Elections Have Consequences?
John Meachem offers us an example of the problems with a journalism model in which it’s more important for pundits to be interesting and buzzworthy than to say something true and informative:
But I think we should be taking the possibility of a Dick Cheney bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 more seriously, for a run would be good for the Republicans and good for the country. (The sound you just heard in the background was liberal readers spitting out their lattes.)
Why? Because Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people. The best way to settle arguments is by having what we used to call full and frank exchanges about the issues, and then voting. A contest between Dick Cheney and Barack Obama would offer us a bracing referendum on competing visions. One of the problems with governance since the election of Bill Clinton has been the resolute refusal of the opposition party (the GOP from 1993 to 2001, the Democrats from 2001 to 2009, and now the GOP again in the Obama years) to concede that the president, by virtue of his victory, has a mandate to take the country in a given direction. A Cheney victory would mean that America preferred a vigorous unilateralism to President Obama’s unapologetic multilateralism, and vice versa.
There are a ton of problems with this, especially the odd description of Democratic behavior during the Bush years,* but let’s just stick with this implicit contrast. Why didn’t Obama vs McCain have this impact. McCain is a “vigorous” unilateralist. And he ran on a platform of lower taxes, and deregulating health care. Obama ran on multilateralism, higher taxes on the wealthy, and more stringent regulation of health insurers. And guess what, despite his electoral victory the people in congress who want to vote down his agenda still feel comfortable doing so.
The fact of the matter is that American political institutions give parties that lose elections a substantial amount of ability to influence public policy. If you think this is a bad thing, then the thing to do is push for changes to those institutions. The low-hanging fruit here is elements of senate procedure like the filibuster and the practice of putting “holds” on nominees.
* During his early months in office, Bush succeeded in attracting substantial Democratic legislative support for his signature tax cut initiative. Then came 9/11. He had sky-high approval ratings, including positive marks from most Democrats, got overwhelming bipartisan backing for an invasion of Afghanistan, got a very bipartisan legislative coalition behind No Child Left Behind, got a lot of Democrats to support him on Iraq, and then got at least a bit of Democratic support for his Medicare reforms. All this despite the fact that there were some real questions about his legitimacy. It’s very frustrating to see the MSM consistently eliding the difference between “many rank-and-file Democrats passionately disliked George W Bush” and “Republican Party members of congress offered uniform legislative opposition to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.”
57 Responses to “Elections Have Consequences?”
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November 30th, 2009 at 10:50 am
“despite his electoral victory the people in congress who want to vote down his agenda still feel comfortable doing so.”
You do know that they also won elections? For all of the House and a third of the Senate, the same election.
And those elections also have consequences: ya just have to look at all of ‘em, and not just the ones you like.
November 30th, 2009 at 10:51 am
As Atrios says, Meacham and others like him apparently dislike the idea of politics, namely an ongoing struggle for power. And whether or not they dislike it, they certainly don’t understand it.
It’s also worth noting that Bush had a great deal of success securing congressional support for his agenda even after he lost popularity. The Military Commissions Act, CAFTA, Telecom Amnesty, and the Iraq Surge all passed Congress after the summer of 2005, and the latter two after the Democrats took over.
November 30th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Which is why that will never happen.
November 30th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Wow, what a way to out yourself. We had this election twice already, in 2006 and 2008. The public already made their preference perfectly clear. Meachem just didn’t like the answer.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Cheney is a man with conviction, allright. If this were anything like a decent country, he’d be a man with several of them.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:02 am
You heard it here first: Newsweek will be out of business within three years. Its current economic model is totally unsustainable, with advertising down about 50% from last year. And the magazine’s editorial reinvention as The Economist Lite doesn’t seem to be working well at all. Time Magazine has similar problems, but it is working off a larger base and as part of a giant magazine publisher benefits from economies of scale. Newsweek is owned by the Washington Post, which is itself in some difficulty. In the age of the Internet we may not need any newsmagazine, but we certainly don’t need two, and I think Newsweek’s days really are numbered.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:02 am
mpowell talks about having “this election twice already, in 2006 and 2008…”
Actually, we had 1,038 of ‘em. Evidently you don’t like the answer in something more than 500, but that doesn’t mean that there were only two elections.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Stupid villager BS will continue to pour forth, until either they all die or their parent news organizations do.
Or we could break up the media ownership oligarchy so we didn’t have these dweebs constantly shilling for the corporate point of view.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:10 am
As usual, in your recap of the Dem supported Bush policies you ignore the civil rights abuses, torture, etc.
This really isn’t even on your radar, is it Matt? You’re becoming more and more the left equivalent of the “Village” that you so love to despise.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:13 am
an odd take on the Dems’ conduct under Bush, indeed, and an even odder concept of how the Constitution set up our government. This man is true maroon. And a moran.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Yes, you do, including ALL of the elections for Congress, not just the tiny little minority of Congressional elections that Republicans won.
Yes, let’s look at ALL OF ‘EM: the American people not only elected Barack Obama, but gave the Democrats massive majorities in both houses of Congress.
So…your point was…?
November 30th, 2009 at 11:16 am
No, we did not have 1038 elections that measured the AMERICAN people’s preferences. All of those Congressional elections count as such a measurement only in the aggregate.
We could say we’ve had 5 national elections in the past three years: two Senate, two House, and one Presidential.
The Democrats have swept them.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:18 am
of course elections have consequences.
provided that a republican wins.
if somehow a democrat steals the victory, then it was not a fair election, so it does not have consequences.
isn’t that shorter than meacham’s version?
November 30th, 2009 at 11:29 am
You and Atrios may be right on the details, but since when do details matter in politics?
Meacham’s “vision” of Dick Cheney as the GOP nominee in 2012 should be a liberal/Democratic dream. Obama would win by an even bigger margin than he did in ‘08, even if the economy is still in the dumps.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:30 am
meacham is an idiot.
the mainstream media in this country–most certainly including radio and tv, but especially print media–are populated by idiots.
not surprising that these mags, papers and so on are dying out.
of course, many bloggers and webpundits are similarly flawed, but at least it’s sometimes new idiocy instead of the samo-samo.
of course, sometimes not….
i do want to add my vote, now that i am here, to the commenter who wondered why you didn’t mention Dems’ complicity in, actual assistance and support for, Bush’s assaults on civil liberties and basic human decency.
if there was ever a need for a loyal opposition that took both those words seriously, those were the issues that mattered, not no child left behind. the Dems blew it utterly, and let the whole frame of that freedom conversation be shifted so far to the right that the most vicious of the teabaggers now can get away with claiming to be freedom fighters.
not pretty.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Sheldon, no, I didn’t “hear it here first.” That’s pretty much conventional wisdom.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:31 am
the thing is, i find it hard to differentiate between journalists looking to be buzzworthy and journalists who are stupid.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Joe — you have trouble with basic civics, I see.
When individual members of Congress evaluate the politics of a particular issue, they generally look less at the election of the President a year or so back, than what they know about the electorate in their district: the people who employ ‘em, whom they hope will continue to employ ‘em, next year.
There are 435 voting members of the House. IIRC, 258 of ‘em are Democrats — and of those, something like 48 come from districts that voted for Bush in ‘04 and McCain in ‘08, while (again, from memory) 52 of ‘em replaced Republicans.
So only a fool (or an ignoramus) looks at Senate or House elections as essentially national in character: ‘all politics is local’, as Speaker O’Neill liked to say.
Senator Nelson, f’r instance, cares a lot more about what his employers in Nebraska think than he does about bogus interpretations of the ‘national’ elections that he’s won, since he’s focused on the one he did win — in Nebraska.
Likewise for the Blue Dogs, the New Dems, etc. They each know a bit more about their districts than any bogus ‘national’ perspective could.
This isn’t to say that making a national message for Senate and US Representative elections can’t be done — Republicans famously did it by the Contract with America in 1994.
But just saying it happened in ‘06 and ‘08 goes beyond ignorance to delusional. For Democrats to decide this is what they want to do next year might be a great idea, and it might even be possible to pull it off — but those are some seriously big if’s.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:37 am
For the sake of argument– they’ve never really seen McCain as one of them.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Actually, we had 1,038 of ‘em.
Lord, how tendentious folks can be about simple stuff. Do you think about what you write? None o’ those individual elections were themselves national referenda. Remember that “all politics is local” (which everyone THINKS was said by Tip O’Neill, but he didn’t coin the phrase…it was passed down to him by his old man. Tip’s father, Thomas O’Neill, Sr., shared this wisdom on the occasion of the only election his son lost — a run for the Cambridge City Council, a story Tip Jr. shared in “Man of the House”:
“This was the only race I ever lost in my life, but in the process, I learned two extremely valuable lessons. During the campaign, my father had left me to my own devices, but when it was over, he pointed out that I had taken my own neighborhood for granted. He was right: I had received a tremendous vote in the other sections of the city, but I hadn’t worked hard enough in my own backyard. ‘Let me tell you something I learned years ago,’ he said. ‘All politics is local.’”)
So those elections WEREN’T each about whether the voters in that district preferred “vigorous unilateralism to President Obama’s unapologetic multilateralism, and vice versa” — they were about who’s gonna clean up County Road 139 or whatever the local issue was.
This is hard for you to understand?
November 30th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Since Meachem, like the rest of the village, love to stereotype liberals maybe I should drop him a line and tell him I am a democrat and horror! last week I just bought a Volvo!!!!
(seriously, the car was just cute and so fun to drive).
November 30th, 2009 at 11:56 am
LOL — not being tendentious: I’m being accurate — which is kind of important if you want to actually make sense.
MattY posted: “American political institutions give parties that lose elections a substantial amount of ability to influence public policy…”
I pointed out in this thread’s first post that MattY’s notion that “despite his electoral victory the people in congress who want to vote down his agenda still feel comfortable doing so…. ” was gobsmacking dumb:
“You do know that they also won elections? For all of the House and a third of the Senate, the same election.
And those elections also have consequences: ya just have to look at all of ‘em, and not just the ones you like.”
And half the posts actually challenged that common sense, cuz it offends their half-baked that just because Obama won the White House, that necessarily counts more than how Joe Democrat won in a Republican district — to Joe Democrat.
LOL — and let’s face it, complaining that local politics matter for who gets elected to national office pretty much indicates that you know you’re full of shit on my (undisputed) point: which is doubtless why you made up a parody monicker.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Of course that can be said of despots throughout human history. Though they tend not to see their liturgies in anything but the most enlightened manner.
Indeed, they’ll save the world for you if you let them.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Paulie, find me one article with that point made.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Perhaps liberals should stop believing the line that “elections have consequences” and play hardball like conservatives do.
Do not admit defeat, do not play nice, do not take it lying down.
Stand up and fight.
Regardless of your ideological leaning, you can’t deny that conservatives don’t fight back harder and meaner.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
mpowell talks about having “this election twice already, in 2006 and 2008…”
Actually, we had 1,038 of ‘em. Evidently you don’t like the answer in something more than 500, but that doesn’t mean that there were only two elections.
I’m actually pretty confused as to what this comment is trying to argue. Yes, we had a lot of congressional elections. Yes, the outcome in many of them was undesirable to me. But on the whole, the outcome was very desirable. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that point clear. Are we not allowed to advance a political agenda if there is a single congressional district that does not like it? That’s an awfully strange view of politics. And it does nothing to help the argument that a Cheney-Obama election in 2012 will address the issue once and for all. Certainly the public is capable of changing its mind. But I stand by the claim that it already made it preference perfectly clear in 2006 and 2008. If theAmericanist has some arguments about how congressional Dems should be voting, he should direct it elsewhere. My point regards the silly argument being advanced by Meachem.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Meacham particularly ignores the fact that Republicans rarely want to have “full and frank exchanges about the issues” – to them it’s all about “character” and exploiting people’s emotions and fears. Why talk about healthcare reform when they can talk about Bill Ayers. Why talk about Iraq when they can talk about John Kerry’s time in VietNam? And then there’s always teh Gay if they really want to avoid talking about anything else.
Does anybody really expect if Cheney (or Palin) runs, that the campaign will consist of high road “full and frank exchanges about the issues”?
November 30th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
the americanist, you can add up all the republicans who won elections and you know what? it still doesn’t give you a majority.
and yet, because of the peculiarities of the american system, they are capable of fending off the majority just as if they had the support of far more of the country than they do.
there are flaws with parliamentary systems too, but this kind of crap doesn’t happen in a parliamentary system, which is matthew’s implicit point.
as for your point: what is it again?
November 30th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias has pointed out, this is problematic in a lot of ways. But it is also another example of the mindlessness of the [...]
November 30th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
LOL — this ain’t complex, folks.
For one thing, Andy, I couldn’t care less if MattY hallucinates that a parliamentary system is better. We don’t have one. (This is how to make a point, btw. Declarative sentences, clear meanings: honest, if you guys worked at your reading skills, you might do better.)
For another, Matty was flat-out wrong — not misunderstood, not mischaracterized, just thick-skulled stoopid — to muse “American political institutions give parties that lose elections a substantial amount of ability to influence public policy…”
Parties don’t win elections, in any precise sense. Candidates who may happen to belong to parties, do — and in that very precise sense, the ones who win are in the Senate and the House. So it is not the “parties that lose elections” that MattY is complaining about.
It’s Senators and Representatives who have WON them. See how these two are different? “parties that lose” and “Senators and Representativess who have won…”? One is true, and the other is false.
When you think accurately and precisely, you suddenly discover that it’s not me, it’s MattY who doesn’t have a point. Hell, if it was possible to be something even less than without depth, length or breadth, he’s managed to come up with the political equivalent.
Howard: it isn’t the Republicans who are the obstacle, or more precisely, that they are an obstacle oughta be taken for granted. That’s why I pointed out that it’s half-baked (gooey and unpalatable) to take for granted ‘just because Obama won the White House… necessarily counts more than how Joe Democrat won in a Republican district — to Joe Democrat.”‘
There are 177 Republicans in the House, and 258 Democrats. That means, expecting to get no Republican votes, Democrats can lose no more than 30 Ds to win anything on the floor.
So all the bullshit about ‘national’ elections, etc., is wishful thinking: those 30, plus another two dozen or so Ds are the key to legislation.
And virtually all of ‘em won in districts that voted for Bush and McCain.
What part of this is too subtle for you?
Now, to be fair — in some circumstances it’s possible for a marginal US Representative to owe his or her election to a President leading the ticket — Reagan brought in more than a few Rs in 1984.
But for those particular Ds in the House today, it’s the opposite: since their districts voted for McCain, they only won by running ahead of Obama.
So every assumption in the part of MattY’s post that I’ve quoted, is wrong.
There’s nothing nit-picking about it (unlike, say, observing that Tip’s father who used to say what I noted Tip loved to say: it wasn’t original to either of ‘em — Cato the Elder said the same thing, and so did Alcibiades before that): if you don’t understand how representative democracy works, learn something, already.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
People open up with a demeaning statement like this because they are insecure about their ability to win an argument on the merits.
The Democrats took control of both houses of Congress in 2006, and expanded their majorities in 2008, because of local issues and concerns specific to their districts? The massive, national movement away from the Republicans and towards the Democrats resulted from a coincidental series of local-level political dynamics that just happened to line up in the same way, rather than from developments at the national level?
Really? You’re really going to stick with that idiocy?
I suppose the similar realignments in 2002, 1980, 1968, and 1932 were also the result of all politics being local. Good lord.
You know, there is actually a field of study of this subject, known as “Political Science.” There are people who study these developments for a living, earning advanced graduate degrees and teaching at universities. To a man, they think your arguments is nonsense.
Senator Nelson, f’r instance, cares a lot more about what his employers in Nebraska think than he does about bogus interpretations of the ‘national’ elections that he’s won, since he’s focused on the one he did win — in Nebraska.
A person who doesn’t understand what the word “aggregate” means really doesn’t need to lecture people about politics.
Oh my God, you are a fool! 2006 and 2008 were about local issues? John Tester campaigned on potholes, I suppose.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Oops — no more than 40.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
“If I can spot exceptions to a trend, I can pretend there’s no trend!
Why is this so hard for you to understand?
PS – I’m not being tendentious.”
November 30th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
If “the Americanist” thinks that all politics are local, why does he constantly come on here and predict that loathing of Barack Obama and his national policies is going to give Congress and the White House back to the Republicans?
Because he expects a coincidental collection of district-level movements towards the Republicans to take place, which is in no way indicative of a national movement in that direction?
November 30th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Never said nothing remotely like any of those bogus quotes, there, Joe.
Strive to be honest, and you might one day make it to smart.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
the americanist: surely you don’t think you’re making an insightful point here, do you?
look, honest, we get it: american politics has both a local and a national aspect to it. bfd.
that point has nothing to do with matthew’s point whatsoever, although you obviously think it’s a tremendous insight, previously unrevealed to us dullards.
but just to spell it out for you: sure, ben nelson isn’t really part of the ideological mainstream of the democratic party, but he’s not the problem: you could pass legislation 50-50 (indeed, the founders thought you might sometimes have a tie in the senate, and that’s why the VP is the tie breaker, leading to the famous cheney 4th way interpretation of the vice presidency).
the problem is a set of institutional dynamics which the minority party, which had a majority rather recently and lost it, is using to frustrate the majority party from the agenda its members made perfectly clear they supported in running.
it doesn’t have to be this way: if there were no filibuster, for example, we’d already have health-care reform.
so what is your twaddle supposed to be telling us that is useful and relevant to matthew’s point? despite all your words, i haven’t seen a thing yet that shows you understand the issue we’re discussing here.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Yes, you did. As I’ve pinged you on over and over and over, you are straining to pretend that the obvious, nationwide movement towards the Democrats that occurred in 2006 and 2008 never happened, and using the existence of exceptions to that trend to deny it.
I trust that, if you had a response to my point, you’d make it.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
…he calls over his shoulder as he walks away from the fight.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
For one thing, Andy, I couldn’t care less if…
Hey, I resemble that remark
November 30th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
LOL — man, you guys are just… precious.
Howard sez: “to frustrate the majority party from the agenda its members made perfectly clear they supported in running…”
Oh? I take it you missed that whole bit about the 50+ Ds who won in districts that voted for McCain.
Cuz, ya see, connecting one point to another (try to keep up), this is where I explained that it’s not legit to say that those Ds owe their election to Obama at the top of the ticket, because in their districts, they got more votes than Obama did.
Now, you could argue (try!) that these folks specifically “made perfectly clear they supported” Obama’s agenda in their campaigns — but, ya see, if you did that, you’d have to explain why it is these folks – all of ‘em Democrats — haven’t been forking over the 250+ legislative majorities you’re bitching that Obama ain’t getting… and blaming on the Rs.
Cuz if Obama was getting all 258 Ds, the Rs wouldn’t matter, would they?
And it’s even funnier when Joe from Lowell (what a perspective!) completely misunderstands the painstakingly obvious: what you describe in shallow terms as “the obvious, nationwide movement towards the Democrats that occurred in 2006 and 2008″ IS those 50+Ds.
Personally. Individually. Each and every one of ‘em, with all their local quirks and political idiosyncracies.
But, see, this is where we actually disagree. (I have to point this out, cuz you’d never find your way by yourselves.) You can’t say that the “the obvious, nationwide movement towards the Democrats that occurred in 2006 and 2008..” excludes those 50+ Ds, but what’s more, you also can’t say that it is more important that Obama won, either.
Cuz having a D in the White House who cannot use his majority in Congress to enact his agenda might even be worse in the long run.
So stop complaining about Rs (cuz they won’t help), while simultaneously trying to pretend the 50+ Democrats who are the key to the House majority aren’t part of the party’s mainstream, much less the majority itself.
Recognize that they won, and their victories are just as legit (even the Rs) as Obama’s: all 1,038 elections. (435 twice, plus 67 Senators, and Obama.)
Thinking of voters and people who win elections with respect is almost always very good political advice. Even where you dis the guy who won the election, the best way to get at him (or her) generally involves respect for the electorate that misguidedly elected him (or her).
November 30th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
the americanist, you keep typing words, but none of them make any sense.
the democratic party/obama agenda has no problems in the house, so i’m not sure why you’re spending all this time on whether the district favored mccain or the democrat running for congress.
the house, you see, doesn’t have the senate’s institutional barriers.
and in the senate, there are 50 votes for all manner of obama policies, there just aren’t always 60 votes. that’s because the gop is engaged in an unprecedented campaign of utilizing the institutional barriers. were those barriers not there, as i said, we’d already have health-care reform and, for that matter, we’d have had a bigger stimulus, and we’d have cap and trade, and so on.
so what is your frickin’ point? it’s clear what matthew’s and mine (and others of us here) are saying: majorities are being denied not through argument but through institutional tactic. that is, through institutional senate tactic.
so why do you keep thinking you’re impressing anyone other than yourself by talking about the house?
November 30th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
It’s getting really strained with the “LOLs” at this point. I know it’s meant to make you look incredibly confident and superior, but after a certain point, it comes to take on the appearance of an insecure person’s tick, like when someone losing an argument loses his cool, or laughs too long and hard at an unfunny joke because it was told at his interlocutor’s expense.
Oh, look, you’re doing again. Things must be going really well for you.
Barack Obama is not “the Democrats.” He is not merely the carrier of Democratic ideology; he is an individual, that many people have opinions about as an individual. The fact that the nation turned to the Democrats, and that this happened even in districts that Obama lost, only proves my point, that the electoral dominance of Democrats stems from the nation turning towards their ideas and agenda.
You’re making the same middle-school-level error of intellect here that you made on the thread about the minarets: people and ideas/agendas are two different things. It is entirely possible for people to move away from the Republicans’ ideas/agenda, and towards that of the Democrats, while still not liking Barack Obama individually. Are you seriously trying to argue that the people who voted for those 50 Democratic congressional candidates and for McCain were expressing a preference for Republicanism? That’s absurd.
(I have to point this out, cuz… you’re so insecure about how the argument is going that you feel the need to be seen demeaning me, whereas I’m quite happy to let the exchange of ideas, and your effort to hold up your end, to do that work for me.
Why would I wish to? The fact that Democratic ideas, and the rejection of Republican ideas, runs ahead of even the most popular presidential candidate of our generation only further demonstrates my point.
November 30th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Other insightful commentaries from theAmericanist that we can expect to see in the near future:
“‘Liberalism’ is has traditionally been about free markets and freedom, so isn’t it funny that ‘liberals’ in America aren’t really ‘liberal’!!?”
“The people didn’t really elect Barack Obama. The electors from each state did.”
“We’re a Republic, not a Democracy!!111!11!”
November 30th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Man, try to elevate your game a bit.
There was a fairly detailed thread about the filibuster not long ago: if you want to rehash that, it’d help to focus.
And if you think things have gone so smoothly in the House, you might read any of the threads that mention Blue Dogs.
Me, I can stick to a point: MattY noted “people in congress who want to vote down his agenda still feel comfortable doing so…”
I keep noting that the reason these people are in Congress, is that they keep winning elections, themselves. It’s sorta silly to be bitching that elections have consequences, and then trip over yourself cuz you only meant the ones you like.
November 30th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
theamericanist, i really love your style! you keep typing silly drivel and insisting that it’s other people who are confused.
but sadly, no: ’tis you who is confused.
what we’re talking about here is quite simple: i get that there are blue dogs in the house, but fundamentally, there is no problem passing the obama/democratic party agenda in the house, so who cares? you keep referencing this point as though it had meaning when it doesn’t.
as for the filibuster, why would i want to go back to some other thread and its “detailed” discussion? some of us have been having “detailed” discussions of the filibuster for years, and we know where we stand: that the filibuster is a bad rule that the senate has in place and it should go away.
and if it did, then the agenda that the majority of the country voted for could pass, and then we could see the outcome: if the outcome was a disaster, the other party would prosper, and if the outcome is good, the governing party will prosper.
instead, we have the defeated party engaged in a process whereby they have convinced themselves that they represent a majority viewpoint, and utilizing senate rules to enable them.
the issue is not whether there are people who are opposed to the democrats agenda in either congress or this great land of ours: the issue is whether they should feel free to use super-majority rules to frustrate the democratic agenda. (and this would be true were the parties reversed, and it was the democrats who were finding every possible way to obstruct anything and everything.)
so take your snot-nosed “elevate your game” comment and shove it, why doncha? if you’ve got something meaningful to say in response, say it.
November 30th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
If the Americanist was capable of formulating a response to my point, he would have done so by now.
Instead, he’s either pretending not to understand it, or really doesn’t understand it.
I guess that’s that, then.
November 30th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
The minority of elections that the Republicans have been able to win certainly do have consequences: they mean that we have a minority opposition party, in the midst of the nationwide realignment towards the Democrats.
The former point really doesn’t do anything to rebut the latter.
November 30th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
LOL — oh, I’ve been having “detailed” conversations about the Senate since I worked there.
The key to this sorta conversation, Howard, is focus. If you want to argue about the Senate’s rules, but not the marginal districts which make the Democratic majority in the House, say so clearly. Don’t elide the distinction, cuz if you won’t make distinctions just like that, you cannot make sense.
Likewise, I stay on the point: it’s silly to complain, gee whiz, Rs in Congress are happy to vote against the D’s, when D’s have enough votes to pass what they want. (This would be your point, except you can’t seem to think in an orderly way.)
So — connecting one point to the next, a practice I commend to you — I noted that the reason why the Ds who haven’t been enacting the Obama agenda aren’t particularly afraid that he won the ‘08 election, is because, er, they also won the ‘08 election (all of ‘em in the House, and a significant chunk of the D’s Senate majority). We haven’t gone there yet, but the ones who are causing the Ds the most trouble in the Senate these days include those who are up next year — so their interest in the importance of last year’s election is limited.
Now if ya wanna change the subject entirely from “winning elections” (the point of MattY’s post on “Elections Have Consequences”) to the specifics of the filibuster, feel free — but know that you’re doing it, cuz (that distinction thing again), it’s very different from the first post in this thread, which noted that everybody in Congress who is such an obstacle to MattY’s original discovery that “elections have consequences”… also won an election.
Recently. Their elections have consequences, too — which is what yer bitchin about.
But since you asked: I’ve argued for many years that the trouble with the filibuster is that it is easy and cheap, when it should be expensive and difficult. IOW, I’d rather see it restored to the “2/3s of Senators present and voting”, rather than the “3/5s of Senators duly sworn”.
The key isn’t the # (although 67 is a lot more than 60), it’s the “present and voting”. Since 50 Senators are a quorum, a minority that wanted to stage a filibuster has to keep 17 Senators available to vote at all times, and even if they can do that, as soon as the majority gets itself together, they lose anyway.
We had a pretty extensive discussion of this a week or so back, in which I argued that keeping a true filibuster would be a good thing: I wish that Byrd (who thought about it, and decided not to with the current 60 “duly sworn” rule) would have had the “present and voting” standard to make a filibuster righteous, against the Iraq war, or for that matter, that Kennedy had had the same opportunity against torture.
One reason neither of ‘em did is simply because, being easy and cheap, the modern filibuster is exponentially less effective. I expect that folks will find this out in the Senate soon enough — cuz everybody has known it for a long time. (This is all elaborations on the Louisiana purchase.)
But I wouldn’t throw it out entirely — in the case of a Byrd against Iraq or a Kennedy against torture, it’s not impossible that now and then, a small group of Senators might actually change America’s mind.
Which is what the Senate is for.
November 30th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
If you want to argue about the Senate’s rules, but not the marginal districts which make the Democratic majority in the House, say so clearly. Don’t elide the distinction, cuz if you won’t make distinctions just like that, you cannot make sense.
You could say so clearly, or, like most people not crippled by Asperger’s, you could assume that was the discussion already, because it is after all the subject matter of Yglesias’ blog post:
The fact of the matter is that American political institutions give parties that lose elections a substantial amount of ability to influence public policy. If you think this is a bad thing, then the thing to do is push for changes to those institutions. The low-hanging fruit here is elements of senate procedure like the filibuster and the practice of putting “holds” on nominees.
So, if you wanna argue about the marginal districts which make the Democratic majority in the House, but not about the Senate’s rules, then ya might wanna, y’know, go to a thread where that was actually being discussed, instead of starting your own conversation in your head and then being astounded when everyone else isn’t able to mind-read.
And no, the “point of MattY’s post on ‘Elections Have Consequences’)” is not simply “winning elections”. It’s the paragraph excerpted above, which argues that parties that lose elections are still able to wield disproportionate power because of procedural roadblocks thrown up in front of the winning party.
November 30th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
No, Stefan: the point of MattY’s post was “Elections have consequences”, from which he derived the incorrect (and unexamined) notion that “parties” lose elections.
To which I responded that all the folks he’s complaining about in Congress, actually won their elections: you can’t make sense arguing that elections have consequences, if what you really want to do is ignore the ones you don’t like.
He added the point — and if you want to argue it was his central one, feel free, blogging is not about thinking it all through in advance — that “elements of Senate procedure” are low-hanging fruit.
Trouble is, if that is what you (or he) wanted to focus on, you’re playing on your own 20 yard line, facing the wrong way: there isn’t any legitimate way to change the Senate rules before 2011.
And even then, the core problem isn’t so much with the Senate’s rules, as with the Senate itself: the place is intended to slow things down. A pretty good example is Lieberman — if he was a Representative, you could legitimately pressure him to back Obama because if he didn’t, the Obama majority in Connecticut would vote him out next year.
But he’s not. He’s not up until 2012. And I already noted how it’s not anywhere near as important to Senators who are up in 2010, that Obama won in ‘08.
Since you guys didn’t like that I kept pointing to the really useful data — that 50+ Ds in the House come from districts that voted for McCain, which is a pretty fair indication of the political opportunity that Ds face in both the House and the Senate — it’d only confuse you when I point out (again!) that in fact, the arithmetic says that the 40 Senate Rs represent pretty much exactly their percentage of the US population. I invite you to do the math.
So you’re sorta left with this utterly lame hallucination that it’s the fact of the Senate itself that bugs you.
Now, I realize that MattY would like to rip out whole chunks of the Constitution, but I don’t take that seriously: why should you?
November 30th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
No, Stefan: the point of MattY’s post was “Elections have consequences”,
Er, no, that’s the title, not the subject. The subject is actually that elections don’t have enough consequences.
And even then, the core problem isn’t so much with the Senate’s rules, as with the Senate itself: the place is intended to slow things down.
This sentence would make as much sense if you reversed it: “And even then, the core problem isn’t so much with the Senate itself, as with the Senate’s rules: the place is intended to slow things down.” Which is usually a sign that one is attempting to pass off a platitude as an insight.
November 30th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
To which I responded that all the folks he’s complaining about in Congress, actually won their elections:
Er, yes. That’s not a response, it’s a truism. The tip-off is that they’re all in Congress. Besides Bush, not too many people who lose elections actually get seated.
Again, this is simply asserting a commonplace fact that no one else disputes, pretending that it’s a hidden insight that only you have and that everyone disagrees with you, and then going on and on ad nauseum about how you’re so right about the fact that the sky is blue. It’s not so much an argument as it is a personality defect.
For example, let’s consider claiming that he derived the incorrect (and unexamined) notion that “parties” lose elections. See, here in the normal world we have this thing called the English language. And often when using English, we use commonly understood shorthand as a way of having to avoid restating commonly understood core assumptions. One of these is to note that when more seats in an election are won by the adherents of one party rather than the other, that that party has “won” the election. (Here, for random example, an NBC report from 2006 that “Democrats wrested control of the Senate from Republicans Wednesday with an upset victory in Virginia, giving the party complete domination of Capitol Hill for the first time since 1994….”).
Of course this does not mean that some people in the other party didn’t also win their elections — everyone (everyone, that is, without an autism spectrum disorder such as some on this thread) understands that that is what is being said. But it allows those of us who are familiar with English and its usage to have normal conversations without continually falling down into a rabbit hole of obsessive-compulsive argumentation about the common meaning of well-understood phrases.
November 30th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Fair enough — now that you’ve figured out what I posted in the first comment in this thread, how about you catch on to the important stuff.e.g.,
1) that it is half-baked to figure just because Obama won the White House, that necessarily counts more than how Joe Democrat won in a Republican district — to Joe Democrat. ; or
2) that it is flat-out wrong to imagine that Obama’s national election means much to the marginal Democrats who — because they are marginal – make up the D majority, since 50+ of ‘em won in districts Obama lost; and
3) that skipping over all the elections that everybody obviously understands (cuz otherwise, why would it have taken 50 posts for you to get it?) , bitching about the Senate rules during a session of Congress is like lining up facing the wrong way — on your own 20.
December 1st, 2009 at 3:18 am
LOL — man, you guys are just… precious.
Says the commenter who is able to do an elaborate little dance thanks to the stick up his ass.
Talk to Lincoln Chafee, ‘ist, and see what he thinks about your pet civics theory.
LOL.
December 1st, 2009 at 10:18 am
1) that it is half-baked to figure just because Obama won the White House, that necessarily counts more than how Joe Democrat won in a Republican district
If Joe Democrat won, then it is not, ipso facto, a Republican district. If it was a Republican district, it would have elected a Republican.
December 1st, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Shorter Americanist: you can’t say the Buccaneers have had a losing season, because they won a game.
December 6th, 2009 at 8:25 am
[...] in The New York Times. Matthew Yglesias, a fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, agrees, writing that Meacham’s column “offers us an example of the problems with a journalism [...]