeated by either Pompey or Caesar. (And our plutarchs are far less able than Crassus).
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Marc McKenzie:
Or a fucking idiot, same thing really.
redshirt
@burritoboy: I dig the Crassus references – he’s going to be a new character in Season 3 of Sparatacus, which I watch in awe, all the while thinking “So this is how Empires Fall”…
Mnemosyne
There have been rumors for months that Tim Geithner wants to leave the administration, but Republicans have signaled that they would block any successor, so he’s been pressured to stay.
Of course, being the hypocritical assholes that they are, Republicans were calling for Geithner’s resignation while saying they would block any successor. Assholes.
Seth Owen
@JMG: The most chilling post commrent I have read in a Lomb time. And thete’s no doubt which party could muster the discipline and ruthlessness required.
burritoboy
I think many of you are simply wrong: it’s not simply the Republicans, or even the Senate, but the nature of all republics simply if they are not straight majority rule. If you attempt to protect the republic through some sort of anti-majoritarian means (whether having rotten boroughs – i.e., about half of the US states – or multiplying veto points or multiple legislative chambers), it might work for a while until somebody figures out how to hijack the anti-majority mechanisms. Then, your system is effectively gone and you must use extra-constitutional methods to reset the mechanisms.
TenguPhule
Change the Carrot to an IED, problem solved.
burritoboy
Seth,
Why is it so chilling? All governments end, and that is precisely how the US government will end at some point or another. Everybody has suspected it would end that way since the beginning – and even more so now that the Executive has unlimited powers in war, intelligence and foreign policy while domestic policy was made incredibly difficult to modify in the least.
The executives will (and gradually already have been doing so for nearly a century) be forced (even if they don’t wish to do so) to do everything – including domestic policy – under their military and foreign policy power. The legislature will – quite properly – become a useless appendage – which to a large extent already has occurred. And good riddance. Better Caesar or Pompey or even Crassus than whatever failures Cicero was trying to prop up.
handsmile
Stipulating Obama’s re-election, once more it appears that the only hope to maintain even a marginally centrist, sporadically functioning, federal government in the next Congressional term is for Democrats to retain their majority status in the Senate.
Should Republicans wield approval for judicial nominations, appointments to the federal bench, already at a historic low, will be stymied further or perhaps we will have to learn to say the phrase Justice John Yoo or Justice Janice Rogers Brown (or Judge Orly Taitz.)
SteveM above makes a chillingly prescient observation on Cabinet-level appointments as well. In his comment #40 with the example of Peter Diamond’s fate, Brachiator demonstrates that such corrosion is already underway.
On the question of whether Senate Democrats will seek to eliminate the filibuster in the next term, with its current roster I can see no way whatsoever for their voting to end that procedure. And of the three challengers who might unseat Republican Senate incumbents-Berkeley,Connelly, Warren-none would vote for its repeal, albeit for different reasons.
Linnaeus
The Republican Party is the Keyser Söze of American politics.
burritoboy
Redshirt,
It wasn’t the Empire which fell, it was the Republic. The Empire lasted nearly another 500 years in Western Europe and another 1400 years in Eastern Europe. As Cicero hints in his dialogue the Orator, the Republic is already on the decline by the time of the First Civil War.
General Stuck
This has happened before. In roughly the decade before the civil war started. Not saying we will have another, but it should be clear that a large swath of the voting public is revolting, not just because they don’t like liberals and liberal policy, but because their birthright does not accept the basic principles of the constitutional pact the founders gave us. And never really have.
The problem is not the filibuster, but the proposition that for a democracy to work, both sides have to agree to be governed by the other on a periodic basis. The senate is a living example of this gentleman’s agreement held within that institution. The only minority right that will work, is providing the minority to judiciously use a manner of veto, when there is something they just can’t live with. But agree not to use that power for seditious purposes to usurp the primary right of the majority to govern them. Short of that, both dems and repubs would revolt without that option built into the system. In a country with two distinct worldviews. Any kind of reform of senate rules that does not include that veto hammer, will not be accepted by the other side. With the entire existence of the senate based on the concept of ‘unanimous consent’, therefore there are many other ways the senate rules other than the cloture requirement, can bring government to a grinding halt. And you can either deal with the problem through the ballot box, of next elections, or eliminate the senate altogether, and have a tyranny of the majority. And if you can’t, or the citizens can’t be bothered to understand this power they hold and responsibility to manage their republic properly, then we are fucked as a republic, and what is left is politics by other means.
The Tragically Flip
The GOP will trash the filibuster, but only if the Democrats use it to block something important to the GOP to pass (and there is a President willing to sign it).
This remains the worst part about the Gang of 14 “compromise” – The Republicans got to keep something they like (the filibuster) and in exchange, Democrats gave their wingnut lower court nominees confirmed. Win-Win! Would have been so much better to let the GOP nuke it. Sure, the wingnuts would still be federal judges, but at least the Democrats wouldn’t have this frivolous excuse for not enacting the liberal agenda that’s supposedly their raison d’etre during 2009-2011.
If progressives learn nothing else from watching the Senate 2005-2012 it is that the filibuster will never ever be allowed to save anything progressives really care about from the GOP knife. When they come for Social Security, Medicare, or the Civil Rights Act, even if the Democrats find 41 Senators willing to reject cloture repeatedly under the glare of Fox News caterwauling, the filibuster will just be ended. It only works for conservatives.
Fuck you very much, Joseph Lieberman et al.
4tehlulz
The GOP is going to go for the maximum amount of damage in the lame-duck session, regardless of whether they keep the House. The obvious way is impeachment, but here’s a question for the Internet ConLaw scholars: If the House votes to impeach Obama and Holder in the lame duck, does the trial have to take place before the new Congress is seated or is the House indictment binding on the new Senate?
If Cantor and Co. go all out, could they refuse to allow the new Congress to be seated until the trial is over?
burritoboy
To a large extent, you could argue that that’s what American history has been anyway: nothing major got done except when strong war presidents abused the hell of the war situations or crises: Washington/Hamilton under the Articles of Confederation, Lincoln in the Civil War, Wilson in WWI and FDR in WWII. If Vietnam had been popular and a larger war, LBJ and Humphrey would have been close, too.
Fair Economist
Fixing the filibuster will not fix the problem. The problem is that if the Democrats control the White House but do not have control of the Senate (60 votes now; 50 without filibuster) then the President can get nothing done and the system will collapse. The only reason we have a functioning government now is that the dems had 59-60 votes in 2009-2010 and there were still a few sane Republicans left. Granted the problem is more acute with a filibuster as there’s almost no chance of a functioning government now; but we’ll still have a catastrophe eventually (probably soon) even if the filibuster gets repealed.
The Republicans have deliberately destroyed an essential underpinning of our system (limited factionalism) and consequently they’re going to cause the Constitution to be destroyed soon. I’d think it ironic that people who rant about the greatness of the Constitution all the time so deliberately work against the goals of the writers and the meaning of the text, but they do the same with the Bible so it’s more a matter of them being pathological liars.
4tehlulz
Also, too, per Wikipedia:
I can see them trying this.
redshirt
@burritoboy: Oh, I know. But we’ve been Imperial enough for most of the 20th century, and the dynamic of which you speak has been operating full force for the last 30-40 years: You sit at the height of power with more power and money there for the taking. Power corrupts and continues to corrupt until they very system that allowed such power to grow is destroyed.
The last 30 years of America history has been the powerful sucking the Imperial corpse dry, offering nothing in return.
Egypt Steve
@Roger Moore: I agree with you that this needs to be done, except that I don’t think the Rethugs will do this. History shows that they use it far more often than Dems do. Eliminating the filibuster is a long-term strategic advantage to the Dems. I think the Rethugs know that. It’s just too bad that the Dem leadership in the last three years failed to grasp this, and focused on the very-occasional short-term tactical advantage of filibustering the Rethugs. I hope and pray that they finally look up at the bigger picture in the next Congress and do what has to be done, but I am not optimistic.
Goobergunch
@4tehlulz: President Clinton was impeached in December 1998. The Senate that was seated in January 1999 got to try him.
Amusingly, this meant that Chuck Schumer got to vote against impeachment in both the House and the Senate.
burritoboy
Fair Economist,
It all gets fixed by a President discovering that he has emergency powers of one sort or another. There’s nothing horrible about that – as I would argue, that’s essentially how the country has been run sub-rosa anyway for at least 150 years – a non-functional legislature screws around until a war President fixes everything under the cover of the war effort or other declared crisis.
redshirt
And also too, to go further doomy and gloomy, consider the following scenarios: Plutocrats/Senators with not only their own security forces, but their own drones as well. We’ve certainly trained enough mercenaries over the past 10 years to make this a lucrative field.
And are targeted, political assassinations that far off? It seems like the last line to cross.
jayackroyd
@PeakVT:
Trouble is, as I noted, not conservative Dems. The problem is centrist Dems, Democrats not committed to the basic principles of the New Deal.
Egypt Steve
By the way, if the Dems. lose the Senate, one way for Obama to work his will would be to threaten to automatically veto any bill that passes without the majority support of the Dem. caucus in both houses. This also gives the Dem. minority in the House the effective equivalent of a filibuster power. Let the Thugs then get 2/3 in both houses if they can. But of course Obama will not do this. Too bad.
...now I try to be amused
Tom Holland’s Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic is a chilling tale of what can happen when the powerful ignore the customs that make a government work and play politics for blood.
Brachiator
@jayackroyd:
Trouble is people spend more time attacking Dems than getting Dems elected.
If every Democrat in the House was a clone of FDR, they would still be in a minority, and getting rolled by the Tea Party and the GOP regulars.
Being committed to New Dealprinciples is not a suit of armor which confers some magical immunity from hard politics.
@…now I try to be amused:
Looks interesting. Thanks.
Mike E
@Linnaeus:
And in this regard you’ll notice how any idea is as good as any other to a movement conservative. They’re all means to their ends.
burritoboy
I’m not sure why the end of the Roman Republic is chilling. So far as we can tell now, most of the population wanted an end to the in-fighting between the plutarchs. The class structure could not be leveled, as Sulla made it very clear that the plutarchs were more than happy to kill everyone else to preserve their property. If you can’t level the plutarchs, the only way to stop their fighting is to elevate one above all the rest – i.e., a monarch in one guise or another. Caesar was clearly far and away the best of the major plutarchs – the most successful military leader, the best rhetorician, the best judge of men and so on. Pretty simple at the end of the day.
This is what happens to most commercial republics – this is the same story as the Florentine Republic and most Italian city-states, for instance.
trollhattan
Attn: DougJ and other pro-quality live chat trollers. The local paper is holding an on-line forum with Senate candidates competing for Feinstein’s seat. They’re inviting reader questions (hint-hint). One Republican candidate is already pasting in “privatize, local control, end unneeded regulations” talking points before it even begins.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/05/live-chat-qa-with-california-us-senate-candidates.html
burritoboy
Redshirt,
The Senators with their own armies might well be an improvement. Leading armies is pretty close to a political skill. The alternative might well be (and, currently, actually is) is that the Senators are those who have the most money (or the Senators are mere agents of those with the most money).
But having money or making money is not a political skill at all. There’s very little overlap.
The Tragically Flip
@redshirt:
How do you know they’re not already happening? The stakes of power in the US are so high, while I won’t speak for any particular conspiracy theory, it really would be more surprising to me if none of the untimely political deaths since WWII had been the result of power games among the elite. Never mind just JFK, RFK and MLK, but also a set of small plane crashes (say, Wellstone and JFK jr) and a few attempts (Reagan and Ford).
Rome, at the peak of its power saw its highest political official murdered on the floor of the Senate by the Senators themselves. How could the US not have political assinations? Maybe they’re just a lot better now at making it look like moody loners and accidental plane crashes.
I’m really not a tinfoil sort of guy, but when you look at what the US government has actually done that is well documented from MK Ultra and overthrowing central American governments, it’s hard not to be doubtful of the overall official line on all this stuff in the aggregate. Much crazier shit has happened than rigging a plane crash. Half the real CIA attempts on Castro are more fantastic than the crazy theories about JFK, RFK or MLK.
Of course, wingnuts are still crazy to think anyone assassinated Breitbart. Aside from the high plausibility of an overweight man with anger issues dying of heart failure, he was in no way worth anyone’s effort to assassinate.
Jado
@dedc79:
Republicans are the Joker to Democrats Batman – as long as the Batman has a line he won’t cross, the Joker is free to kill as many civilians as he likes.
Lucky for Gotham that the Joker only kills when it amuses him. The Republicans have no such compunctions against grinding government to a halt. As they demand more extremism in their members, they tend more toward sociopathy. They’re more than halfway there now with the demands to bomb Iran…
redshirt
@burritoboy: I’d be terrified at the idea of Jim DeMint with his own army. AIEE!
jayackroyd
@Brachiator:
If every Democrat in the House was a clone of FDR, they would still be in a minority, and getting rolled by the Tea Party and the GOP regulars.
Really?
You mean if the Establishment Democrats had come in full throated opposition to the bankster bailout, had taken action against foreclosure fraud, had reformed the health care system in an effective way, they would have been rolled by the tea party?
Really?
You really think that 2010 wave election would have been worse if the democrats had invited the banksters’ hatred, and put them in jail? You really think that if they stood up and said “if you don’t like your health care plan at work, or if you are uninsured, you can sign up for Medicare” the tea party would have rolled them?
Really?
Funny. I thought the 2010 wave election happened because the democrats, holding both houses and the presidency, didn’t do shit, not that they did too much–just as the 2006 and 2008 waves happened because the Republicans not only didn’t do shit, they did really bad shit.
Gus diZerega
The American system was not set up to handle ideological disciplined parties. Read Federalist 10- this kind of party is 100% opposed to the thinking behind the constitution. Madison writes quite bluntly that this sort of thing destroys democracies.
We might be able to survive this as a nation if enough Republicans pull back from the brink, which in all honesty I doubt.
We might be able to survive this if states start adopting majority vote elections, which by giving third parties a decent chance could destroy the two party monopoly on power. Then the Republicans could decline to nuisance status.
Absent either, breaking up the US so that blue states no longer need union with red ones is the only thing that will keep blue states capable of engaging in self government. Under the circumstances I really don’t give much of a shit what happens to states that choose to be Republican. Good citizens can immigrate to blue states and if we are fortunate red sympathizers can move in with their kindred. Each can then go its own way and let history decide who is more in the right.
Barry
@Roger Moore: “The filibuster is going to have to go. I assume that the Republicans will eliminate it if they get a majority in the Senate, and the Democrats need to do the same if they maintain their majority. Our government can’t function if an intransigent minority can stall things indefinitely just to throw a spanner in the works.”
The GOP won’t eliminate it, because they know that the Democrats won’t use it even half as much, and will always cave when pushed.
Barry
@ericblair: “That’s the intent. Up to this point, as Turtleface McConnell helpfully pointed out, the main point to gooper intransigence was to fuck things up and blame Obama for it. ”
Remember, as far as they’re concerned, they can continue to blame Obama/DemonokRatz/Feminazis/Brown People for ever. It’s not like honest will restrain them.
Brachiator
@jayackroyd:
You thought wrong. Same is true of your other Really’s as well.
rumpole
You can’t disassociate the collapse from money. Any variation from orthodoxy set by a PAC = millions of bucks in negative “uncoordinated” ads flooding the airwaves. If paid to take one position (via donation) you’re going to see that position marketed via a principle that will be discarded when the next or bigger payment comes in.
All politicians have done this to some degree, but I’ve never seen it this bad, even during Clinton’s impeachment.
The Tragically Flip
A bold liberal agenda would have improved the economy noticably so that voters were not so angry in 2010 and Democrats would have done better.
The filibuster is an illusion, it only constrains the majority if they allow it to. The Democrats chose to govern 1 degree left of center, and the shitty half-assed policies you get in the center are why they fucking lost in 2010. Liberal policies have the virtue of working, and voters mostly react to the real state of the economy, particularly when the economy is or was bad.
Barry
@gene108: “I just wish the pundit class would realize this is more than just political tactics, it is the Republican Party refusing to acknowledge the peaceful transfer of power and the power the victors have – to appoint justices, for example – that underscores our nation’s success, if they aren’t the ones in power.”
So long as they get paid, the pundit class is happy (with a few exceptions).
priscianusjr
@Roger Moore:
priscianusjr
@kindness:
sherparick
I am probably the dissenter here on the filibuster rule. Given the undemocratic nature of the Senate, and the way the Democratic Party is dying out in rural and predominately white states with strong evangelical churches, the Senate is likely to slip into permanent Republican control. The filibuster is likely to be the only means of blocking reactionary laws and court appointments.
If the Republicans win the Presidency and keep the House, I expect them to move against both the filibuster and hold rules.