politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
With Republican obstructionism, the only way for Democrats to get anything done is to control the House, the Senate, and presidency. Without all three, Democrats will have an ineffective government that is incapable of passing laws to solve problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ8psP4S6BQ
There are limits to executive orders but they have their uses and a cool song too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUDSeb2zHQ0&t=7s
Actually, the Democrats would need more than just to control the Senate. They need 60 seats or they need to throw out the filibuster rule. Without one or the other, a single Republican senator can pretty much tank any legislation.
That is correct. The Democrats need to get rid of the filibuster, since it's unlikely for them to get 60 seats. It is another mechanism in our government that perpetuates minority rule. Another reason why we need to vote Blue in record numbers.
Just remember that getting rid of the filibuster means for both parties.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/01/fact-check-gop-ended-senate-filibuster-supreme-court-nominees/3573369001/
Democrats lowered the voting threshold from 60 to 51 for most presidential nominees, but not Supreme Court nominees, when Republicans tried to debilitate the Obama administration by obstructing his cabinet picks.
Republicans lowered the voting threshold from 60 to 51 for confirming Supreme Court nominees when the filibuster got in their way. Republicans are bad faith actors who only care about power. No amount of a safe guards will tie the hands of bad faith actors when they are in power. If Republicans take power, they will get rid of the filibuster as soon as it is convenient for them to pass legislation.
All the filibuster does is entrench minority rule even further. It makes Democrats need a supermajority when they were already representing over 41 million more voters in the Senate in 2021.
https://www.vox.com/2021/1/6/22215728/senate-anti-democratic-one-number-raphael-warnock-jon-ossoff-georgia-runoffs
My point is that removing the filibuster means that the minority party, which will inevitably include the democrats, have a much harder time doing anything to stop the majority. That may seem great when you're imagining Obama, Biden, or Harris. But when it's Trump and whoever follows him, your desire to give the party in power even more power might seem less ideal. That's a lesson the democrats learned the hard way when they opened the door to removing the filibuster. They got some cabinet positions. Republicans took the supreme court. Play stupid games...
You can dither about the structure of the senate and it's equality-of-states construction, but that is what was intended when it was created. What you seem to actually want is to abolish the concept of senate itself.
Republicans are bad faith actors. They will remove the filibuster whether Democrats do it or not. The Republican's intention is to form a christo-fascist dictatorship.
Our society is in need of systemic change and wealth redistribution. The time to act is now to prevent the worst outcomes of climate change.
All you need to change the filibuster is a majority of votes. There is no "they did it first clause" in the Constitution. That's a post hoc justification for sound bites.
And removing the filibuster will serve the christo-fascist agenda just as well as anything else. You can try to hand-wave it away and act like I'm pointing this out for the "sound bites" (?), but it's simply a fact. Perhaps you should look around. Half the country fully supports those christo-fascists, and they seem a lot more armed, a lot more organized, a lot more politically entrenched, and a lot more strategic. You're right, they will probably remove the filibuster when they get in power, and you'll get your wish.
It takes one vote for the Republicans to remove the filibuster. If the Republicans gain the majority in the Senate, there is nothing the Democrats can do to stop them. It's an honor system. The filibuster ties the hands of the pro-democracy majority. The christo-fascist minority is free to obstruct when they are out of power and free to remove it when they are in power. Which the Republicans will do, because fascists are bad-faith actors.
"They did it first!" is literally a sound bite for the press. The Republicans were always going to remove the filibuster to get Supreme Court nominations through. Blaming the Democrats based on what they did previously was a post hoc fallacy to justify their actions.
FAAFO
Wanting a functioning, majority rule democracy isn't the same as a christo-fascist dictatorship. By getting rid of the filibuster under a Democrat controlled Senate we will, in theory, be able to utilize systemic change to solve existential crises such as climate change and redistribute wealth to fix wealth inequality.
This is exactly why I like the 127 DC states plan so much, https://www.vox.com/2020/1/14/21063591/modest-proposal-to-save-american-democracy-pack-the-union-harvard-law-review
Need to drop the filibuster to pass the required laws to implement it, but once that's done, Dems have not only a permanent super majority in the Senate, but the required two thirds majority of House, Senate, and even States to pass constitutional amendments. So as soon as its removed, the filibuster can be re-enshrined via a constitutional amendment as a permanent fixture (preventing the GOP from taking advantage once they inevitably retake power).
That's a clever and funny strategy. And who knows we may end up wanting to do that or something similar. But what we need isn't the certainty of a Democrat majority and a Republican minority, but majority rule.
Creating lots of states out of DC would solve our current dilemma of Republican overrepresentation, but it would not solve minority rule. We need to reform the institutions of our society from the ground up. The House and Senate each need a thousand seats, and the president and Supreme Court need to be elected by popular vote to name a few. All of these are possible to change, assuming bicameral legislatures are worthwhile to keep. Even the Senate, but it requires every state to agree.
Agreed, but does it require every state to agree? If enough constitutional amendments could be passed and ratified by a two thirds majority on all levels, then the Constitution could simply be amended to implement those changes (and the authors behind the paper for this proposal expect that this is exactly what will happen once the plan is executed successfully - rather than Dems abusing their power or DC enacting minority rule over the entire country, they'll cooperate to design a better, fairer, and reformed system)
Yes. It's baked into Article V which is about amendments. The last line is the relevant line.
I'm not a constitutional scholar, but presumably an amendment cannot self-reference the article that amendments are derived from. Otherwise, we could just amend Article V to remove the last line of text and then amend the Senate as much as we wanted with another.
I could be wrong. Maybe the Founders were hoping that the future generations would notice this, but enough slave owners at the time wouldn't and sign it.
Hmm.. I understand the that last line to mean that every State should have the same number of Senators in the Senate.
But from https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/56523/can-the-us-senate-be-abolished-without-unanimous-consent-of-the-states it sounds like a workaround is simply to set that equal number to zero. Meanwhile there's no prohibition on adding a new, third House to Congress - so maybe we reply the Senate with the House of of State Peers or something.
Alas, it looks like we're screwed now.
👍