Matt_W
1809
I think it’s because you can’t actually force through your agenda as the minority party. You can only slow things down and obstruct the functions of the Senate, which is 95% stuff that no one watches but needs to get done like military promotions. You can force a floor vote, but it won’t pass. It’s just political theater and/or obstruction.
This is true. On the other hand, it’s equally important how this gets perceived by “swing voters” and “moderate” democrats. Nonsense is easier to dismiss when it is clearly nonsense.
I refer you to all statements I’ve made regarding hope. If you accept in your heart that Trump and his cronies will never face a lick of justice and that the republic is still doomed, just slower than before, the worst thing that happens is that you get a happy surprise if a Democrat somewhere grows a spine!
I think that’s some of the hope with Garland. That he’d be able to lure some of those folks back to help clean up DOJ.
Might be a vain hope, for sure. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that was some of the calculus here.
Yes, they manage to do it on those occasions where no member from the majority party is on the floor to object. Otherwise, a single member objection kills the motion. That’s the point.
Monaco is a former federal prosecutor and was Homeland Security Adviser to Obama. She was on the Homeland Security Council. Gupta was head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under Obama.
It’s a good start.
But tactically, isn’t this what they should have done at every opportunity for at least some of the bills the House passed? So they could get GOP senators on record as being against whatever decent thing the House was putting in front of them?
I’m trying to figure out if I should be relieved that the Democrats are going to be the majority party or retroactively angry at them for not having done what they could to slow down the GOP over the last four years.
The GOP slowing down was the problem. Slowing is what the minority can do. Speeding up was what they wanted to do.
I mean, having control will result in a tougher 2022 election, because now they will be expected to do shit. So when Manchin refuses to eliminate the filibuster and Mitch uses it to prevent any actual action, they will be left hoping that a post-COVID boom is rip roaring through the everyday economy next year.
EDIT: That said, appointments, executive action, and perhaps a few extra bills at the margins, where they can get bipartisan support but would never have gotten it past the Hastert rule with McConnell in charge means a lot more good than if they had lost.
jpinard
1820
500 posts in the last 18 hours?!
They get two shots at reconciliation in 2021. So, that’s two big things they can do without fear of a filibuster. One will probably be healthcare.
Replacing a 68-year old white guy on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals with a 50-year old, supremely qualified black woman is just more upside to this choice.
Matt_W
1825
No it doesn’t. That’s only for resolutions entered under unanimous consent. A cloture motion (which this was), in fact, requires a roll call vote and can interrupt debate (which is the point of it.)
From Senate Rule XXII:
Notwithstanding the provisions of rule II or rule IV or any other rule of the Senate, at any time a motion signed by sixteen Senators, to bring to a close the debate upon any measure, motion, other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, is presented to the Senate, the Presiding Officer, or clerk at the direction of the Presiding Officer, shall at once state the motion to the Senate, and one hour after the Senate meets on the following calendar day but one, he shall lay the motion before the Senate and direct that the clerk call the roll, and upon the ascertainment that a quorum is present, the Presiding Officer shall, without debate, submit to the Senate by a yea-and-nay vote the question: “Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?”
You’re pulling a Timex and just asserting your position without presenting evidence.
This is what I’m worried about, that the Democrats are going to weakly limp along for the next two years and then get destroyed in the next midterms. If they don’t make some big moves, they’re going to lose progressives, who in 2022 won’t see staying home as the Trump-driven existential threat that it was in 2020.
I don’t understand the point of this back and forth. Are you actually arguing that there is nothing that the Democrats can now get passed that they couldn’t get passed before other than the reconciliation bills?
And only 3 hours after I post this the Biden Administration announces Garland as Attorney General. This is exactly what I’m talking about. A DOJ headed by Merrick Garland becomes a premier employment destination for some of the brightest legal minds in the country, the polar opposite of what it had become under Barr with all of Trump’s stink on it. The ripple effect of rebuilding the DOJ will also impact the FBI, Homeland Security and other federal agencies that work in conjunction with the DOJ.
More of this please!
