How much more could democrats have accomplished if in 2009 they had taken republicans at their word about making Obama a one term president?
How much more could democrats have accomplished if in 2009 they had taken republicans at their word about making Obama a one term president?
So, I assume you mean the Senate, which then had a Democratic majority, votes the first day of the 2009 term to end the filibuster?
Not going to happen. It's also within the interest of the democrats to keep filibusters around in case of a republican majority. It's why it hasn't been done away with even though everybody knows it does more harm than good.
The threat of filibuster reform during the Bush administration was enough to cow Dems, so the GOP already signaled it would remove it if ever in majority and the Dems tried to filibuster them like the GOP did to the Dems from 2009 on. With McConnell's speech about making Obama a 1 term president the gloves should have immediately come off and ramming things through should have been the order of the day even with a 50+Biden vote majority. The institutionalists in the Senate didn't understand how politics had changed and thought that they might need it in the future, but failed to understand the GOP wouldn't keep in the future if it served their interests anyway. Decorum was gone by 2009. Harry Reid himself blocked any reform of the filibuster in the first 4 years of the Obama administration and Biden was against it too IIRC. Obama too didn't get that being a compromising Centrist was only rational in the 1980s, not since Bill Clinton was impeached over nothing. The 2009 GOP was the most extreme ever elected and the Dems didn't and still don't get that they cannot be the adults in the room when they are getting shit thrown in their faces. The old rules of politics and media balance don't exist anymore and the side that tries to restore it loses.That logic only pans out if you assume that the filibuster will be kept in future Republican Administrations long enough to be useful. Given the way the 109th Congress especially made a point of running over the Democratic minority, they could have been more cynical about it than they were.
The threat of filibuster reform during the Bush administration was enough to cow Dems, so the GOP already signaled it would remove it if ever in majority and the Dems tried to filibuster them like the GOP did to the Dems from 2009 on. With McConnell's speech about making Obama a 1 term president the gloves should have immediately come off and ramming things through should have been the order of the day even with a 50+Biden vote majority. The institutionalists in the Senate didn't understand how politics had changed and thought that they might need it in the future, but failed to understand the GOP wouldn't keep in the future if it served their interests anyway. Decorum was gone by 2009. Harry Reid himself blocked any reform of the filibuster in the first 4 years of the Obama administration and Biden was against it too IIRC. Obama too didn't get that being a compromising Centrist was only rational in the 1980s, not since Bill Clinton was impeached over nothing. The 2009 GOP was the most extreme ever elected and the Dems didn't and still don't get that they cannot be the adults in the room when they are getting shit thrown in their faces. The old rules of politics and media balance don't exist anymore and the side that tries to restore it loses.
The dangerous precedent that we might actually have majority rule and minority rights? Rather than minority rule?Feb. 1975
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Nelson_Rockefeller.htm
The Senate voted 51 to 42 to table Mansfield's motion, in effect agreeing that Senate rules could be changed by a simple majority vote at the beginning of a Congress. The Senate, however, adjourned for the day without actually voting on the resolution to take up the cloture rule change. The leaders of both parties then met and determined that they disagreed with this procedure, which they felt had set a dangerous precedent.
I wanted to like that, but liking something this grim doesn't feel quite right, but I agree with ya.And now we're going to see the institutionalists' folly bear fruit, I guess. Oy.