Yeah, this story would be better with some context. We all know that Trump hasn’t bothered to nominate anyone to fill a myriad of positions, either due to policy or incompetence or perhaps under threats of future non-confirmation. But are there actual Senate holds, or nominees being either voted down or slow-rolled through the Senate?
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The senate, being statewide is not gerrymandered. That’s their problem. They have to appeal to more than the partisan loonies who drink the GOP koolaid.
That said, the senate is still pretty skewed. Nearly half the population of the US lives in 10 states, meaning half the population gets 20 senators and the other half 80.
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Dear Thick Mick the Malevolent Leprechaun: the House GOP is made up of people who get to choose their voters, the Senate isn’t.
Not that the Senate lacks its own dumb biases. But what must it be like to live in the sweet sweet electoral ignorance of being a South Carolina Republican?
Talking points from trump on down. Attack congressional GOP. Whip up the batshit element for 2018. The mistake was not going batshit enough. I sure hope this turns out to be overreach and not a successful strategy.
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Christ, what an asshole
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The tone is that of a desperate man who has made promises to powerful people and is now receiving unhappy feedback for his failure to deliver.
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That sounds like me at work as well
The “problem” with the Senate is that it can’t be gerrymandered in the traditional sense. That is one of the few reasons we have not been completely dismantled as a country yet. But with the growth of population in the blue states and other demographic trends, it won’t be long until 70 of the senators represent 30% of the people and the other 30 senators will represent 70% of the people.
Add this to data driven weaponized gerrymandering of the House, the wholesale packing of the Federal judiciary that is going on in plain sight right now, and the obsolescence of the electoral college - and the ever widening wealth and knowledge gap - uh, doesn’t look good.
The modern day tactics of the powerful conservative elite in this country have, in just a few decades, completely outstripped and corrupted the institutions in our country that have so far protected us from our own worst instincts. The very first principles of our nation are at stake and we are drowning in tweets. We need basic legislative changes (like controls on gerrymandering and elimination or restructuring of the electoral college) and we are depending on lawsuits to achieve them because the majority of the legislature cannot and will not act. Lawsuits that are working their way up to a Supreme Court that is going to look very different in the near future. We find ourselves desperately hoping for fair treatment from people in their 80s who have been protected from all of the problems of actual living in this country for decades. People who are granted the power to dramatically affect how things work in this country for their entire lives, like royalty.
I am not going to say we are doomed - but historians will look back on 2016 as the turning point. Which way it will turn we really do not know. 2018 is our test.
Maybe he is realizing, what Donald’s latests health care sheennanigans are gonna cost…?
Chiselin’ Trump: “I never take the blame for anything. But, that’s not my fault.”
A Trumpian trait.
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“A lot of people didn’t know this, but…”
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This is an awesome resource for exploring your question: Tracking Trump’s nominations
Note that the link only covers “Senate-confirmable presidential appointments classified as ‘civilian.’”
Both nominations and confirmations have been slow. Senate Dems have done some deliberate delaying of confirmations, but I believe that Trumpp has played an even larger role in the Senate delays.
He contributed to initial delays by nominating people that needed more time to get paperwork submitted/approved and/or needed more time for Senate vetting. Many nominees weren’t well known to Senators, or had extensive potential conflicts of interest, or had no prior government experience, or previously had expressed views that Senators found alarming, or previously had expressed hostility toward the mission of the departments they were appointed to lead.
Trumpp then threw sand in the gears by pushing the Senate for weeks on the atrocious healthcare repeal. After it died for the third time in the Senate, he paused just long enough to abuse the Americans in Puerto Rico before beginning a push for sprawling and absurd tax “reform” plan.
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While a bill did come out of the house and fly to the Senate, it was a punt, not a pass.
The GOP House members who opposed the bill were finally brought onboard by the assurance that the Senate would “fix” the bill and that the House could take another whack at it in conference. There was nothing the Senate could have done to the bill that would have made it something that would pass the House, so it was a total punt.
Had they continued to fight, we’d have gotten nothing.