After last night’s 50-48 jobs bill “loss”, you might be interested in Steven L. Taylor’s review of Senate math:
To put simply:
Top 50% of Senate represents 83.65% of the population of the states.
Bottom 50% of Senate represents 16.35% of the population of the states.
The Senate already far over-represents the interests of rural states. The combination of that over-representation, plus a constant filibuster, gives some small, red percentage of the population veto power over the rest of us.
I, for one, welcome Harry Reid’s mini- or maxi-nuclear option. If we got rid of the filibuster, holds and all the other delaying tactics, Democrats might be worse off in the short term if we lose the Senate in 2012. Longer-term, however, we’re ahead of the game if the Senate becomes a majority vote body.
If Mitch McConnell is majority leader in 2012, this won’t even be a debate. He’ll use the precedent set by Reid to cut whatever rules get in the way of his majority, and he’ll do so while decrying the anti-democratic nature of the filibuster. Expect sober Brooks and Will columns about the awfulness of both sides’ use of that tool when McConnell decides to change the rules. Democrats would have been far better off just adopting new rules limiting the filibuster at the start of this session, but they’re too spineless and short-sighted to do that.
Napoleon
Regardless of whether this is true or not the fact of the matter is that it is bad for the country. No representative democracy should have a method by which a determined minority can absolutely keep a majority from enacting its program, which is what we have in this country. Now some of it is hard wired into the Constitution and so we have to live with it, but holds and filibusters are not.
Mark S.
I was wondering about this:
Shit, I skimmed through the first three pages, and I would guess it’s more than 50% since most of the ones I read were students. Only one of them had the honesty to admit she was a “future 53%-er.”
These people are really dumbasses.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mark S.: via Tbogg, here’s a response tumblr: Actually, you’re the 47 percent.
Mark S.
@arguingwithsignposts:
Nice!
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: I don’t want to call those people idiots, but I am struggling to find another term. Seriously, woefully misinformed? Clueless? Wrong? Help me out here.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus:
All of the above?
Plus, deluded, brainwashed, lacking in understanding of basic historical and economic facts. The list could go on.
Surprising how many young people are in there.
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus: They are servile creatures by nature. They are like the loyal dogs of an abusive owner who still wag their tails furiously on the rare occasions their master gives them a little pat on the head. Dogs in this situation deserve a better home, humans in this situation deserve nothing but ridicule and contempt. Because they lack all self-respect, they are simply not capable of respecting other people.
arguingwithsignposts
@beltane:
I think they also deserve pity.
cleek
@arguingwithsignposts:
Pity the fools.
Mr. T 19:83-87
beltane
@arguingwithsignposts: I do kind of pity them in the abstract sense. Their comments on Twitter are so sour, so full of envy and self-hate that I wonder if these people are even capable of experiencing happiness. It is depressing to see people who are so young, so privileged, and yet so deeply miserable. I’m not a religious person but it does seem like these people have been afflicted with an incurable defect of the soul.
Social Outcast
Abolishing the senate would be one way to cut the size of government. Having two legislative bodies when other nations seem to do okay with one strikes me as redundant and wasteful. Where is republican support for this money-saving idea?
arguingwithsignposts
@beltane: I think one of the defects of the American emphasis on “rugged individualism” is the way in which it pushes the idea that empathy only extends to me and mine.
justawriter
Another way to look at it, coming from the heart of hicksville, is that the Democrats are reaping the results of failing to support the party in rural states. A lot of rural states were bluer than big states like Pennsylvania for 20 to 30 years after the Reagan revolution but their local bench has become so depleted there aren’t any credible candidates to step up when that generation of senators and representatives retire. Dean recognized this with the 50 state initiative, but that’s been flushed down memory hole.
Ash Can
In a day and age when one of the two major parties is so clearly not just willing but actually eager to wreck the entire fucking nation for its own gain, I cannot go along with the idea of doing away with the filibuster. Better instead to keep trying to get the message across to the voters — harping on it — of who is doing what, and why. If it’s repeated often enough, it may start to sink in.
jayackroyd
The first act of the Republican 2012 Senate will be to get rid of the filibuster.
It would really help to do it now, because Dem Senators use it to remain unaccountable. So I don’t think they’ll get rid of it. Schumer had the gall to send out an email featuring this theme:
Schumer, of course, is one of the main forces responsible for the hedge fund/private equity carried interest loophole.
FlipYrWhig
@Ash Can:
Then again, I’ve been talking to my cat for 16 years, and she still doesn’t recognize words other than her name or comprehend that language is something other than pitch and volume. Voters are not dissimilar.
Chris
@beltane:
And now you know why religion’s so important to them. If you’ve got all the self-hate and bitterness they do, the fact that Jesus thinks they’re special is about the only thing left that gives their existence any value.
Fundamentalist Christianity reinforces the shit out of this by teaching about original sin and what a fallen, depraved, hopelessly corrupt species we are, and then teaching that Jesus loves you and will save you anyway… if you only join his fan club.
Not saying it’s the only kind of religious outlook in the world or that it’s the only reason people are religious, obviously it’s not. But there’s quite a demographic out there that works that way.
NonyNony
@jayackroyd:
This is obviously wrong. Majority leader Mitch McConnell will NEVER get rid of the filibuster. Because of this:
Who does that fact help? Whose base is in low population rural states at this moment in history? Republicans. Who for the long term is looking at having a base that is the MINORITY of the country and NEEDS that extra power to stay politically relevant? Republicans.
Mitch McConnell will NEVER EVER EVER nuke the filibuster. Jim DeMint might (he’s a moron) but not McConnell. McConnell knows how politics works.
What McConnell will do is find N Democrats to sign onto whatever he wants to do – where N is the number that it takes to get him over 60. And he’ll be able to find them – just like nothing substantial got blocked during the Bush years by a filibuster unless the Republicans were already on shaky ground with their own caucus for it.
The filibuster is a conservative’s ultimate weapon. There is no way on God’s green Earth that a conservative will nuke it. A radical might – Majority Leader Jim DeMint might just do it out of spite – but not a conservative. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
So I hope to fucking Grod that Reid gets pissed off enough at the Republicans in the next few months to just nuke the fucking thing from orbit. Because it’s been a blight on our politics for decades and it needs to be axed.
Mino
@jayackroyd: …Dem Senators use it to remain unaccountable.
Schuster is also the one pushing the repatriation scheme. Now that is a man who represents his doners, for sure.
catclub
@arguingwithsignposts: “Surprising how many young people are in there.”
The ones in that crowd who know how to post pictures to the interweb are mostly young.
Zifnab
We already have a bi-cameral legislature. And its not as though legislation gets through either body at lightning speed in normal cases (or that it can’t get through at lightning speed in “emergency” cases). We have Presidential vetoes. We have conference committees. In short, we have a host of tools for refining good legislation and kill bad legislation (or, you know, the reverse). The filibuster was a rule that was pretty much invented within the Senate, for the Senate, to make each individual Senator just that much more powerful. What exactly are we losing by abolishing it?
Viva BrisVegas
@Ash Can:
As someone from Far, Far, Away I gotta say that the American notion of democracy looks very peculiar from the outside.
The fact is that democracy means that you need to take the risk that someone insane might just win an election. If you don’t take that risk then you will find that when the sane people win elections they will be unable to govern.
Elections need to have consequences, in that the winners need to be able to govern, for good or bad. The remedy for bad government should be the next election, not minority veto.
The US Senate filibuster has got to be the most fundamentally undemocratic feature of any Western government in the world today, and I include the UK House of Lords in that.
catclub
@arguingwithsignposts: Just remember, there is no ‘us’ in USA!
Kola Noscopy
Oh don’t be silly. This will never happen, as we have been assured over and over and over again by BJ Otards that the majority leader simply does not possess the power or ability to make this happen.
So, no, no need to worry about this happening. It won’t. It can’t. Otards say so.
kindness
The very first minute the next new Congressional session to be run by a Republican majority will see the elimination of holds & filibusters.
Who doubts that?
@Kola Noscopy: Who needs to remind you you are a fucking troll?
MBunge
@NonyNony: “Whose base is in low population rural states at this moment in history? Republicans.”
Among the top 25 most populous states, there are currently 24 GOP Senators and 26 Dem Senators. And that’s counting Dems elected in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Missouri vs. Reps elected in Illinois, Massachusets and Wisconsin.
Mike
Jinchi
Republicans are going to get rid of the filibuster the day they retake the Senate. They don’t need an okay from Harry Reid to get it done. They’ll just change the rules when the chamber opens up the way liberals were begging Harry Reid to do last January. Democrats will be in worse shape if they lose they Senate no matter what. The only question is whether they will have the ability to get anything done while they still control it.
Social Outcast
@Viva BrisVegas: “As someone from Far, Far, Away I gotta say that the American notion of democracy looks very peculiar from the outside.”
The bicameral system was originally set up to ensure that the interests of wealthy colonial landowners and merchants wouldn’t be threatened by mobs of colonial poor. There was also a need to balance the political strength of highly populated states versus less populated states. So it was designed to be undemocratic, in other words.
Anoniminous
@Social Outcast:
James Madison:
Emphasis added
FlipYrWhig
@Kola Noscopy: The majority leader has the power to attempt it, yes. Unfortunately, he does not have support for said attempt among the senators who at present comprise the majority. A Republican majority leader, on the other hand, might. Really not that hard to understand.
agorabum
What’s the point of getting rid of the fillibuster for this session?
The Rs control the House. Nothing Reid passed with a 51 vote margin would make it through the House.
Sure, they could have done it in 09, but things looked rosy then; they had 60 votes and there was still the (naive) expectation that it would be politics as usual, with a few easy Republican defections in the name of maverickness and/or some pork.
jayackroyd
NonyNony:
Yep, you’re right. McConnell won’t need to get of it. Thanks.
ChrisB
The time to reform the filibuster was 2009 when we had the House. Now, not so much.
Jenny
Mistermix,
I like you, but once again, you’re wrong.
Keeping the filibuster has nothing to do with spine or vision, it’s all about pork and contributions.
With the filibuster, every Senator has the ability to take a bill or nomination hostage in order to get appropriations for a local project or to gin up donations from various groups.
Without the filibuster, how will Richard Shelby get appropriations for his crony contractors in Alabama? No filibuster equals no kick backs.
Jenny
I have to remind everyone, baby Jesus himself, in the earthly form of Saint Russ Feingold was vehemently against changing the filibuster.
So yes, go ahead and dump on Reid. But not even the liberal icons supported modest reforms.