US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2658

On September 22 2020 02:36 Nevuk wrote:

Before 1974, filibusters were harder to do and harder to break if the opposition was determined, but easier if they weren't. They required actually standing and speaking and could only be broken with 2/3 of those present.

After 1974, filibusters could be done with signaling of intent only and required 3/5 of all non-vacant. So the requirement became 60 for all votes, when before it was only 66 for a full session.

No one cared enough about the things I listed above to stand and talk for days on end, but they were still immensely important. The only even close to successful filibusters at the time (and they still got broken) were on civil rights or for wars (we didn't have a filibuster breaking mechanism at all until arming merchant ships in ww1 was filibustered by 12 anti war senators).

The other aspect is that currently 1 GOP senator can stay in washington and filibuster everything even though he only has 1 vote, but it'd take the full 60 democrats to break it. So it becomes a strategic rather than a tactical maneuver.

Now, how does this result in punting to the SC? Say it's something critical. The senators, when asked about passing a bill like DACA or gay marriage or a mask mandate, say that they don't have 60 votes and refuse to even discuss it. They use it as a shield to pretend they're powerless. These then wind up before the SC because the executive then has to just make stuff up with EOs, since congress never gave input. I'd be fine with the filibuster having been nuked at the start of 2020, as it would have forced the GOP to actually do something about COVID, even if the bills were idiotic, rather than continually passing bills they knew would die.

Reconciliation has been bent into a pretzel to allow for avoiding the filibuster, applying to things it should never have touched like tax cuts. It was strictly to be used for non controversial or critical budgets in its original vision.

The only people in favor of the current filibuster are those who aim to legislate from the bench, like Danglars or McConnell - once they have a solid majority they'll repeal the precedent that allows the executive branch to overturn past EOs with new ones. They've already signaled their intent to do this btw, look up the headline about "Thomas , disagreeing with Thomas, cites Thomas" which was entirely about repealing it.

On September 22 2020 07:21 Erasme wrote:
Can anyone listen to trump and biden, and really question biden's mental health ? Trump can't stay focused on a topic for more than 20sec, unless that topic is him obviously.
Another trump paradoxe, he's against the military complex AND hes bragging about being the most military focused president ever. In 20secs.

On September 22 2020 07:57 Wegandi wrote:


Reid got rid of the legislative filibuster. You only need 50+1 for basically everything since 2013.

On September 22 2020 08:11 Danglars wrote:

I mean, he started the chain of events that *will probably* get rid of the legislative filibuster. But right now, it's only judicial nominees.

Democrats just filibustered the Republican $500 billion coronavirus relief bill this month in a 52-47 vote (8 short).

On September 22 2020 07:57 Wegandi wrote:


Reid got rid of the legislative filibuster. You only need 50+1 for basically everything since 2013.

On September 22 2020 07:52 Wegandi wrote:


Huh, maybe direct democracy is a poor idea, and the 17th Amendment was a train wreck that should be abolished.

On September 22 2020 07:50 iamthedave wrote:


Will they take the heat though? And does it matter? I seem to recall the last couple of shutdowns having almost no effect electorally.

On September 22 2020 08:18 pmh wrote:
The filibuster was rediculous as it could in theory halt all legislation.
The argument that it was good to make the minority voice heard i can understand somewhat though. In the usa 1 party has the majority,per definition because its a 2 party system.
It sort of is a democratic dictatorship where the people can vote once every 4 years which party holds all the power. Somewhat balanced by the house and the senate but in the end it is what it comes down to.
The way out of this would be a system with a minimum of 3 credible and electable parties,this would force compromise and make sure the minority voice is beeing heard.

The winner takes it all,its embedded in every aspect of america and also in politics. I guess it fits the culture and the people seem to be happy with it so maybe there isnt much reason to change it.
It is one of the main causes for the polarization in america in general. Its either one side or the other,there is no middle ground and compromise. Its an effective system in some aspects i can see that,its easier to get things done.
But it also has its drawbacks,the polarization it does create.
Maybe this is what america needs to function and maybe it could not function in a way that europe,which heavily depends on compromises,functions.

Still i wonder,how come after all those years a truly progressive party still hasnt made its way into mainstream american politics.
Its not by the lack of potential support because the widespread support for sanders did show that there is potential for such an agenda. Not to be a majority or even close to that,but to get at least 10% of the support. And 10% support is all it takes,it would prevent a 50% majority for either the democrats and the republicans and force compromises.
Though i guess this alone would not be enough,the president holds a lot of power himself.
Again,easier to get things done so i can see the argument in favor. But as said,it does have considerable drawbacks.

Kolko, in particular, broke new ground with his critical history of the Progressive Era. He suggested that free enterprise and competition were vibrant and expanding during the first two decades of the 20th century; thereafter, however, "the corporate elite—the House of Morgan, for example—turned to government intervention when it realized in the waning 19th century that competition was too unruly to guarantee market share."[19] This behavior is known as corporatism, but Kolko dubbed it political capitalism, "the merger of the economic and political structures on behalf of the greater interests of capitalism".[20] Kolko's thesis "that businessmen favored government regulation because they feared competition and desired to forge a government–business coalition" is one that is echoed by many observers today.[18] Former Harvard professor Paul H. Weaver uncovered the same inefficient and bureaucratic behavior from corporations during his stint at Ford Motor Corporation.[21] Free market economist Murray Rothbard thought highly of Kolko's work on the history of relations between big business and government.[22] As one profile, published in The American Conservative, put it:

For Gabriel Kolko, the enemy has always been what sociologist Max Weber called "political capitalism"—that is, "the accumulation of private capital and fortunes via booty connected with politics." In Kolko's eyes, "America's capacity and readiness to intervene virtually anywhere" pose a grave danger both to the U.S. and the world. Kolko has made it his mission to study the historical roots of how this propensity for intervention came to be. He was also one of the first historians to take on the regulatory state in a serious way. Kolko's landmark work, The Triumph of Conservatism, is an attempt to link the Progressive Era policies of Theodore Roosevelt to the national-security state left behind in the wake of his cousin Franklin's presidency. Kolko's indictment of what he calls "conservatism" is not aimed at the Southern Agrarianism of Richard Weaver or the Old Right individualism of Albert Jay Nock. In fact, Kolko's thesis—that big government and big business consistently colluded to regulate small American artisans and farmers out of existence—has much in common with libertarian and traditionalist critiques of the corporatist state. The "national progressivism" that Kolko attacks was, in his own words, "the defense of business against the democratic ferment that was nascent in the states." Coming of age in the '50s and '60s, Kolko saw firsthand the destruction of the "permanent things" as the result of the merging of Washington, D.C. and Wall Street. A sense of place and rootedness lingers just beneath the surface of his work.

his was a thesis that disputed the "widely held view that government regulates business, arguing that instead, business steers government"[9] and Kolko used it to analyze how America's social, economic, and political life was shaped beginning with the Progressive Era (1900-1920). But for Kolko, a social policy of "corporate liberalism" (or what Kolko preferred to call "political capitalism") shaped the mainstream agenda of all that was to follow afterwards in American society, from The New Deal (1930s) through to the post-World War II era of the Cold War (1947-1962), and onwards. Kolko's argument that public policy was shaped by "corporate control of the liberal agenda" (rather than the liberal control of the corporate agenda), revised the old Progressive Era historiography of the "interests" versus the "people," which was now to be reinterpreted as a collaboration of "interests" and "people." So too, with this revised version of recent American history, came the tacit recognition that this fulfilled the business community's unspoken, but deliberate, aim of stabilizing competition in the "free market."[15]

This was an idea summarized by journalist and internet columnist Charles Burris when he argued that:
Rather than "the people" being behind these "progressive reforms," it was the very elite business interests themselves responsible, in an attempt to cartelize, centralize and control what was impossible due to the dynamics of a competitive and decentralized economy.

On September 22 2020 07:21 Erasme wrote:
Can anyone listen to trump and biden, and really question biden's mental health ? Trump can't stay focused on a topic for more than 20sec, unless that topic is him obviously.
Another trump paradoxe, he's against the military complex AND hes bragging about being the most military focused president ever. In 20secs.

Still i wonder,how come after all those years a truly progressive party still hasnt made its way into mainstream american politics.

On September 22 2020 07:52 Wegandi wrote:


Huh, maybe direct democracy is a poor idea, and the 17th Amendment was a train wreck that should be abolished.

On September 22 2020 09:39 Mohdoo wrote:


Why do you respond like this? If I am clearly making an effort to engage with you and have a real conversation, what makes you say "I know, I'll just be rude and dismissive"?

On September 22 2020 09:47 Wegandi wrote:


What part of my response was rude and dismissive? You mentioned that politicians don't do X because of electoral pressure, so I brought up the disastrous 17th Amendment (something that "your" side has high support for hence my huh). You can take it however you want.

On September 22 2020 10:00 Mohdoo wrote:

I don’t pretend you think drivers licenses are a violation of personal freedom just because you’re a libertarian. We can engage with each other and have a conversation without painting each other as parodies of our party affiliation. I don’t think you think I’m saying we should abolish the 17th amendment.

On September 22 2020 07:21 Erasme wrote:
Another trump paradoxe, he's against the military complex AND hes bragging about being the most military focused president ever. In 20secs.

There were multiple vacancies at the time on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the nation’s most important benches, and President Obama nominated three qualified jurists, each of whom enjoyed majority support in the Senate.
Republicans in the chamber, however, blocked the trio, filibustering each of the nominations.

GOP senators didn’t raise any specific objections to the nominees, but rather, said they didn’t want President Obama to appoint anyone to the appellate court, ever. Republicans presented a demand never before heard in American history: the Senate must ignore the vacancies on one of the nation’s most important courts, indefinitely, because a minority of the chamber says so.

When Senate Republicans refused to even hold a hearing on Obama-nominee Judge Merrick Garland, Graham said it was too close to the election even though at the time of late Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February it was roughly nine months away. “I want you to use my words against me,” Graham said at the time. “If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.” He has since reissued that promise several times over. In 2018, he said that following a potential seat vacancy in the final year of Trump’s term the Senate would “wait to the next election.”

On September 22 2020 08:27 Wegandi wrote:


You're wondering why socialists haven't made its way into the mainstream in a country founded on liberal ideas where those ideas are still quite strong among a large part of the electorate? I'm honestly, shocked. Really shocked. Granted, the Government education centers have created a lot more of those progressive folks in the last 20 years.

We also had a Progressive Era in the early 20th Century that gave us a shit ton of awful laws and Constitutional amendments. Stuff like the income tax, the 17th Amendment, Wilsonian Foreign Policy, Anti-Trust poo (Read Gabriel Kolko's work on the matter, competition plummeted during the Progressive Era giving rise to the Corporate monoliths of today), prohibition which segued into Drug War, Federal Reserve system, etc.

There was a big backlash to the Progressive Era and FDR which is why Republicans have had the power they've had in the post-war period (45-Present).





If Progressives ever get a majority of power in the Government again they'll exacerbate the conditions they loathe. Corporate interests want large unwieldly regulatory schemes. They love the CFR. Insurance companies adored the ACA.

On September 22 2020 15:27 pmh wrote:


I am not arguing for the progressives to get a majority of power. Infact i think it would be bad for the usa as a whole. I am arguing for a system in which the progressives could have 10% of the political influence. Not so much to push the progressive agenda itself but to force more compromises between the 2 mainstream political parties. I think this would be good for the usa as a whole because it would decrease the polarization and help make it a more coherent society.

On September 22 2020 15:49 pmh wrote:
There are 3 different coalitions possible in a system with 3 parties devided 45-45-10
45A+10,45b+10 and 45+45. In every coalition the progressive voice would have little influence but it would have some influence.
Depending on how things go in society either of those coalitions would be possible and desireable for the long term stability of the nation. a 45-45 coalition is very likely because those 2 parties are closest to eachoter,but it would force compromise. It would force a compromise which 90% of the people could be more or less satisfied with. In the end it could even satisfy the 10% to some extend.
Contrary to the current system where halve of the people are not satisfied and where there is a very polarized society.

On September 22 2020 15:34 Wegandi wrote:


Seems like compromise with a 10% Progressive part would only push in one direction. It's better (and obviously I'm more biased) to have a 10% libertarian part which would move the Republicans on civil liberties/war and Democrats on economics/bureaucratic state and centralization/cartelization. Like why would Progressives do anything to have Republicans compromise? At least libertarians can say, hey, Democrats you want more police reform/voting security, well sure, but we're going to ask to slash the Code of Federal Regulations by 15% and abolish some bureaucratic departments/lessen their comprehensive ability to enlarge their powers / laws by fiat. What are progressives offering Republicans?