Can At Least *Some* Of Our Government Be Pro-Majority?

~ 5/19/21

The issue: Liberals have a majority in the Senate, currently. However, much of the policy in the Senate needs 60+ votes instead of a straight majority (51). Unless there are 60+, someone on the minority side of the Senate can filibuster, essentially causing the bill to fail.

In other words, this is not majority rule, as it should be, and as the framers intended it. The filibuster rule is a rule made up by the Senate; Not the Constitution.

Democrats have tried to come out abolishing the filibuster (as they should), but Joe Manchin, a Democrat (and possibly another Democrat Senator?), has opposed it. Naturally, every Republican also opposed it as it would, in the short term, weaken their power even further.

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If there is zero movement in the Senate – no bills passed – then Republicans have gotten exactly what they want. A stagnant government. A retention of the current status quo which unequivocally favors straight white and rich Christian males above all the rest.

This shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone.

I am tempted to respect Joe Manchin’s words on the issue: That they should be forced to try and convince each other or find compromises rather than brute force a majority vote.

However, with Trump’s GOP firmly at the table, that is a hopelessly, childishly naive thought. It will not happen. It sounds flowery, and if we had a better government, it would be possible.

We don’t have a better government. It is not possible. The GOP was, in Mitch McConnell’s words, the “Party of ‘No'” before Trump even took over. After Trump melted their collective brain power into a pool of spaghettios, what do you imagine that will look like?

I don’t know the man, but I can’t help but feel like Manchin has a hard-on simply being so important. The importance is contrived – he has to pretend to be against the majority – but it allows him to be one of the biggest names in the game, currently. It’s an old, well-known tactic in the American political arena. And it’s one of the few which would explain some of his bizarre recent stances – not just with the filibuster.

As well, I believe there is a name for this bias but cannot currently bring it to mind: That because you say you are in the middle between two competing ideologies, then you “must be” the more reasonable. I’m not sure if he’s guilty of it, himself, or if he’s simply wishing to make others believe this biased logic of his stances.

I thought this was apt:

“If you can’t get a Republican to support a nonpartisan analysis of why the Capitol was attacked the first time since the War of 1812, then what are you holding out hope for?” -Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.)

Yes: Policy is more likely to swing back and forth over a partisan divide based on whomever is currently in power. The alternative is doing almost literally nothing, as there is very little that isn’t partisan. Nothing that *needs* to be done, surely, is free of partisan nonsense today.

At least if something is getting done, we will be getting data to further inform our views. Even if Republicans take over the Senate in the coming years and they implement more supply-side bullshit, there will then be hard evidence of how badly it fails a few years later, exactly like what happened with Sam Brownback in Kansas.

Or, if they wish to further discriminate against minorities or enact some other bigotted nonsense, the populace will still be getting discriminated against, or seeing their friends be discriminated against. Republicans will keep aiming for the bigotted demographics, and the rest of the country will become even more clear on who, exactly, the Republican party is, today. Assuming we can keep our free speech and protect the media from people like Trump, I don’t see Republicans garnering more support after this kind of behavior.

In either case, good still comes with the bad. Even this worst-case-scenario if we get rid of the filibuster isn’t nearly as bad as doing nothing, and that is exactly what will happen if the filibuster remains.

They can’t stop us from bringing bills to the fucking floor anymore (for now), but they can and they will vote down every single thing that liberals want because they want it. Literally, no amount of deliberation will help, because getting them to understand the rationale was never the problem. Their main goal is not sound governmental action. It is denying anything liberals want, and that’s not hyperbole.

Republicans, particularly Mitch McConnell and his sycophants, have shown over the past decade or two that they literally don’t care how badly their inaction harms the well being of Americans, how much taxpayer money they waste with obstructionism, how badly their behavior hampers the international opinion of America, etc. If it hurts or even mildly annoys liberals, they will do it.

Joe has doomed us to at least a few more years of nothing getting done. And because state gop legislatures are petulantly upping their regressive, hillbilly policies in response to Biden’s legitimate, record-breaking election win over their savior, we will actually be dragged down with them, rather than becoming, at all, a better nation.

There’s your legacy, Joe Manchin (and others in opposition). Hope you’re happy with it. And I hope your constituents are not. From what I understand, he probably knows already that he won’t get reelected, but we can still hope he changes his mind.