Discussion:

Discussion for article #230781

Personally, I’d rather Mitch and the rest of the GOP be nuked.

I hope he nukes the filibuster for legislation. President Hillary will pass single payer within the decade. We would have single payer now if not for the filibuster. And six years in there would have been no chance of the GOP majority removing it, and in all likelihood, if we had passed single payer in 2009, there wouldn’t be a GOP majority today.

Mitch will be in the same sinking boat with bonehead around march 2015. watch mitch slowly become orange and always seem a little tipsy. Bonehead figured out how to survive the onslaught, hide, drink, get tan, play golf and always say, it’s what the american people want and where are the jobs. Mitch will learn. lol lol

They would if Romney had been elected. Then it would be “Goodbye, 20th Century: Social Security, Medicare, etc.”

Please do. They’ll spend two years spinning the propellers on their beanies, things will swing back, and then we’ll get single payer. Finally.

My wife and I are watching the series on FDR.

FDR.

You know…they guy who made the 20th Century so much more pleasant for millions. The guy who made possible what the Confederates are now gleefully plotting to destroy.
And when I say “Confederates”

• I’m talking about Dixie
• I’m talking about white suburbia
• I’m talking about the Southwest
• I’m talking about the Plains states
• I’m talking about the Mountain states
• I’m talking about the majority of whites over 50
• Finally, I am ESPECIALLY talking about the gadgetized (Call of Duty, anyone?) Americans
  who make the New Confederacy possibe by maniacally insisting upon not voting

First, I’d like to inform Sahil that the Constitutional threshold for passing legislation in the Senate is 51 votes.
The 60-vote margin is a creation of the GOP’s relentless filibustering of every single thing that comes up for a vote, including procedural motions.

Second, McConnell will do whatever it takes for him to thwart President Obama in every possible way, because Mitch is a craven and highly-partisan right-wing nihilist who is more concerned with ruining President Obama’s administration than he is with governing.

I am less sure than you that 51 Democrats actually wanted "single payer’ … I’ll buy a public option.

Go ahead. The filibuster is a bridge too far in an institution (Congress and the Senate particularly) that has enough bottlenecks. For instance, the House has no filibuster. The immigration bill was just not brought up to a vote. If it was, it very well might have passed. The Senate will still have ways to block.

Also, do away with individual holds, at times secret, on nominations. That’s absurd. A single hold, e.g., helped to block Victoria Nourse and helped a voting id law to be upheld by a 5-5 vote in the 7th Cir.

as always leave it to republicans to do what democrats are afraid to do while democrats sit silent

I agree with at least one point in this article: Obama like the Clinton’s, is in agreement with Republicans on things like trade agreements (arbitraging the US worker Vs foreign peasant workers) and they disagree with most of their own party.

If Obama and the Dems don’t get back to working for the bottom 90% of Americans and end their pro-corporate and pro-monopoly ways, it will be the end of the middle class and the end of the Democratic Party!

Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders for President - not a Republican and not Hillary Clinton the Corporatist!

Do it! Do it!

Long-term thinking here, people: look at the use of the filibuster throughout history, and you will find that is has been used to block progress and progressive ideas much, much more often than to block regressive ones.

Er, I mean, um, “As a liberal, the idea that the Republicans might eliminate the filibuster rule makes me very, very angry. It’s a rage, but sort of a helpless rage. I sure hope no Republicans are reading this.”

Your specific example is a tad optimistic, but the general point remains.

But they wouldn’t have taken the Senate if Romney had been elected. They gained seats on anti-incumbent sentiment.

God, I hope so…

I’m of the opinion that Senate votes should be on a simple majority. It’s the way most all democratic countries operate. Yes I realize this will let McConnell and his cronies do a great deal of damage BUT it cuts both ways. I don’t think McConnell will be the majority leader of the Senate in the 115th Congress.
Any way you cut it, it’s gonna be a long two years.

What would be nice if literally every single piece of legislation weren’t filibustered. It really should take just 51 votes for the majority of bills. We are at this point now because Republicans literally filibustered EVERY vote. EVERY ONE.

And yet McConnell will use this as a threat when it actually would be a good thing in my opinion. We elect Presidents based on who gets a simple majority of Electoral College votes. Everything in the House is passed by simple majority why not in the Senate? I think this would give less power to the minority party which the republicans will be in the Senate after the next election. And that isn’t based on wishful thinking. It’s based on which seats will be contested next time.

I understadn what you’re saying from an intellectual aspect; I get it. However, the FACT of the matter is America is no longer a democracy. It isn’t. We can banter back and forth about the specifics that makes this country different from certain other countries but this country is now well entrenched in a plutocracy.

Oh, yes, I absolutely agree with you that the GOP is going to enact an insane amount of damage (perhaps even more than with W in office). In my mind, the next 2 years will be no trade off for - I dunno, something else. And what if the Senate has another GOP leader for the 115th? Then what?