Is it exaggeration to suggest the USA is at a crossroads?

[SuperMatt]

If you're talking about legislative compromise that keeps nudging the country to the right, I get it. It's infuriating.

But the Dems do have balls. They impeached an impeachable president twice when his own party was too craven to step up and do it. They said ok we might lose some elections but we're not letting a wannabe autocrat shred the Constitution in broad daylight even if it's probably true he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and skate. They said NO MAS for the history books. No more. No stamp of approval or wink and nod. It was crucial for the country's future to demonstrate formally that there were lines Trump crossed, that he went too far in terms of not only customs and norms but constitutional powers, even if the Senate in its assumed wisdom under Mitch McConnell did not see fit to remove the guy from the White House and prohibit him from running again for public office. Nancy Pelosi has more balls than McConnell has brain cells.

But on legislation... the Dems keep giving away the store. So yeah on that point you're right. They're too f'g nice. By now if the shoe had been on the other foot, the filibuster would have been drop kicked by the GOP even knowing there would be times they'd regret it.

For now the Dems resist taking that final step but it's not out of being nice, it's out of some respect for situations where maybe it SHOULD take 60 votes (or more) to pass certain legislation. At least the Dems have the brains to understand that. Too bad the Rs don't take a page from the Ds' playbook and compromise a little more often. In the end the GOP will have been the impetus for ditching the filibuster they think (possibly correctly) they can't remain viable without.

The filibuster is not part of the constitution. The Senate already gives too much power to a minority of Americans. We have a House too, and a president with veto powers. The filibuster doesn’t prevent one party from forcing through any legislation they want. It allows one party to indefinitely block the will of the majority of Americans.

The History of the Filibuster

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Sarah Binder counters a number of conventionally held notions about the origins and history of the Senate filibuster. Binder notes that the filibuster was not part of the original design of the Senate and the creation of...

www.brookings.edu

 

[lizkat]

The filibuster is not part of the constitution. The Senate already gives too much power to a minority of Americans. We have a House too, and a president with veto powers. The filibuster doesn’t prevent one party from forcing through any legislation they want. It allows one party to indefinitely block the will of the majority of Americans.

The History of the Filibuster

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Sarah Binder counters a number of conventionally held notions about the origins and history of the Senate filibuster. Binder notes that the filibuster was not part of the original design of the Senate and the creation of...

www.brookings.edu

I didn't say it was part of the Constitution. It's just a rule. There are good reasons for assorted of the sometimes arcane House and Senate rules, and they can be argued over ad infinitum. Sometimes they even get changed...

One of my points was that the Republicans would have ditched the filibuster themselves now had they found themselves in the situation the Dems have occupied lately.

A second point was that there can indeed be times when maybe it should take more than simple majority to pass particular motions or bills. It has been thought so in the past BY BOTH PARTIES, although not necessariy at the same time, which led to my added remark that if the Rs did ditch the filibuster they might eventually come to regret it.

The Dems though are probably going to have to make the change, ditch the filibuster and take the GOP's hypocrtical political heat for it if they want to salvage what's left of Biden's key legislation. And then... and then the Rs will pass all kinds of crap with simple majority votes as soon as they regain the Senate. Which of course is why the Ds are hesitating.

 

[Herdfan]

The filibuster has been bastardized. Not sure who was at fault, but originally it was simply a mechanism where those opposed to legislation had to actually "hold the floor." In other words, it required sacrifice. It no longer does so it is overused. By both parties. Right now it is the GOP using it, but not that long ago it was the Dems using it.

At this point, I am ready to get rid of it. But I don't want to hear any bitching when the GOP is back in control over some things they will pass.

Remember, the Dems opened the door. Had Reid not removed it for judicial nominations giving some cover for the GOP to remove it for SCOTUS, the courts would look very different today than they do. So be very careful what you wish for.

 

[lizkat]

I keep looking back at the OP of this thread and the related poll and thinking there are degrees missing in the poll. I'm as alarmed as any citizen should be (in my view) about the 2021 insurrection and the voting suppression bills enacted in some states since then. But I don't think we're at some point of near apocalypse of democracy.

We're living in a particular time, having survived the accession of Trump, a completely anomalous president who happens to be a telvision celebrity, a self-described successful "businessman" but above all a deluded narcissist and wannabe autocrat. We're a little too close to the times to make a good assessment of his eventual impact on the further course of our history, even in the short term. But he lost a re-election bid and his successor has been making headway on some of his policy and legislative goals, despite covid and not much help from what we used to regard as loyal opposition...

I really don't understand why the Republicans, who adopted Trump because he added a small but previously unreachable and long discontent base, are afraid to say to Trump "Thanks for your service and have a nice retirement!"

Let the Republicans put up some candidates with policies that appeal to their potential voter base. That is how campaigns generally proceed. You have a platform, policies, some show and tell to underwrite the worth of the policies, and so forth. You have elections, count the votes, console the losers, congratulate the winners, roll up sleeves and get on with the work at hand. It's how we've done it in the past. Republicans and Democrats. It's how we got from the 18th century to the 21st. No reason we can't sweep up the busted crockery of the Trump era and resume a workable mechanism.

Honestly I believe that's what the gen Z and the millennials are going to insist on. The world is soon to be theirs, they need to run it and most of them seem to know that, because they do turn out to vote.

All this other doomscrolling only feeds the trolls who loved the idea that a handful of violent people nearly managed to prevent Congress from certifying an election. It didn't happen. We have a functional government and the usual arguments over which way to steer the ship of state, which meanwhile steams ahead on its slightly right of center course despite all the shopworn calls of how socialist a nation we've become. If we are that, we got there in the Nixon era for chrissake.

We need to pass the voting rights act and do something about student debt before it kills this country's future for a century,

Fix the poll and put in a slot for "things were bad but they're looking up" and maybe "we've learned lessons in time".

 

[SuperMatt]

The filibuster has been bastardized. Not sure who was at fault, but originally it was simply a mechanism where those opposed to legislation had to actually "hold the floor." In other words, it required sacrifice. It no longer does so it is overused. By both parties. Right now it is the GOP using it, but not that long ago it was the Dems using it.

At this point, I am ready to get rid of it. But I don't want to hear any bitching when the GOP is back in control over some things they will pass.

Remember, the Dems opened the door. Had Reid not removed it for judicial nominations giving some cover for the GOP to remove it for SCOTUS, the courts would look very different today than they do. So be very careful what you wish for.

The GOP misused the filibuster to block ALL judicial nominations. Such behavior, if continued by both parties over time, could have shut down the judiciary completely.

When Reid ended it in order to keep the judiciary functioning, McConnell used that to create a false equivalency for SCOTUS nominations. He used it not because ALL Republican SCOTUS nominations (or ANY for that matter) were being blocked, but because he wanted to put far-right justices on the court.

If the Democrats keep the filibuster in place, there is no guarantee the Republicans will follow suit.

Also keep in mind that although the Senate is divided 50-50, the number of people represented are 56.5% Democrats and 43.5% Republicans. The Senate ALREADY gives an outsized voice to the Republican minority. Adding the filibuster to it means even if they were representing as low as 35% of voters, they could still shut down everything as they’d have more than 40 seats.

The argument FOR the filibuster if you’re a Democrat is that we’ve recently had a Senate controlled by the GOP despite receiving a minority of Americans’ votes. In a way, the filibuster could be the majority‘s veto power over a minority-rule chamber of Congress. I can see benefits and risks to keeping it and to letting it go.

 

[User.168]

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[Huntn]

It's your last paragraph that worries me the most. What I am seeing is clear evidence of gerrymandering, court packing and all around voter suppression attempts (more so than usual even by the GOP standards) with little being done by the Democrats.

Keep in mind that the Democrats in all of the States in question are in the minority for representation. At the state level the GOP has a stranglehold on the country. In that position there is little that can be done though the State House. The voters have to decide or be convinced that a change in leadership is needed. Instead enough of them feel that blatant dishonesty and corruption is the best path forward for them and consequently the GOP persists, even thrives. This is where I use the term STUPID frequently, but there are other derogatory descriptors I could use instead, such as racist, selfish, or corrupted- Christian.

As you know, unless the youth can get themselves into gear, I think we in the US are fucked as a democratic Nation as the GOP seems to be trying to morph us into Russia or China.

From my perspective, the Democrats have the right message, it appeals to me, it just does not seem to appeal to what represents today’s GOP base, other than them turning into raving, corrupt lieing, cheating, gun toting, abortion outlawing, trashing democracy, fascists in the making.

Then your average Republican Kool-aid drinker might fall in love with them, but the rest of us? We’d lose out on what little representation that if we don‘t completely agree with, has the potential to lead out out of the swamp.

Before any counter appears, I’ll acknowledge that in decades past the Democrats had their swamp elements, especially in the South before most of the old Democrats who hated civil rights switched to the Republican Party.

 

[lizkat]

It's your last paragraph that worries me the most. What I am seeing is clear evidence of gerrymandering, court packing and all around voter suppression attempts (more so than usual even by the GOP standards) with little being done by the Democrats.

Yes, gerrymandering is one of the pillars of partisan protectionism, despite efforts in some states to reform district mapping. Of course each state's legislature may handle the reform process differently. Also, the rate of change in a state and district's population can affect the extent to which gerrrymandered maps (old or new) still offer partisan advantages. Hence, in states where those factors may be in play, some red states, particularly but not exclusively in the south, have also hastened to pass new laws, aiming to reduce turnout of voters presumed to lean to the Democrats.

What alarms me with some reform efforts are outcomes like what just happened in New York State, which had opted to insert an advisory process managed by an "independent commission" to make recommendations to the legislature. But we live in extremely partisan times: the commission itself finally proved unable to agree on a new map, and so by law the process has reverted to the legislature. In other states the process when failing may then fall to the state courts.

In NY this currently means the Democrats may be able to control the process and protect their incumbent or perceived challenger advantage, which of course makes the conservatives in rural parts of upstate NYS unhappy. Nationally however the Dems now may exert control of CD map-drawing in just 75 districts, the Rs in 181. The latter number is reduced from what it was in 2010 (213 districts), but the Supreme Court --in its questionable wisdom of gutting certain provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act-- has almost guaranteed that a number of southern states (formerly needing federal approval for its congressional district mapping changes) will succeed in making new maps that reinforce or create Republican strongholds in congressional districts and so in House representation, even with statewide Democratic majorities.

The Redistricting Landscape, 2021–22

Political, legal, and demographic changes, along with census delays, will shape the fight for fair maps and representation.

www.brennancenter.org

 

[SuperMatt]

Keep in mind that the Democrats in all of the States in question are in the minority for representation. At the state level the GOP has a stranglehold on the country. In that position there is little that can be done though the State House. The voters have to decide or be convinced that a change in leadership is needed. Instead enough of them feel that blatant dishonesty and corruption is the best path forward for them and consequently the GOP persists, even thrives. This is where I use the term STUPID frequently, but there are other derogatory descriptors I could use instead, such as racist, selfish, or corrupted- Christian.

As you know, unless the youth can get themselves into gear, I think we in the US are fucked as a democratic Nation as the GOP seems to be trying to morph us into Russia or China.

From my perspective, the Democrats have the right message, it appeals to me, it just does not seem to appeal to what represents today’s GOP base, other than them turning into raving, corrupt lieing, cheating, gun toting, abortion outlawing, trashing democracy, fascists in the making.

Then your average Republican Kool-aid drinker might fall in love with them, but the rest of us? We’d lose out on what little representation that if we don‘t completely agree with, has the potential to lead out out of the swamp.

Before any counter appears, I’ll acknowledge that in decades past the Democrats had their swamp elements, especially in the South before most of the old Democrats who hated civil rights switched to the Republican Party.

Voters CAN end gerrymandering if they organize. Michigan is a good example.

MSN

www.msn.com

In 2018, 61% of Michigan voters adopted a constitutional amendment to wrest control of the redistricting process from state lawmakers who drew lines deemed some of the most politically skewed in the country.

The amendment charged a group of randomly selected voters with crafting the new boundaries instead.

 

[GermanSuplex]

Trump’s scheme to overthrow the election in 2020 is starting to come into view, and it’s more nefarious than I imagined. The call to Georgia’s SOS was pretty bad, maybe even criminal, but it was a smaller part of what I just imagined was Trump’s usual mouth-running and hamfisted way of trying to will whatever he wanted - in this case, getting others to go along with his claim that he won and the election was “fraudulent”. But it was far more involved than that. Rachel Maddow is diving into the fraudulent documents alleging Wisconsin was won by Donald Trump - documents that were illegal and concocted by high-ranking members of Wisconsin’s GOP party.

This is an opinion piece, but it lists the facts…

We must hold Wisconsin’s fraudulent electors accountable • Wisconsin Examiner

The fraudulent electors played a key role in the insurrection, even if they were sitting at home in Wisconsin that day.

wisconsinexaminer.com

There is a lot more to this and it ties in to other things the January 6 committee has found, and probably will find - and who knows what they are aware of that hasn’t been made public yet.

The real question is how long does this go on for while republicans pretend nothing happened? Are they truly onboard until the whole thing collapses, or will they find the brass to join together and speak up against Trump and this plot to disregard the voters?

This was all way more coordinated and detailed than it seems. I think Jeff Clark is in deep shit, and so are these clowns in Wisconsin. People are talking and naming names, and it’s only a matter of time before they all point the finger at those at the top.

But it could be futile if we’re waiting on scum like congressional republicans to grow a backbone. This is not a game we want to play every four years.

 

[Yoused]

umm,

Empty Wharrgarbl:

Ultimately the truth is it’s our Second Amendment rights, our right to bear arms, that protects Americans and give us the ability to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government. And I hate to use this language but Democrats, they’re exactly -- they’re doing exactly what our Founders talked about when they gave us the precious rights that we have.​

Yeah, she "hates to use that language", right. Stupid [redacted]

 

[User.168]

.

 

[SuperMatt]

Trump’s scheme to overthrow the election in 2020 is starting to come into view, and it’s more nefarious than I imagined. The call to Georgia’s SOS was pretty bad, maybe even criminal, but it was a smaller part of what I just imagined was Trump’s usual mouth-running and hamfisted way of trying to will whatever he wanted - in this case, getting others to go along with his claim that he won and the election was “fraudulent”. But it was far more involved than that. Rachel Maddow is diving into the fraudulent documents alleging Wisconsin was won by Donald Trump - documents that were illegal and concocted by high-ranking members of Wisconsin’s GOP party.

This is an opinion piece, but it lists the facts…

We must hold Wisconsin’s fraudulent electors accountable • Wisconsin Examiner

The fraudulent electors played a key role in the insurrection, even if they were sitting at home in Wisconsin that day.

wisconsinexaminer.com

There is a lot more to this and it ties in to other things the January 6 committee has found, and probably will find - and who knows what they are aware of that hasn’t been made public yet.

The real question is how long does this go on for while republicans pretend nothing happened? Are they truly onboard until the whole thing collapses, or will they find the brass to join together and speak up against Trump and this plot to disregard the voters?

This was all way more coordinated and detailed than it seems. I think Jeff Clark is in deep shit, and so are these clowns in Wisconsin. People are talking and naming names, and it’s only a matter of time before they all point the finger at those at the top.

But it could be futile if we’re waiting on scum like congressional republicans to grow a backbone. This is not a game we want to play every four years.

I generally opposed the electoral college because it gives extra votes to small states, and gives “winner takes all” electoral counts in most states. I didn’t realize before how ripe it is for cheating and exploitation, but Jan 6 showed us that exactly. We should have National popular vote for President, period.

 

[Herdfan]

I generally opposed the electoral college because it gives extra votes to small states, and gives “winner takes all” electoral counts in most states. I didn’t realize before how ripe it is for cheating and exploitation, but Jan 6 showed us that exactly. We should have National popular vote for President, period.

Then change the Constitution. Period.

 

[SuperMatt]

Then change the Constitution. Period.

That’s exactly what I’m calling for.

 

[Herdfan]

That’s exactly what I’m calling for.

The recipe is widely known. Good luck.

 

[SuperMatt]

The recipe is widely known. Good luck.

Yes, I personally will change the constitution.

 

[Renzatic]

That’s exactly what I’m calling for.

It'd be far, far easier to change how the EC works at the state level than it would be to kick off a successful constitutional convention.

Yes, I personally will change the constitution.

When you get right down to it, all you need is a pen, and way to get in the National Archives.

 

[Herdfan]

It'd be far, far easier to change how the EC works at the state level than it would be to kick off a successful constitutional convention.



When you get right down to it, all you need is a pen, and way to get in the National Archives.

I think the easiest way to make it more fair would be to allocate the votes like NE and ME do. Two to the winner of the state as a whole, then by CD.

Are you suggesting a National Treasure 3 plot?

Yes, I personally will change the constitution.

I know you are being sarcastic, but that is exactly how things happen. People, individuals fighting for what they want. Convince enough people and you can get there.

 

[SuperMatt]

I think the easiest way to make it more fair would be to allocate the votes like NE and ME do. Two to the winner of the state as a whole, then by CD.

Are you suggesting a National Treasure 3 plot?



I know you are being sarcastic, but that is exactly how things happen. People, individuals fighting for what they want. Convince enough people and you can get there.

It certainly is a sad comment on our country’s current state that a change to the constitution seems less likely than civil war… to the point of basically being a joke.

The people of Michigan changed their constitution to curtail gerrymandering. If more states did that, then a constitutional amendment might be possible. But since it is the states that need to approve amendments, it will require more heavily gerrymandered states to have their constitutions amended first. States with over 60% of the legislative seats going to Republicans despite only getting 45% of the vote… are not currently democracies.