Filibusted
Well, that republican dude won the senate seat in Massachusetts. That sucks.
sigh
It's kind of a big deal. I don't know what's gonna happen with this health care stuff now. Fuck. I swear, if they don't pass some kind of health care bill, I am fucking giving up on American politics! I really am. I'll teach it, but I won't care about it any more than a high school English teacher cares about the Scarlet Letter.
It is a bit shocking that this dude would win Ted Kennedy's seat, but it's not that shocking in general that republicans would be making gains. This is a very closely divided country, and the President's party almost always loses seats in the midterm elections. The honeymoon effect has faded (i.e., people have realized that Obama can't wave a magic wand and make shit better), and people are starting to blame the country's problems on the democrats, whether that's fair or not. These are predictable patterns that we almost always go through.
The bigger point is that the country has become nigh ungovernable, because of the extreme polarization in the legislature and the willingness of the minority party in the senate to use the filibuster. The filibuster has been around a long time, but in the past, it was rarely used. The parties were much less ideologically polarized, and there was a norm of reciprocity in the senate. That has changed. The senate is already a countermajoritarian body, giving equal power to densely populated and sparsely populated states. With the filibuster power in the hands of the minority party, it is even more countermajoritarian. Getting a full 60 votes in the Senate is extraordinarily difficult in today's highly competetive political climate. Which means that it has become virtually impossible to govern the goddamn the country!
We need to abolish the filibuster. I realize that my party will someday be on the losing end of that change, but it needs to be done. Our system is designed to be conservative. Power is shared and fractured across the four branches of government and across levels of government. The architects of our system feared tyranny, and they feared the mob, so they designed a system that is insulated against both. But the system is moving so slowly now that it's toppling over. We need to abolish the goddamn filibuster.
posted by Joe @ 10:11 PM
13 Comments:
You don't see any value at all in the filibuster being a mechanism to slow the process of legislation? I mean there are tangible costs to every law that gets passed. Never do legal codes get simpler over time. A system that becomes biased towards change would only seem to exacerbate this. It would make hiding earmarks easier though...
First, yay for comments!
Second, don't be afraid to identify yourself, as nobody actually reads this blog. How bout a nickname?
Third, there are plenty of other mechanisms for gumming up the system. The filibuster is just one. Abolishing it would hardly create a "bias toward change." There are still a million other ways for a bill to die.
Perhaps, but no one ever complains about those.
Do you believe that the public (never mind congress) has had enough time to really achieve an understanding of the implications the senate or house health care bill? The public doesn't seem to think so and they've decided to put on the brakes. Many have experienced sitting opposite to a sweaty car salesman feverishly trying to push through an incomprehensible deal ("No you can't use the bathroom! You have to sign now!") and they don't like the feeling.
We've been having a vigorous national debate about this for half a year, at least. Longer if you count the 2008 election. Longer still if you figure we've been talking about this issue on the National scene since the Social Security Act in 1935. Insofar as the public ever pays attention to what Congress actually does (newsflash: they almost always don't), I think they've had plenty of time to digest these issues.
I just woke up, so I haven't looked around yet, but I'm sure lots of people are now pontificating as to the "meaning" of this election. One of my professors wrote a cool article about this phenomenon. Everyone coalesces around an accepted "meaning" for the election, even when these interpretations are often wrong. So, I'll play agnostic here and say that I don't know why that lady lost. In Massachusetts, where they already have a state run health care plan, I doubt it's because people found the House and Senate bills too liberal. I think it's more likely that people thought she was a bad candidate, and the dem base was apathetic because 1. they were overconfident and 2. they're disappointed at the SLOWNESS, not the speed, of the legislative process. But, let me reiterate, that's just speculation. We'll have to wait for the political scientists to be political scientists.
Oh, and like I said, the President's party almost always loses seats in the midterm election.
Attributing the loss to unknown or local issues is the most comfortable narrative isn’t it? I suggest reading up on what independent voters in focus groups are saying. This was a referendum on the healthcare bill.
Yes there has been some debate over what the bill should be but there has been little analysis as to how the finished bill will impact our lives. For example it includes a new tax on medical device makers. Cook Medical is one of Bloomington’s largest employers and will be directly affected. High paying jobs will likely be destroyed.
Sure it's the most comfortable. That doesn't make it wrong. I'll wait for the exit polls to opine about that, as should everybody else.
So, I guess all of the analyses from the CBO, OMB, and think tank after think tank don't cut it, huh?
Other than what the campaigns did internally there were no exit polls for this race. It was supposed to be a ceremonial transfer of Kennedy property.
What we know is that one candidate ran entirely as the 41st vote and the other suggested healthcare would be doomed if she lost. Independents and a non-trivial percentage of democrats broke towards Brown reflecting a national trend of unease about the current health care reform proposal.
http://images2.dailykos.com/images/user/426/franklin2010a.gif
I wasn’t aware that discovering all the discrete microeconomic effects of all of the different healthcare bills was part of the CBO and OMB’s portfolio.
I haven't read the reports, but yeah, that's the kind of thing that we policy wonk types do. The level of detail will depend on the question and the interests of the person asking it. That's why economists build models with hundreds of variables in them.
I see. So you’re telling me there weren’t any policy wonks involved in the stimulus bill?
Stimulus bill? What does that have to do with anything?
Anyway, by all means, comment to your heart's content, but for future reference, I'm gonna have to limit my arguments to one or two responses (homework to do and porn to watch. I'm sure you understand). Maybe one of my other two readers wants to discuss these finer points with you.
It has everything to do with efficacy.
Do you think the stimulus spending satisfied policy objectives? A sizable population people don’t think so. These stimulus bills were also vetted by the CBO and OMB. Perhaps congress and the president didn’t ask them the right questions. Perhaps they didn’t have time to produce adequate models but their favorable conclusions hardly seem a sufficient basis in which to judge the soundness of the health care bills; especially given the budgetary gamesmanship (6 years of benefits over 10 years of cost) required.
I was wrong. Blaming Bush for the outcome of this election is the most comfortable narrative.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2010/01/obama-massachusetts-anger.html
"People are angry, and they're frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."
So if you liked Brown winning I'm sure you loved the outcome of citizens united vs. the FEC.
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