Harry Reid Needs to Put Up or Shut Up on Filibuster Reform

File under "I wouldn't get my hopes up"; ThinkProgress' Ian Millhiser reports that Senate majority leader Harry Reid is talking filibuster reform again, after the last stab at it turned out to be a completely inadequate joke. In an interview with a public radio station, Reid threatened once again to bring democracy to the US Senate.


“All within the sound of my voice, including my Democratic senators and the Republican senators who I serve with, should understand that we as a body have the power on any given day to change the rules with a simple majority, and I will do that if necessary,” Reid said on Nevada Public Radio.

...“I’m a very patient man. Last Congress and this Congress, we had the opportunity to make some big changes. We made changes, but the time will tell whether they’re big enough. I’m going to wait and build a case,” Reid said. “If the Republicans in the Senate don’t start approving some judges and don’t start helping get some of these nominations done, then we’re going to have to take more action.”


 Yes, Harry Reid is a "very patient man." In fact, on the issue of Republican obstructionism, Harry Reid has been far too patient.


[Greg Sargent:]

By my count, this is at least the third time a Dem Senate leader has threatened to revisit rules reform. Yet the obstructionism continues with no action on Reid’s part.

Reid needs to stop threatening to revisit the filibuster unless he actually means it. Empty threats accomplish nothing. Indeed, they’re counterproductive. They make Dems look weak. They inflate expectations among Dem base voters — and supporters who worked hard to reelect Obama and Dems to Congress — that we may soon enjoy a functional Senate.


I couldn't agree more. Something needs to be done. And talking about doing it is counterproductive. GOP filibustering over the past decade has gotten so bad that the media has taken to reporting failures to break one as if the filibuster didn't even exist. "The Senate failed to reach the 60-vote threshold today..." has become a routine opening sentence, as if this is all so very normal and democracy in the Senate is supposed to be a sham. As if the filibuster were some grand constitutional design -- part of the founders' "checks and balances" -- instead a mere obstructionist tactic that could easily be reformed or even done away with.

I understand the concern very well: if Democrats lose the Senate and there's no filibuster, things could get ugly. Take it from a guy from a state where Democrats can only offer token resistance at the moment.

But that's only a real worry if there's a Republican president who won't veto crazy GOP bills and who'll nominate terrible candidates to courts, cabinet positions, and ambassadorships. And that doesn't seem very likely for the foreseeable future. Demographically, the major qualification required to become president right now is that the candidate not be a Republican. So if dems own the White House, they own the veto. It takes a 2/3 majority to override a veto, so that's virtually the same as overcoming a filibuster in the Senate, plus the additional hurdle of a 2/3 majority in the House; i.e., a "super-filibuster" of sorts.

In fact, the current political landscape makes this the perfect time to reform the filibuster. Personally, I'm torn on whether or not to do away with it altogether (leaning toward no, the minority party should never be completely powerless) . But there's no reason just to leave it as it is. Washington is deeply, deeply broken and dysfunctional and the Senate filibuster has a lot to do with that. If there's one thing I'm not torn about, it's that the current version of the filibuster must die -- preferably painfully and with a stake through its heart.

Harry Reid should stop with the threats and grab up a hammer and that stake.

-Wisco

[photo by Steve A Johnson]

The Holy Threats and Sacred Lies of the Anti-Choice Movement

The "pro-life" side of the abortion argument always claims the moral upper hand. Mostly Christian, they cite their religion as the sole measure of their moral and ethical beliefs and wave the Bible around as proof of their righteousness. But, as is so often the case with fanatics, they don't actually follow their religion, so much as twist it and pervert it in order to force it to follow them. Their moral upper hand never stays up for long before it comes to slap the crap out of benighted unbeliever. These people are Bible-thumpers, sure. But when they thump that Bible of theirs, it's generally over someone's head.


[Raw Story:]

The life of a Latina assemblywoman in Nevada has been threatened after she used a story about her own personal abortion experience at age 16 to make a point about the importance of sex education.

“I’m going to say something I’ve never said publicly before, because — Why not? I’ve been open about everything else?” Democratic Assemblywoman Lucy Flores reportedly told the state Assembly Education Committee on Monday. “I had six other sisters, all of them became pregnant in their teens — all of them. One was 14 years old when she got pregnant with twins. That is what I had to learn from.”

“I had an abortion because I didn’t have access to birth control, or even an understanding of what that meant,” she explained. “I didn’t even understand that my worth did not come from men, or sex with men, trying to fill up a hole in me from so much pain.”

 So yeah. Followers of the "Prince of Peace." If these people are so pro-life, then why doesn't the fact that Flores is getting death threats surprise anyone?

Flores was testifying as to the stunning (and entirely predictable) failure of her state's abstinence-only education policy. Her personal story is a story that's been repeated over and over in Nevada and other states, where the educational system has failed kids by leaving them almost entirely ignorant about reproductive health. She wants to reduce teen pregnancy -- and with it, rates of abortion -- through honest education and access to birth control. For the most part, she's actually on the pro-lifer's side. They merely disagree about the method.

And for that, the heretic must die.

It's the movement itself that tries to stoke up this level over anger over things like this. Shameless spin went immediately into gear, with "conservative websites like Life News [getting] the message out to anti-abortion activists with headlines like: 'Democratic Legislator: I Don’t Regret Killing My Baby in Abortion.'"

Of course, that's not what she said at all, but the morally superior anti-choicers have never had any qualms about lying. In fact, that's not the only lie Life News would tell about the incident.


“Unlike Flores, most women regret their abortions and tell painful stories of how they are often unable to come to grips with taking the life of their child,” Life News’ Steven Ertelt wrote.


This is an old lie of the anti-choice movement. The fact is that women abort because they feel it's necessary (proven by the fact that when abortion is illegal, women die) -- in fact, it's hard to think of another reason why someone would have an elective abortion. People tend not to regret doing necessary things. In fact, most women report feeling relieved. But the truth doesn't serve the cause, so the truth is of no use to them.

So much for their moral superiority.

-Wisco

[photo by DaveFayram]

Griper Blade: Stolen Seats, Unresponsive Government

Good news, at least one poll shows that Democrats are poised to take the House of Representatives and with it John Boehner's gavel. In an eight point landslide. There are few outcomes that would be better for America. After all, it's Boehner and his willingness to be led around by the nose by Tea Party Republicans that most stands in the way of progress in America. It's they who believe that up is down, that black is white, and that undermining demand at every opportunity is good for the economy. No wonder Americans reject them.

There's one little hitch: the poll is a bit optimistic and even if it's merely close to being correct, Republicans have so rigged House elections that it wouldn't be enough.


[ThinkProgress:]

According to a Quinnipiac poll released today, if the election were held today 43 percent of the electorate would support a Democratic U.S. House candidate, as opposed to just 35 percent who would back a Republican. That 8 point lead for Democrats is significantly more than the GOP’s margin of victory during the 2010 Republican wave election (6.6 percent) and even more that the Democratic margin of victory during the 2006 wave (7.9 percent) — when Democrats were bolstered by both an unpopular Republican president and a failing war in Iraq.

And yet, if Democrats succeed in maintaining this substantial lead through next year’s congressional election, they will likely emerge with a tiny majority of just 5 seats.
Last January, the Republican Party published a triumphant report bragging that “Republicans enjoy a 33-seat margin in the U.S. House seated yesterday in the 113th Congress, having endured Democratic successes atop the ticket and over one million more votes cast for Democratic House candidates than Republicans.” The report touts the role GOP gerrymandering played in enabling Republicans to keep the House despite losing the popular vote, citing states like Michigan, where “Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress.”


See, that's why I always call Republicans shameless. When you're actually bragging about how great a job you did of stealing elections, no other description fits quite so well.

"Indeed, Republican gerrymandering was so successful during the last redistricting cycle that Democrats would likely need to win the national popular vote by more than 7 points in order to win the barest of majorities in the House," the report tells us. So that eight point popular vote landslide Quinnipiac predicts? In practice, that would be a squeaker. Gerrymandering is like a filibuster launched against the will of the American people and it is profoundly undemocratic.

There's a consequence to this sort of election shenanigans, beyond just having the voters cheated at the polls. When people vote for candidates, they're actually voting for things (and perhaps more often against them). These things are policies, proposals, ideas, and values. And if the person you voted for gets robbed of victory by election rigging, then the things you voted for are robbed as well. For example:


[MSNBC:]

Strong majorities of Americans say they favor stricter gun laws, including an assault-weapons ban and universal background checks for private gun sales, according to a new national Morning Joe/Marist poll.

[...]

What’s more, the Morning Joe/Marist poll finds that 87 percent of Americans support background checks for private gun sales and sales at gun shows, and 59 percent favor legislation that would ban the sale of assault weapons.


But of course, if that support of common sense gun regulation is influencing voters in the 2014 election cycle, those lopsided numbers likely won't be lopsided enough.

The poll also found that most people are more interested in creating jobs than cutting the deficit -- the opposite of Republican priorities.There again, GOP gerrymandering will probably screw you.

So Americans keep voting on certain ideas and then wind up getting the opposite ideas jammed in their face by a party with absolutely no respect or reverence for democracy. In other words, the result is non-responsive government. No matter how you vote, you're getting what the GOP wants, since we still live in a largely Republican-constructed status quo. By obstructing everything and impeding any progress, House Republicans can get most of what they want, because most of what they want is the status quo -- loose gun laws, an unaccountable Wall Street, staggering wealth inequality, ignoring climate change, etc. They've even gotten drastic and foolhardy spending cuts, by obstructing all efforts to avoid sequestration. Washington may be mostly Democrats, but they're Democrats unable to change anything, because Republicans block their every move from stolen House seats. 

-Wisco

[photo by Vox Efx]

On Sequester, GOP Beginning to Regret Believing the GOP

One of the dangers of a long campaign of BS is that you stand a real danger of beginning to believe your own lies. Especially when that long campaign is carried out by an institution, not individuals. People who believe the lie will join the organization to support the lie and the whole thing just snowballs. What began as spin or propaganda for political advantage becomes a guiding principle. And when you go to war against your imaginary enemy, firing blindly into the dark because you know it's there someplace, you're going to have real casualties.

In this case, the lie is the GOP claim to runaway government waste. That was why Republicans pushed the supposed "nothing-burger nature of the sequester," in the words of Ed Kilgore. The GOP ran around parading the sequester as a war trophy because "of course there’s so much waste, fraud and abuse that big cuts can be absorbed without pain."

But of course, there is not. Kilgore's commentary is in reaction to a report by two of the Huffington Post's best political journalists: Amanda Terkel and Sam Stein. Terkel and Stein took a look at sequester cuts and found them to be much more severe than they'd imagined.


The Huffington Post set out to do an extensive review of sequestration stories from the past week, with the goal of finding 100. What seemed like a daunting task was completed in hours. No one region of the country has been immune. Rural towns in Alaska, missile test sites in the Marshall Islands, military bases in Virginia, university towns across the country, and housing agencies in inner cities are all beginning to feel the cuts.


It's a disturbing list of hits to essential programs, of job losses, of decreasing demand. The only person in America who could believe this was good news is Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, whose love of European-style austerity and stick-it-to-the-worker policies has dropped his state's level of job creation from 11th in the nation to 44th -- in just two years. Finally, Walker will have more competition way down there at the bottom, as state after state is forced to emulate his idiotic and destructive economic policies. When everyone is forced to suck as hard as he does, maybe he won't look so bad.

European-style austerity is here, there isn't a huge buffer of government waste that can soften the blow, and Republicans have greeted it all with an enthusiastic round of applause, because they've bought their own lie.

So how is this all going to work out for America? Well, it's called "European-style" for a reason, so there's a place look to answer that question.


[ThinkProgress:]

The 17-nation Eurozone set another dubious record in the opening months of 2013, as its unemployment rate continued to climb from its already record-high rate. The jobless rate also rose for the European Union as a whole as austerity efforts continue to plague the continent’s recovery from the Great Recession:

The jobless rate reached 12 percent in both January and February, the highest since the creation of the euro in 1999, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg.

The January jobless rate for the 17-nation currency union was revised upward from the previously reported 11.9 percent.

For the overall European Union, the February jobless rate rose to 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent in January, Eurostat said, with more than 26 million people without work across the 27-nation bloc.


Not well. It's not going to work out well. Already, Republicans are starting to feel the sequester's pinch and beginning to get cold feet about it.

That whole thing about billions in waste that can easily and painlessly be cut from federal spending is turning out to be a fairy tale. You hope enough Republicans realize they've bought a bill of goods before their chumpishness does too much lasting damage.

Hoping they learn a lesson about believing their own propaganda, however, is probably too much to ask.

-Wisco

[photo from Wikimedia Commons]

Rebranding Failing Because GOP Doesn't Do Listening

So, Republicans are now in the midst of their big rebranding effort that includes outreach to minority and female voters. Frankly, the woman voter outreach is going pretty lousy, because they're doing it all wrong. You don't take away people's freedoms then ask them to reward you for it at the ballot box. If the GOP wants to win over women, it might be a good idea to stop with all the War on Women stuff.

But there's always the minority outreach. Let's see how that's going...


[Washington Post:]

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), in an interview with a local radio station released Thursday, referred to Latinos working on a ranch by using the derogatory term “wetbacks.”

“My father had a ranch. We used to hire 50 or 60 wetbacks and — to pick tomatoes,” Young said in the interview with KRBD. “You know, it takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.”

The term “wetback” is a slur often used to refer to illegal Mexican immigrants. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a Mexican who enters the United States illegally,” “from the practice of wading or swimming the Rio Grande where it forms the U.S.-Mexico border.”


OK, so that's not doing it right either. Young later released what some are calling an apology, but is really just an explanation. There is no apology. "I used a term that was commonly used during my days growing up on a farm in central California," he said. "I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect."

In other words, "You're wrong to be offended by what I said."

"Just so we're clear, it's 2013," Steve Benen reminds us. "Republicans were recently reminded not to use words like 'aliens' and 'anchor babies' when referring to Hispanics, but apparently that advice was not all-encompassing enough, since we still have at least one congressman using the word 'wetback' -- on the air -- as if it were perfectly acceptable."

This comes on the heels of a Republican National Committeeman posting a homophobic screed on his Facebook page. And the committeeman, Dave Agema, isn't apologetic. He likewise released a statement of explanation, claiming to be the victim of harassment and playing the Helen Lovejoy "Won't somebody please think of the children!?" card, saying someone has to post these hateful lies, because "It's about maintaining the family and its importance to the well being of the children and this nation."

"And here's the problem with the wise, beltway-driven Rebranding effort," writes Dave Weigel. "You're a D.C. Republican consultant who gets booked on TV to talk about the glories of gay marriage? Good for you. I agree with you! But most of your party adamantly disagrees with you, and these people know how to write or say things that can make their way onto the Internet."

Reince Priebus may think the GOP needs to change it's image, but other than saying maybe they might possibly give an inch someday on immigration reform, no one seems willing to actually change anything. They don't want to change their policies, they don't want to change their language, they don't want to change anything. They've just decided to declare themselves friendlier to people they so far haven't removed from their enemies list. "No abortions or birth control for you, you whore!... Now vote for me because I'm pro-woman."

You can't change the perception without changing the party -- and people who think they can change the party need to check the dictionary and see what "conservative" means. It doesn't mean open to change. In fact, I always say that when a Republican talks about change, you should watch out -- it means he wants to change things back the way they were when they sucked. The party doesn't look to the future, it looks back at the fifties and wonders why we changed from that.

The perception of the party won't change until the party members change. And they're not willing to do that. In fact, most are probably incapable of doing that. And incidents like Young's keep happening because of another conservative trait: they're lecturers. They don't listen, the dictate. It's why these Republicans keep saying stupid and offense things -- then explain why they aren't gaffes, instead of apologizing. The GOP is a strict, top-down hierarchy where elites tell everyone below them what to think. Why do you think talk radio works so well for the right? They don't think they have to change, they think you have to change. They'll explain why you have to change until you do. Todd Akin thought he was winning voters to the Republican cause by educating them about rape and abortion. And take a look at Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson -- all he ever talks about is how wrong everyone else is and how they need to listen to his teachings and become enlightened. Republicans tell, they aren't told. Not by voters, anyway.

And not, apparently, by Reince Priebus and the RNC.

-Wisco

[original photo by MACSwriter]