If the Senate would do away with the filibuster rule like many of them keep saying should happen then Democrats in Congress could pass whatever climate legislation they pleased...
The current legislative fight is over a bill that is structured to bypass the filibuster. And the climate provisions didn't survive the negotiations because the Democrats in the Senate don't support them unanimously. One objection from the guy who owns a big stake in coal, and they don't have the votes.
That's what legislating with a minimal majority is like, especially since the Republicans are united in lockstep opposition to anything the Democrats try to do. So no, they couldn't just pass whatever they please even with no filibuster to worry about.
The current push to weaken or remove the filibuster is focused on voting rights. And I have to agree with that; the filibuster has a history of being used to protect discrimination, and its current implementation in the rules makes it way too easy to stop anything from getting done. Having two legislative chambers and a president that all have to agree on legislation is already inefficient as designed; we don't need to make it worse by requiring a supermajority in one of those chambers.
Also, just going to add, but simply because Republicans are in the minority, does not absolve them from participating in governance. They all won their respective elections in their home districts ostensibly to govern. They've decided, collectively as a party, to act in near lockstep opposition to passing anything. But there's nothing justified in that position.
There's no reason why a Republican from a state that doesn't depend on fossil fuel extraction couldn't also take up the cause of combating climate change. There's no reason why some Republicans can't join with Democrats once in awhile on major legislation. I'm not expecting them to join on things that break on ideological lines, like tax rates, welfare spending or hot button issues like abortion. But as Ballpointman says above, climate change is a pretty serious looming crisis -- one that ought to unite across ideological lines. In fact, it has done so in other democracies. I think it's wrong and counterproductive for citizens to hold the parties to a double standard on such an issue.
Sorry to revive a dying topic but I couldn't resist posting this. The blatant hypocrisy in politics is what has driven me from identifying with either party. Gerrymandering is apparently only morally reprehensible if it's the 'other guy' that's doing it. I believe I mentioned this fact years ago in this very thread...
Sorry to revive a dying topic but I couldn't resist posting this. The blatant hypocrisy in politics is what has driven me from identifying with either party. Gerrymandering is apparently only morally reprehensible if it's the 'other guy' that's doing it. I believe I mentioned this fact years ago in this very thread...
I don't think that is a fair take. As long as Gerrymandering is legal not making use of it will put you at a severe disadvantage, and Democrats have to use it to offset similar gains on the GOP side. You wouldn't want to be the only side on a divorce without a lawyer either, even if you think you both should be able to resolve things without one.
There is just one party who is trying to introduce federal legislation that would solve or at least make the issue less severe.
Sorry to revive a dying topic but I couldn't resist posting this. The blatant hypocrisy in politics is what has driven me from identifying with either party. Gerrymandering is apparently only morally reprehensible if it's the 'other guy' that's doing it. I believe I mentioned this fact years ago in this very thread...
I don't think that is a fair take. As long as Gerrymandering is legal not making use of it will put you at a severe disadvantage, and Democrats have to use it to offset similar gains on the GOP side. You wouldn't want to be the only side on a divorce without a lawyer either, even if you think you both should be able to resolve things without one.
There is just one party who is trying to introduce federal legislation that would solve or at least make the issue less severe.
And that's not the GOP.
The Democratic Party could have gotten rid of gerrymandering in the 70's and 80's when they had a solid majority but they didn't. I'm pretty sure that's because it was working in their favor back then. I'm old enough to remember details like this. The GOP was railing against gerrymandering back in those days. They got the same crickets that are chirping in the Democrats ears now...
Well, another major US election has passed. Not a presidential election, but a third of the Senate, all of the House, and lots of statewide offices were up.
The results? A split decision. We don't know which party will control either chamber yet, and that'll probably take a few days to fully sort out as more votes get counted.
Over in my corner of things, some results from Washington state:
Senate: Patty Murray (D, incumbent) wins easily. Some late polls had the race close. It wasn't.
House: Six seats to the Democrats, two to the Republicans, two that won't be called until the late-arriving ballots start getting counted (WA votes by mail. Election night returns are all ballots that arrived before election day, and ballots mailed in the last day or two often have a significantly different partisan mix than the earlier votes. Votes get added to the count in one batch per day.)
Those two close races in the House:
8th district (eastern edge of the Seattle metro area, and continuing east to the Cascades): Kim Schrier (D, incumbent) leads Matt Larkin (R) by a 52.7% - 47.0% margin. This one's about in line with what people expected.
3rd district (southwestern corner of the state): Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D) leads Joe Kent (R) by a 52.6% - 46.8% margin. If that lead holds, it's a major upset. No pundits saw it coming ... but nobody was polling the race.
For a bit of context, here's the primary results from August (WA uses a system in which the top two finishers advance regardless of party):
Gluesenkamp Perez: 31.0%
Kent: 22.8%
Jaime Herrera Beutler (R, incumbent): 22.3%
Heidi St. John (R): 16.0%
Other Republicans: 3.7%
Other Democrats: 2.2%
Independents and write-ins: 2.0%
The Republican incumbent was ousted for insufficient fealty to Trump. And then this happens in the general election.
On a more local level, the city of Seattle had a ballot proposition to change the voting system for local election primaries. It was a two part question - first "should we change things?", and second "if we change things, what system should we adopt?"
On the first part - the first day's results have it at 49-51. Change might or might not happen.
On the second part, it was a choice between "approval voting" and ranked-choice voting. The former would let voters name as many candidates "approved" as they wish, and then have the top two advance to the general election. The latter would let voters rank all the candidates, and progressively eliminate the lowest finishers until two remain. While RCV can be used to condense the primary and general election into one ("instant runoff" voting), that wasn't on the table here; state law currently forbids local entities from condensing the primary and general elections into one. The result for this question: ranked-choice voting trounced approval voting with a margin of about 75-25. If the change happens, it'll be ranked-choice voting in Seattle.
The Senate is currently Democrat 50 Republican 49; we will not know until 6 December if that becomes 50/50 or 51/49, but either way Democrats retain control of that chamber. 50/50 means control goes to the party represented by the VPOTUS.
The House is currently Democrat 204 Republican 212, but if the elections were all called right now then the Democrats pick up the following seats--AK01, CA06, CA09, CA21, CA27, CA49, ME02, and OR06--while the Republicans would pick up these seats--CA03, CA22, CA27, CA41, and CA45. This would bring the totals to Democrat 212 Republican 217.
The Republican candidates have slim leads--in some cases razor thin--in AZ01, AZ06, CA13, CO03, and NY 22 while the Democrat candidate has a slim lead in CO08. Republicans would have to lose in all of the first 5 districts to fail to have a majority in the House. Not impossible, but unlikely.
At the State level, here is the current breakdown of gubernatorial offices and legislatures; this will likely change to some degree next January. Republicans control 26 governor's offices and 30 legislatures while Democrats control 21 governor's offices and 17 legislatures. In general, Democrats control the Pacific Coast, the Eastern Rocky Mountains, the Northeast, and the Great Lakes States (with the exceptions of Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania); Republicans, in general, control everything else.
If you think Republicans in the House, should they control it, will somehow end Social Security and/or Medicare, ask yourself how they could possibly do this when the Senate would not pass such a bill and Biden would never sign it. This topic is not even going to come up on the floor, so why was anyone mentioning it?
Democrats had two years during which they could have updated/amended the immigration laws into whatever form they wanted, but they did not. They had sufficient time to codify Roe into law at the Federal level, but they did not. "But the filibuster in the Senate"--they could have done away with the filibuster at any time but chose not to do so. They could have added seats to the Supreme Court but chose not to do so--the real problem there is that the Court has the authority to disallow a Justice from being seated, a power it has never used.
We will soon have a split Congress. Expect even more bickering and less legislating than usual. Ironically, this is in your best interests--they can't mess anything up if they can't do anything.
Comments
The current legislative fight is over a bill that is structured to bypass the filibuster. And the climate provisions didn't survive the negotiations because the Democrats in the Senate don't support them unanimously. One objection from the guy who owns a big stake in coal, and they don't have the votes.
That's what legislating with a minimal majority is like, especially since the Republicans are united in lockstep opposition to anything the Democrats try to do. So no, they couldn't just pass whatever they please even with no filibuster to worry about.
The current push to weaken or remove the filibuster is focused on voting rights. And I have to agree with that; the filibuster has a history of being used to protect discrimination, and its current implementation in the rules makes it way too easy to stop anything from getting done. Having two legislative chambers and a president that all have to agree on legislation is already inefficient as designed; we don't need to make it worse by requiring a supermajority in one of those chambers.
There's no reason why a Republican from a state that doesn't depend on fossil fuel extraction couldn't also take up the cause of combating climate change. There's no reason why some Republicans can't join with Democrats once in awhile on major legislation. I'm not expecting them to join on things that break on ideological lines, like tax rates, welfare spending or hot button issues like abortion. But as Ballpointman says above, climate change is a pretty serious looming crisis -- one that ought to unite across ideological lines. In fact, it has done so in other democracies. I think it's wrong and counterproductive for citizens to hold the parties to a double standard on such an issue.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/02/gerrymandering-new-york-republicans-democrats/622086/
I don't think that is a fair take. As long as Gerrymandering is legal not making use of it will put you at a severe disadvantage, and Democrats have to use it to offset similar gains on the GOP side. You wouldn't want to be the only side on a divorce without a lawyer either, even if you think you both should be able to resolve things without one.
There is just one party who is trying to introduce federal legislation that would solve or at least make the issue less severe.
And that's not the GOP.
The Democratic Party could have gotten rid of gerrymandering in the 70's and 80's when they had a solid majority but they didn't. I'm pretty sure that's because it was working in their favor back then. I'm old enough to remember details like this. The GOP was railing against gerrymandering back in those days. They got the same crickets that are chirping in the Democrats ears now...
So much has happened since then. I agree with you that the last year or two have been surreal. Maybe even eerie...
The results? A split decision. We don't know which party will control either chamber yet, and that'll probably take a few days to fully sort out as more votes get counted.
Over in my corner of things, some results from Washington state:
Senate: Patty Murray (D, incumbent) wins easily. Some late polls had the race close. It wasn't.
House: Six seats to the Democrats, two to the Republicans, two that won't be called until the late-arriving ballots start getting counted (WA votes by mail. Election night returns are all ballots that arrived before election day, and ballots mailed in the last day or two often have a significantly different partisan mix than the earlier votes. Votes get added to the count in one batch per day.)
Those two close races in the House:
8th district (eastern edge of the Seattle metro area, and continuing east to the Cascades): Kim Schrier (D, incumbent) leads Matt Larkin (R) by a 52.7% - 47.0% margin. This one's about in line with what people expected.
3rd district (southwestern corner of the state): Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D) leads Joe Kent (R) by a 52.6% - 46.8% margin. If that lead holds, it's a major upset. No pundits saw it coming ... but nobody was polling the race.
For a bit of context, here's the primary results from August (WA uses a system in which the top two finishers advance regardless of party):
Kent: 22.8%
Jaime Herrera Beutler (R, incumbent): 22.3%
Heidi St. John (R): 16.0%
Other Republicans: 3.7%
Other Democrats: 2.2%
Independents and write-ins: 2.0%
On a more local level, the city of Seattle had a ballot proposition to change the voting system for local election primaries. It was a two part question - first "should we change things?", and second "if we change things, what system should we adopt?"
On the first part - the first day's results have it at 49-51. Change might or might not happen.
On the second part, it was a choice between "approval voting" and ranked-choice voting. The former would let voters name as many candidates "approved" as they wish, and then have the top two advance to the general election. The latter would let voters rank all the candidates, and progressively eliminate the lowest finishers until two remain. While RCV can be used to condense the primary and general election into one ("instant runoff" voting), that wasn't on the table here; state law currently forbids local entities from condensing the primary and general elections into one. The result for this question: ranked-choice voting trounced approval voting with a margin of about 75-25. If the change happens, it'll be ranked-choice voting in Seattle.
The House is currently Democrat 204 Republican 212, but if the elections were all called right now then the Democrats pick up the following seats--AK01, CA06, CA09, CA21, CA27, CA49, ME02, and OR06--while the Republicans would pick up these seats--CA03, CA22, CA27, CA41, and CA45. This would bring the totals to Democrat 212 Republican 217.
The Republican candidates have slim leads--in some cases razor thin--in AZ01, AZ06, CA13, CO03, and NY 22 while the Democrat candidate has a slim lead in CO08. Republicans would have to lose in all of the first 5 districts to fail to have a majority in the House. Not impossible, but unlikely.
At the State level, here is the current breakdown of gubernatorial offices and legislatures; this will likely change to some degree next January. Republicans control 26 governor's offices and 30 legislatures while Democrats control 21 governor's offices and 17 legislatures. In general, Democrats control the Pacific Coast, the Eastern Rocky Mountains, the Northeast, and the Great Lakes States (with the exceptions of Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania); Republicans, in general, control everything else.
If you think Republicans in the House, should they control it, will somehow end Social Security and/or Medicare, ask yourself how they could possibly do this when the Senate would not pass such a bill and Biden would never sign it. This topic is not even going to come up on the floor, so why was anyone mentioning it?
Democrats had two years during which they could have updated/amended the immigration laws into whatever form they wanted, but they did not. They had sufficient time to codify Roe into law at the Federal level, but they did not. "But the filibuster in the Senate"--they could have done away with the filibuster at any time but chose not to do so. They could have added seats to the Supreme Court but chose not to do so--the real problem there is that the Court has the authority to disallow a Justice from being seated, a power it has never used.
We will soon have a split Congress. Expect even more bickering and less legislating than usual. Ironically, this is in your best interests--they can't mess anything up if they can't do anything.