A new precedent was not established in the U.S.Senate today

Today the U.S. Senate majority changed the Senate rules to ban filibusters for presidential appointments (apart from Supreme Court nominations).

Sounds radical, and the Democrats who support this had mostly spoken out in defense of the filibuster eight years ago.

Also, the Senate has never changed its rules mid-session.

But it's the Republicans who actually changed the rules at the start of President Obama's presidency. Not the way the rules are written. Instead they changed the traditional way the filibuster has been used--that is, to block the appointment of a presidential appointee you believe isn't qualified for the post.

Instead the Republican leadership decided to use the mechanism of the filibuster to try to nullify the results of the presidential election. The Senate's rules protect the rights of the minority party. They were not intended to permit the minority party to rule the country as if it had won the election.

The Constitution obviously intends for presidential appointments to be confirmed or denied by 51% or more of the Senate. Not 60%. The Republicans' abuse of the rules--unlike how either Democrats or Republicans had applied them before President Clinton was elected, and in spades since President Obama was elected--that abuse gave a minority of less than 50% of the Senate a veto not only over presidential appointments but over letting agencies function whose leadership appointments are being blocked.

And now they're also using the filibuster to block nominations over unrelated issues, just because their veto power gives them a lever.

This amounts to trying to run America as if they'd won the last two presidential elections.

Which is not just intolerable--it's also the unprecedented change made in the how the Senate works by the Republicans five years ago, which the Democratic leadership has now finally recognized...and dealt with.

You can be sure the Republicans will abuse their majority status if they win control of the Senate again, just as they've been abusing their minority status. They will wield today's rules change ruthlessly. But there's no guarantee they wouldn't do that anyway--especially given their behavior during the past half-decade.

But even more importantly, if the Senate majority hadn't done what they did today they would simply be continuing to cede control-- a systematic, aggressive control--of the United States Senate by the side that lost the last election. They lost the House, except their gerrymandering and voter suppression gave them a House majority. They lost the Senate and the presidential race outright.

And today their determination to practice minority rule was thwarted in one major area.

One trait the Republican leadership has shown consistently is the belief that Democrats are weak, Republicans are strong. So Republicans can push the Democrats around with impunity because they have a monopoly on manly toughness.

The Imperial Japanese high command made the same mistake about their enemy in 1942.

Can you serve two masters? When it comes to gun control, Republican pols are having trouble doing so. Hence the filibuster.

Until we get public financing of elections, every politician must serve two kinds of master: voters and patrons.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the gun regulation debate. Especially with universal gun registration, supported by over 90% of voters and even over 2/3 of NRA rank and file members--but opposed by the gun makers, major patrons and congressional job-killers of those who bring down their wrath.

The solution? Prevent a vote. That way the general voting public won't notice that your first loyalty is to your patrons, not your voters. Heck, most Republican districts are so radically gerrymandered you can't lose to a Democrat anyway. So what even Republican voters want doesn't matter all that much.

And of course when one side is being promoted by a multibillion dollar industry and the other by a few grieving parents and a few politicians with a conscience, voters are more apt to hear the blaring bullhorn than a few teary pleas.

In addition, from time immemorial the rich and powerful have always had a core of shock troops--their bully boys--to go out and defend their interests. In Tehran it's the thug militias who go out and club and shoot protesters against the mullahs. Here it's more peaceful but still has that flavor: that is, the million or so gun nuts--not to be confused with most gun owners--the gun nuts who believe they have a right to own military ordnance without the government knowing they do and without any meaningful protections from crooks and psychos having almost equally free access to firearms of all types.

It's an unequal fight. The one positive sign is the growing disenchantment of Republican voters watching even their opinions being flouted flagrantly by the people they voted into office. 

...and a few Republican senators who are manning up and denouncing the threatened filibuster, including John McCain.

Filibuster reform should happen the first day the Senate reconvenes

Today the United States Senate operates more under the U.S. government's Articles of Confederation than under the Constitution.

The Articles of Confederation had required a 2/3 majority to pass anything. It didn't work. The Founders knew better, which is why the Constitution says everything the Senate does only requires a 51 vote majority except for treaties, impeachment, veto overrides, Constitutional amendments, & expulsion of members.

The current filibuster rules enable the minority power to control the Senate--and even one Senator to hold up bills and appointments as long as they please.

Instead of being a rare event, the Republican Party now uses filibustering darn near everything not as a tool to exercise minority rights but as a tool to make the majority government a failure, in hopes of the minority party regaining power.

This is a betrayal of the people--putting Party before Country. The GOPs actions have crippled a crucial part of government and turned America's government from a Constitutional Republic back into a Confederacy.

The majority party needs to do what it's talking about and rein in the abuse of Senate rules that centers on the filibuster.

The current rules violate the spirit of the Constitution and the intentions of the Founders. Anyone who opposes filibuster reform should be able to demonstrate why their opposition doesn't show a willingness to harm the Republic for partisan ends.


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[Requiring more than a majority is] a poison [that] destroy[s] the energy of the government, and substitute[s] the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which …the weakness or strength of its government is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. If…the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority… the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater…. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers Number 22

For more details, you can read a nonpartisan analysis of the Senate filibuster here.    

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Today the United States Senate operates more under the U.S. government's Articles of Confederation than under the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation had required a 2/3 majority to pass anything. It didn't work. The Founders knew better, which is why the Constitution says everything the Senate does only requires a 51 vote majority except for treaties, impeachment, veto overrides, Constitutional amendments, & expulsion of members. The current filibuster rules enable the minority power to control the Senate--and even one Senator to hold up bills and appointments as long as they please. Instead of being a rare event, the Republican Party now uses filibustering darn near everything not as a tool to exercise minority rights but as a tool to make the majority government a failure, in hopes of the minority party regaining power. This is a betrayal of the people--putting Party before Country. The GOPs actions have crippled a crucial part of government and turned America's government from a Constitutional Republic back into a Confederacy. The majority party needs to do what it's talking about and rein in the abuse of Senate rules that centers on the filibuster. The current rules violate the spirit of the Constitution and the intentions of the Founders. Anyone who opposes filibuster reform should be able to demonstrate why their opposition doesn't show a willingness to harm the Republic for partisan ends.

Guidelines

To filibuster or not to filibuster?

The best way to consider revising the Senate's rules would be to use zero-based budgeting:

That is, supposing we were to have a constitutional convendion and reached the point of determining what rules should be used to govern the Senate--and of those rules, which should be baked into the Constitution.

Let me stipulate that in this hypothetical mission, the Democrats and Republicans each contolled 50 votes in the Senate, and the presidential elections have not yet been held, and all the major opinion polls of likely voters put each team's chances at exactly 50-50.

That is, neither party would have an incentive to jigger the rules to favor the minority or the majority.
So--how would we balance majority vs. minority rights, without regard to the current actual situation or the past four or eight or fifty years?

Some useful principles to use:

1. Transparency: no check or balance should involve anyone being able to gum up the works in secret.

2. Minority rights: while the minority party should be able to slow down particular proceedings; to force issues out of committee for a floor vote; to prevent their will being overrun in secret--at the same time the rules should never permit what would be in effect minority rule.

How about it?

Discussions of this issue are full of tit-for-tatting; hopefully pushing for a zero-based approach can sidestep the endless litary of grievances both sides tend to bring to such debates.

The one question to ask Republican friends

Do you believe in democracy? That's the question to ask Republican friends.

Many avowed conservatives will say "We're not a democracy. We're a constitutional republic." This is nonsense. True, America isn't a direct democracy, as ancient Athens was (if you didn't count its slaves). But of course we're a kind of democracy--as our Constitution mandates. "Democracy" doesn't mean "Direct Democracy." That's just one kind. We're a representative democracy--another kind, included in the basic dictionary definition of "Democracy."

Once you've batted down that detour, ask once again "Do you believe in democracy?"

This is crucial, because nearly all the Republicans in the U.S. Senate have demonstrated that they don't believe in democracy.

The Senate's 41 Republicans don't represent 41% of the voters. They represent about a third, due to the fact that Montana gets the same number of senators as California, and the most populous states (Texas notwithstanding) are mainly Democrat majority, while the least populous states (Delaware notwithstanding) are mainly Republican majority.

So now we have the disaster of one third of the American people being able to dictate legislation to the other two thirds. Nothing in the Constitution's careful set of checks and balances envisions or supports this kind of minority rule.

Do Republicans really believe it's better to have minority rule of this sort than for the other party to get to enact the legislation it was elected to enact?

Say you're a doctrinaire Republican--opposing "big government," deficit spending, expansion of the federal government, foreign involvements except when absolutely necessary, and social issues such as abortion.

Say the party in the majority would, given its way, enact legislation that goes against all of this.

Then would supporting your agenda and opposing theirs justify, in your mind, destroying our democratic form of government?

A key component of an advanced democracy is the losing side accepting defeat. The Republican Party leadership has decided not to do this. Gridlocking the United States Senate is just one example of this new policy--the policy of the permanent campaign, of demonizing the other side, of claiming that the Republican Party's ends justify the means now being used.

Remember the Republican reign of Congress from 1994-2006? Time after time they railed against Democrats using a lightweight version of the Republicans' gridlocking tactics, demanding that judicial confirmations and a lot more go to "an up or down vote." Now the Republicans have abused Senate rules about filibustering to block 70% of Democratic legislation and personnel confirmations. They're preventing over 2/3 of Senate work from reaching that "up or down vote."

So ask your Republican friends: "Do you believe in democracy? Because your party's leadership doesn't. And if you actually believe in democracy, pressure your party's leadership to follow suit and quit blocking everything."

Note that I'm not saying this because I want everything the Democratic Party wants. I don't, as this blog's other entries demonstrate. But I do want to live in a democracy, and I'm willing to pay the price of not getting what I want all the time in order to reap the benefits of living in a democracy. Are Republicans?

If not, they've morphed from a political party into a primitive tribe in which tribal loyalty trumps principles.

Time to fix the filibuster

Over the history of the filibuster, it had been used in extreme circumstances (from the minority's point of view), as a last-ditch effort. Most notably from Southerners trying to stop civil rights legislation.

Today the Republicans in the Senate use the filibuster for everything, routinely--aided by a recent Senate innovation that allows them to not actually filibuster, but simply to threaten one. Thus the filibuster has morphed from an emergency device to preserve minority rights to something close to minority rule.

I believe in minority political rights. During the Dark Ages (the Bush presidency and Republican Congress 2000-2006) the Democrats used it and I always thought "Great. The Founders wanted our democracy to be somewhat inefficient, to prevent mob rule." Moreso because during the Republican rule of the Senate, its majority actually represented some 15 million fewer voters than the Democratic "minority"--courtesy of the way the Electoral College gives, say, one Montana Republican voter the same say in picking a President as around 4 California Democrats.

But now the filibuster has become exactly what Alexander Hamilton predicted in his Federalist Papers:

"The history of every political establishment in which [a super-majority] principle has prevailed is a history of impotence, perplexity and disorder."

The Senate Democrats must confront the filibuster head on. The howls will be huge. And when the Republicans regain control of the Senate, as is historically inevitable sooner or later, they will use any new rules on us--ruthlessly.

So be it. Minority rights cannot be allowed to become minority rule, regardless of who's in the minority.

Are most readers of liberal newspapers Republicans?

Editorially liberal newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post get hundreds of comments on their editorials and op-ed pieces.

I've started to realized that many of those comments aren't from readers. But if not, who are these people? --especially the ones who insert general-purpose right wing rants, often with numerous spelling/grammar errors that don't seem to match reader demographics for the publication in question.

But how do you prove it?

I took a Washington Post op ed piece advocating changing the U.S. Senate's filibuster rules, which have gotten a lot of attention since being used by the Republicans to block healthcare reform. Historically, they first came into prominence when Southern senators used filibusters to try to block segregation reforms.

I read the hundreds of comments and categorized them into pros and cons and off topic rants (many about healthcare reform), along with whether they were pretty much nonpartisan or appeared to be making left wing or right wing talking points.

Here's what I posted in the comment thread for that article:

As of 10:32:03pm, here's how the hundreds of comments on this thread divide up:

72 support Senate rules reform on bipartisan grounds, though a lot of these want term limits more than a change in filibuster rules

26 oppose reforming the filibuster rules on nonpartisan or bipartisan grounds

33 more support Senate rules reform on a Democratic Party partisan basis.

44 more oppose reforming the filibuster rules on a Republican partisan basis.

This gets us 105 favoring Senate rules reform by combining bipartisan and Democratic pro- comments, and

70 opposing Senate (filibuster) rules reform by combing bipartisan and Republican anti- comments

But...
there were also 91 off-topic rants against all things Democratic by Republican posters,

along with 51 off-topic Democratic partisan posts--mostly in response to the off-topic Republican rants, and

30 more off-topic nonpartisan rants, mostly of the "pox on both your houses" variety.

Put this all together and you have 135 explicitly Republican posts vs. 83 explicitly Democratic posts.

So--is it reasonable to assume that either a large majority of Washington Post readers are hard-core Republicans--the sort who believe President Obama is a foreigner, a Marxist, and a Muslim terrorist...

Or that many if not most of the Republican off-topic rants come from those who aren't actually Washington Post readers?

If the latter is true, why is it true?

Three possibilities:

1. Some of the posters are sad, angry little souls whose only real human contact is the negative intimacy they derive from flame wars online.

2. Others are Republican activists mounting something like a DNS (Denial of Service) attack on mainstream comment threads to disrupt them and to create the false impression that more people share their beliefs than is true.

3. Or some? many? are doing this for money. I have seen two right wing websites offering this service. No idea whether it's true. Seems plausible though.

Another question: how did the non-WaPo readers find their way to this article's comment thread? Are there groups monitoring major publications who then direct them to such comment threads through blogs? Or what?

12/27/2009 10:50:00 PM