1981

As pointed out, Democrats have 59 votes. There was actually only a four month window wherein they had 60.

Now - you’re naive if you think the GOP is interested in compromise. Here’s the political reality.

  1. There’s virtually zero ideological overlap between Democrats and Republicans. Things that Democrats like Republicans are going to hate, and vice versa. There is simply not much room for compromise from the perspective of policy preferences.

  2. As of about 18 years ago, the parties figured out that the way back to power when you’re in the minority is to relentlessly do everything you can to prevent the majority from doing anything. The GOP started this in '93, Democrats did it during the early part of this decade, and the GOP is doing it again. The main difference is that this time the GOP has abandoned all sense of tradition; their use of Senate rules to delay and obstruct is without precedent in this country’s 200+ years of history.

edit: more info on this can be found:
here - short version is that Americans aren’t very sophisticated in how they understand politics and despise the actual process by which Congress does things.
here - short version is that the minority profits when America hates Congress.

  1. As of about 20 years ago, the GOP has developed a much greater degree of party discipline than the Democrats, especially in the Senate. My theory is that this is mostly because the GOP changed how it assigns committee chairmanships - in the Democratic caucus it’s based purely on seniority; in the GOP the chairs are elected by the caucus as a whole. This creates a mechanism by which the caucus can punish members who go against them on major votes.

Why don’t the Democrats do this? My theory is that the reason the GOP did it was that it spent a great deal of time in the minority, without any meaningful power to enact legislation. With their caucus reduced to forty some-odd members they had enough ideological coherence to come together and make that kind of change in the rules (remember that as your caucus gets bigger, it gets more coherent ideologically. The reverse happens as your caucus grows). I’m guessing that when the GOP eventually takes back Congress, if it can keep the Democrats in the minority for 6-8 years we’ll see the Democrats make the same adjustment.

Anyway, the notion that Democrats haven’t made an attempt at bipartisanship is ludicrous. Look at how much time Max Baucus spent trying to get his buddy Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snowe on board with a healthcare bill when the Finance Committee was working on it. Look at how much time Harry Reid and President Obama spent trying to get Olympia Snowe on board. Healthcare reform is failing for many reasons, but “Democrats didn’t try bipartisanship enough!” is not one of them.

1982

Right, because all the healthcare legislation voting took place in the last two weeks.

1983

To be fair, I would be interested to know if my facts are incorrect, or where my arguments are inaccurate. I don’t just post and run, and I (think I) am open to other viewpoints. What I do have a problem with is when I bring up a point, and someone responds with, “Oh look, more Republican talking points!” without actually addressing the issue.

I’m not saying that the free market is a magical solution to all of the nation’s ills, but neither do I think that everything would work out better if the government just took over control and regulated prices and restricted profits. Oh, and I also take issue with touchy-feely comments like, “Don’t you think it’s just UNFAIR that some people are better off than others??” And people accuse conservatives of acting on emotion.…

1984

First of all, none of these provide the actual text of the amendments, so I’m forced to take the GOP’s word for what the amendments were actually going to do. However, I see that the very first amendment is to kill the public option. Which was done, albeit not through that amendment. So, hey, the Democrats compromised in that area. That should have garnered some Republican support, right? It didn’t? Oh. Well, then fuck you for saying that it’s entirely the Dems fault that there’s no Republican support here.

In fact, a number of the objections embodied in these amendments are actually incorporated or rendered moot in the bill as it actually passed through the Senate. And there is still absolutely zero Republican support. So even though some of these changes were actually adopted, the GOP won’t support it. That is the definition of not acting in good faith.

1985

This still amazes me. If we sat down and actually talked things out, I’m sure we would agree n more than we disagree on. One of the major problems with politics today is that things have become so polarized that no one is willing to work together to accomplish anything.

1986

Sure, but we’re not Senators. Senators in the GOP are under huge pressure to toe the party line.

The overlap in politicial ideology amongst parties in this country was pretty much an accident. For most of its history (including today) you had political parties that were pretty distinct ideologically. The exceptions are a brief period in the early 19th century - the so called Era of Good Feeling, following the death of the Federalist party, and then the early part of the 20th century, where you had lots of super-conservatives in the Democratic party because they didn’t want to lose their committee chairs. This lasted up until the sixties, mainly because conservatism had been almost entirely discredited in the public mind as a valid governing philosophy by the Great Depression (go check out GOP campaigns from the 1950s, it’s nothing but “We’ll give you your welfare state, only we’ll be more efficient at it”)

Also here’s James Fallows on why bipartisanshp can’t work today. And another.

1987

Is that about right?

Your last one is a wildly inaccurate summary of that article and misses the point completely. That’s unfortunate, because I think it’s probably the single most driving factor behind modern conservatism. The others contribute, but aren’t anywhere near as big of a deal as they used to be.

I’m not saying any of this applies to you, but the vast bulk of the public, much less the Republican party, is not making their policy decisions based on data regressions.

1988

But making those same points but without anything to back them up, you thought, would be received much better?

But since you asked: According to the World Health Organization, all babies showing any signs of life should be counted as a live birth. That is the standard that the U.S. uses. However, other countries do not use the same standard. Switzerland does not count deaths of babies shorter than 30 cm. According to UNICEF, in former Soviet countries a child born at less than 28 weeks, less than 1000 grams, or shorter than 35 cm is not counted as a live birth if it dies within seven days. Because they want to keep infant mortality rates low, those deaths are counted as miscarriages or stillbirths. In Austria, Germany, and Canada, the baby must be at least a pound to be considered a live birth.

Links, references?

Let’s say that for argument’s sake, we grant all that. Let’s say that the statistics on infant mortality from those countries is so corrupted as to be worthless. (Although, again, the question arises, what number of babies under a pound in weight are being born alive in Germany, and then dying? Is the number so large as to have a substantial impact on their IMR?)

This still leaves a few countries whose statistical methods you haven’t disputed and whose rate of infant mortality is substantially lower than the US’s:

San Marino, Italy, Taiwan, Greece, Ireland, Monaco, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Portugal, Australia, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Denmark, South Korea, Liechtenstein, Israel, Spain, Malta, Norway, Anguilla, Finland, France, Iceland, Macau, Hong Kong, Japan, Sweden, Bermuda, Singapore…

…some of those would be unfair to compare with the US because, eg, Singapore has a single city with a very dense population and the attendant scale advantages. But really, the only reason that the US has worse infant mortality than Italy, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Spain, Norway, Sweden, &c, is an artefact of statistics? There’s no possibility that there might be a general problem with health and healthcare in the US contributing?

I realize that. That’s why I try to offer differing opinions in what seems like a very like-minded community. I also try to be receptive to other viewpoints.

Well, I was trying to acknowledge the validity of what you were saying about people ignoring you, while also acknowledging that validity of wanting to ignore you because… listening to Glen Beck should be a voluntary act.

1989

In other words, the Democrats think no health care reform is better than passing this.

I’m baffled why the hardcore Democrats here who have been arguing that passing SOMETHING is better than waiting for a better bill aren’t livid at what the Democrats are doing, or rather, not doing. And still talking about how rotten and intellectually bereft the Republicans are.

Because I’m not sure what is more intellectually and morally worse than having the ability, completely in your hands, to pass a bill today, after acting as if it was something critical to America, telling America horror stories of Americans who have gone bankrupt, who have had families destroyed, Americans who have needlessly died, in order to convince the country why this is so necessary, having pushed it through the House and Senate, having 100% complete control to pass it, and then deciding nope. Not gonna pass it. We can blame the Republicans somehow, and that’s good enough for us to not push the button we could push today, with no one able to stop us, to pass large scale health care reform.

And you guys don’t seem to care. You hard core Democrats who berated anyone who felt that perhaps the bill needed more work and more time, who stood at the top of the hill looking down at everyone and proclaiming “You sad ignorant fools, listen to me while I use small words you can understand - if we don’t pass SOMETHING, even if it is far from perfect, the odds of ever getting something passed later is almost zero, this is an historic moment in our nation’s history, what will it take for you people to understand?!?” - you guys seem just fine with the Democrats refusing to pass the bill.

1990

That’s a quantitative statement, and it strikes me as statistically unlikely. Can you support it quantitatively? How much of the effect comes from which confounding factor, with what degree of confidence?

1991

The reason we’ve shut up is that the incompetence of the last few months have completely crushed the political life out of us. They’re like a degenerate version of goo-goo liberalism at this point - they’re not willing to be effective by being hardcore partisans, and they just keep slamming into that wall of trying to be bipartisan. I don’t think they’ll ever learn. All this in service of a very mildly liberal agenda, and they’re too goddamn stupid to know how to stay in office during a recession.

Maybe we’ll luck out and they’ll pass it, but at this point I’ve given up on the Democratic party for anything but very, very marginal gains; the leaders, and to a large extent their supporters, simply don’t have the institutional organization to reform the party into something that can achieve anything. They’re better than the GOP, but “at least they won’t destroy the country outright” isn’t exactly a rallying cry.

What to do about it is a separate post, but if the Democrats have this much trouble translating a 59 or 60 vote margin into anything, and can’t even be relied on to kick the finance motherfuckers in the teeth, what’s the point? If I wanted to vote for an incompetent version of Eisenhower republicans I’d go back in time.

1992

Concur.

1993

I’m not a hardcore Democrat. I think all of the political parties are hopelessly corrupt and that nobody is going to get anything done. I think the Democratic party has utterly failed at providing what the nation needs and that the Republican party is the slimiest fuckwads we’ve ever had in office.

I’ve already stated what I feel should have been the appropriate response plenty of times in other threads. And I don’t give a fuck if they pass the bill or not. It’s a shitty bill, it’s not going to get any better, even if they pass the bill the corporate-ocracy will find some way around it, and there isn’t a single person in any position of power who actually wants to change that.

The bill as it stands doesn’t do anything worthwhile other than give an insurance mandate to individuals, thus enriching further the health insurance industry. It doesn’t prevent rescission or even disincentivize it. It doesn’t prevent price-gouging. It doesn’t reduce prices. It doesn’t cut the insurance companies down to size. It doesn’t do anything that would reduce beaurocratic bullshit. It doesn’t do anything of value to the American people other than allow the Democrats to wave a “Mission Accomplished” flag. The only other thing it does is suck.

The Democrats utterly failed at every stage and on every level, and it’s over, the retards and asshats have won.

In sum, the bill I was hoping for, that I voted for Democrats in order to see, and that I would have been cheering in the streets had it passed, is as removed from this bill as brettcmd is from a rational human being, and therefore I don’t give a shit if it passes or not.

In other words, Jason McCullough said it better than me.

1994

Maybe, but that was also well said.

1995

My god, I have created a monster.

1996

I didn’t think I had to extensively footnote every statement, no. This isn’t Wikipedia. People make statements back and forth repeatedly, without providing a link to support every single comment.

The countries I cited were examples, not the totality of all statistical inconsistencies. Many other countries have definitions of “live birth” that differ significantly from that of the U.S., and yes, that does have an impact on the results.

Because of advancements in healthcare in the U.S., many more attempts are made to deliver babies at earlier points in the gestation process, which will necessary skew the survival rate of live births down. It’s like saying, "I’m a better quarterback than anyone in the NFL, because I have won both flag football games I played this year, while professional quarterbacks sometimes lose games.”

1997

…and its patently obvious insufficiency:

Wasn’t there some French dude in the 19th Century who wrote something to the effect of: “The Law, in its egalitarian majesty, punishes the rich and the poor alike for sleeping under bridges and stealing bread.”

It was Anatole France, and the translation of the quotation is: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

1998

Damn.

Jason, I misjudged you. I expected a big defense of the Dems, with lots of links, somehow making this all the fault of the Republicans, etc.

For some reason I am now really depressed. It’s one thing for an old scarred cynic like me to abandon hope in Washington, but it’s another thing for someone with the faith in their party, such as you, to lose hope.

And deserving or not, my real bitterness at this point is aimed at Obama. I never thought the Democrats were fundamentally different than the Republicans once you got beneath the surface - IMO they are all focused on gaining power and keeping power and everything else is a distant second - but I had a renewed hope (yes, I used the word) in Obama. I followed his career while he was in Illinois and I was living in Chicago, I jumped on his bandwagon when everyone had already coronated Hillary as the heir to the Democratic crown, I sent a ton of money to his campaign and volunteered time to work on his campaign locally, I was pumped up like I haven’t been in many years.

And while I have little faith in Democrats or Republicans to do anything other than calculate what they have to do to keep their seat, I expected Obama to get into Washington and use the momentum and apparent support of the American people to lead the Democrats. To get in there and use “the bully pulpit” which is his strength and work hard to sell the American people on his vision and to simultaneously pull the Democrats together (yeah, I know it’s hard - that’s why he’s the President, my job is hard too) and drive and lead them (and the Democrats NEED a popular banner carrier to follow.) But the damned guy just kinda faded into the background and let the Democrats struggle to put something together, let the focus be on squabbles and differences within the party in Congress, allowed the Republicans to send a message without countering it with his strength, his prepared public speaking, and let this whole thing wither and die. Even now, he’s out there admitting defeat.

It’s hard to imagine that, a little over a year after the entire country was almost in tears of joy and optimism from Obama’s inauguration, it is very conceivable that Obama could lose the White House and the Dems could lose the Senate in 2012. Probably not, but at least not an outrageous idea, and inconceivable (and yes, I do know what that word means ;) ) a year ago.

Sigh.

1999

He, Obama, was trying to bridge the divide that had appeared in the country over the last couple of decades. I think, if anything, he was naive. America isn’t a country for conciliators.

2000

Personally, I"m willing to put up with quite a lot of shit if it just gets done. I’m also willing to put up with a lot of failure if the goals are ambitious enough. They’ve managed to fail in passing the bare minimum, though, so it’s like they’re trying to piss me off.

I haven’t really given up on politics, but given the current state of the United States I’ve definitely given up on the Democratic party saving us. We’re going to need some sort of outside game. A hardcore movement on the left like Norquist has built? Give up on federal, and transform states individually? Deal with the one-third of the country that’s crazy first? Not sure.