Getting rid of the filibuster makes sense to a lot of people. The votes are not there to do it. Making the filibuster a lot more painful and obvious is a step in the right direction, and it just might have the necessary votes. If even that does not get the voting rights bills past, maybe the holdouts will change their minds and vote to a…
Getting rid of the filibuster makes sense to a lot of people. The votes are not there to do it. Making the filibuster a lot more painful and obvious is a step in the right direction, and it just might have the necessary votes. If even that does not get the voting rights bills past, maybe the holdouts will change their minds and vote to abolish. It's only been a pro-slavery, anti-civil rights maneuver anyway. I do remember Ted Kennedy using it to block Nixon's health care plan - the one that was the basis for Romney's plan in MA and then for Obama's - because it lacked a public option. That turned out to have been a mistake.
Hello Joan. The US healthcare insurance system pre-ACA was an abomination, while Obamacare is - at best - a significant but inadequate incremental improvement. My wife and I are over 65 and living on govt. pensions in Italy. I recently had a small skin tumor surgically removed, while my wife had a cataract fixed, all without pain or complication. The bill? What bill? This is Italy. Healthcare here is a right written into the Constitution. We have never received a bill for healthcare in Italy. Most Americans have no idea of how bad they have it when it comes to healthcare.
I guess if Joe Manchin and a few other "moderate" Democrats dig in their heels over the filibuster, US healthcare will continue to be an embarrassment for the foreseeable future. Ted Kennedy should not have used the filibuster to block Nixon's healthcare plan because - like Obama's - it was no doubt better than nothing and might have morphed into something more appropriate for a wealthy and powerful democracy, who knows?
Well, that was then, when there were still a few liberal Republicans, a few conservative Democrats, and general agreement that government was not something to be derided and then drowned in a bathtub, but in today's political hell, the GOP has become an organized crime syndicate aspiring to dictatorship. The events of Jan 6th are proof that I am not merely ranting here.
The bottom line is that there is no room for error or half-measures now. Despite the cheap, instant transmission of an infinite amount of information to anyone with a smartphone and easy access to reliable sources of fact-based news, many poorly educated Americans are in thrall to gurus, seers, and noisy paranoid schizophrenics who exploit their lack of knowledge and discernment and can convince them of almost anything. Throw in residual and not-so-latent racism and other forms of xenophobia, 40+ years of stagnant middle-class wages, rising rents, unaffordable higher education and the fetishization of the invisible hand and $$$$ and we have a dire situation that must be radically changed before the midterm elections in 2022.
But no, now we have to worry about a supposed Democrat's nostalgia for a Senate rule based on a mistake made by Aaron Burr a couple of hundred years ago and used to greatest effect in my lifetime to block Jim-Crow-killing civil rights bills. Will this last, best chance to save our democracy be simply (excuse the expression) pissed away if the "holdouts" maybe don't change their minds?
Thanks, David, for this good summary of politics since Nixon. In retrospect, some see him as the last liberal president of the 20C, If liberalism is defined as believing in government's role and using it to advance the common good. When it came to dirty tricks, conspiracy, secret bombings etc, definitely not so much.
Getting rid of the filibuster makes sense to a lot of people. The votes are not there to do it. Making the filibuster a lot more painful and obvious is a step in the right direction, and it just might have the necessary votes. If even that does not get the voting rights bills past, maybe the holdouts will change their minds and vote to abolish. It's only been a pro-slavery, anti-civil rights maneuver anyway. I do remember Ted Kennedy using it to block Nixon's health care plan - the one that was the basis for Romney's plan in MA and then for Obama's - because it lacked a public option. That turned out to have been a mistake.
Hello Joan. The US healthcare insurance system pre-ACA was an abomination, while Obamacare is - at best - a significant but inadequate incremental improvement. My wife and I are over 65 and living on govt. pensions in Italy. I recently had a small skin tumor surgically removed, while my wife had a cataract fixed, all without pain or complication. The bill? What bill? This is Italy. Healthcare here is a right written into the Constitution. We have never received a bill for healthcare in Italy. Most Americans have no idea of how bad they have it when it comes to healthcare.
I guess if Joe Manchin and a few other "moderate" Democrats dig in their heels over the filibuster, US healthcare will continue to be an embarrassment for the foreseeable future. Ted Kennedy should not have used the filibuster to block Nixon's healthcare plan because - like Obama's - it was no doubt better than nothing and might have morphed into something more appropriate for a wealthy and powerful democracy, who knows?
Well, that was then, when there were still a few liberal Republicans, a few conservative Democrats, and general agreement that government was not something to be derided and then drowned in a bathtub, but in today's political hell, the GOP has become an organized crime syndicate aspiring to dictatorship. The events of Jan 6th are proof that I am not merely ranting here.
The bottom line is that there is no room for error or half-measures now. Despite the cheap, instant transmission of an infinite amount of information to anyone with a smartphone and easy access to reliable sources of fact-based news, many poorly educated Americans are in thrall to gurus, seers, and noisy paranoid schizophrenics who exploit their lack of knowledge and discernment and can convince them of almost anything. Throw in residual and not-so-latent racism and other forms of xenophobia, 40+ years of stagnant middle-class wages, rising rents, unaffordable higher education and the fetishization of the invisible hand and $$$$ and we have a dire situation that must be radically changed before the midterm elections in 2022.
But no, now we have to worry about a supposed Democrat's nostalgia for a Senate rule based on a mistake made by Aaron Burr a couple of hundred years ago and used to greatest effect in my lifetime to block Jim-Crow-killing civil rights bills. Will this last, best chance to save our democracy be simply (excuse the expression) pissed away if the "holdouts" maybe don't change their minds?
Thanks, David, for this good summary of politics since Nixon. In retrospect, some see him as the last liberal president of the 20C, If liberalism is defined as believing in government's role and using it to advance the common good. When it came to dirty tricks, conspiracy, secret bombings etc, definitely not so much.
TPJ! True, Tricky Dicky had his points. Wicked 5 o'clock shadow, however, and often slick with sweat when he was lying.
Don't forget Patty Murrey's filibuster in Texas to prevent an anti-abortion bill being passed before the legislture adjorned until after the election.