Your response has no substance, and denying you are a Trump supporter while repeating all his talking points is the most ridiculous PaRD shtick there is.

how is my response a lack of substance when all you did is blame the procedure on the lack of results you want? literally, tell me one thing that is a trump talking point i said. you just think all conservatives/republicans only are about trump, when its you lefties that only care about trump because you don't want to truly shame the republicans/conservatives / Christians. although you are getting there now.

Wrong. The Senate allows the GOP to rein in the power of the Democrats, but it does not give them power on its own.



They only get to appoint judges/cut taxes if they also win control of other branches of government, namely the presidency/House+presidency, respectively. And winning these means that they have majority support in states/House districts representing a majority of the country. So no, Republicans can't do shit as long as they don't win majority support in some sense.



If the party in power could govern unchecked as long as it wins a trifecta by the tiniest of margins, they could create too many policies and decisions that the other party cannot undo once the power flips back. And with the national balance of power becoming ever more delicate, this would be a recipe for instability and for getting stuck with lots of unpopular and/or bad bills.

Just fyi: in 2020, a national uniform swing of just 2.2% separated the Democratic trifecta from a Republican one*. These kinds of margins should not entitle either party to pass whatever it wants.




*
- Trump needed a swing of 1.16% to win AZ, GA, WI and PA for an outright EC majority.
- with that kind of swing, David Perdue would have gotten over 50% on Nov 3rd, avoiding the runoff and bringing the Republicans to at least 51 seats in the Senate.
- the tipping point seat in the House was Conor Lamb's, which he won by 2.2%.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 19 2021 10:49pm

I don't doubt the corruption is wide spread, most try to hide it and trump just didn't care to and that's why he was called out on it regularly in the media.

I'd agree that the government using tax dollars to help those that aren't exceedingly wealthy is much better than giving it to those that are exceedingly wealthy. Unfortunately that's quite rare and what we usually get is privatized profits and socialized losses.

The American people can choose to do that by giving 60 Senate seats to a single party. Voters did it in 2008, and gave Barack Obama unfettered control over the federal government. The Democratic party needs to do some soul searching and understand why they're so less popular today than they were back then.

The filibuster number is completely arbitrary. It used to be 67 less than 60 years ago but they lowered it to be more efficient and created the two-track system. Personally, I'd get rid of the two track system and force demagogues like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz to speak until they drop. No votes could be held until the underlying issue is resolved. We could also increase the number of votes needed to invoke cloture to 75.

Imho, the threshold should sit at 55 votes. This way, bigger lesiglation can only be passed without bipartisan support in the Senate if the party in power has a majority of at least 10 seats. This is a mark that's reachable for both parties if they can win several cycles in a row, but not by random flukes/fluctuations in a single cycle.



I would like to reiterate the point I made in my previous post though: careful what you wish for. Just as a little counterfactual: had Chauvin removed his knee from Floyd's neck after 2 minutes, chances are we would be looking at a Republican trifecta right now. Would we really want Trump, McConnell and McCarthy to be able to ram through every legislation they want in this scenario?

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 20 2021 08:23am

It's all arbitrary at the end of the day. But 60 votes is not some impossible threshold, it was achieved not too long ago when the nation elected its first black president. Carville is right, the Democratic party has no idea how to speak to middle American anymore. Ohio and Iowa both voted for Obama, and now they're solid-red states. The Democrats need to do some soul-searching and identify what went so horribly wrong. It is not a fait accompli that these places vote Republican. But when you run exclusively on coastal and urban interests, you're going to lose a lot of elections.

democrats have all the institutional power in the federal executive and legislative branches, with lifelong swamp demon leadership at every level, so of course their supporters are blaming republicans for everything. what a tired old tall tale that’s ridiculous, also is ridiculous when the opposite scenario exists too

This post was edited by excellence on Jun 20 2021 09:17am

Remember, the GOP is an opposition party (even when they are the majority!) and seeks to preserve the status quo. A Republican trifecta shouldn't scare anyone because the only thing they could get done with a trifecta is tax cuts. Do you honestly think that they'd make abortion illegal if given the chance? Do you honestly think that they'd get rid of the popular aspects of Obamacare? I don't because it'd be immensely unpopular. The filibuster, in its current form, prevents the voters from accurately assessing the political parties because you can only use rhetoric instead of results. We should let political parties implement their agenda if the voters want it.

There is merit to the idea of letting things cool down in the Senate which is why we should have some way of slowing down legislation. The old school filibuster fosters that mentality because if a controversial bill comes up, you can stop ALL BUSINESS in the Senate and let the American people know why it's important to shut down the Senate. Everyone knows that Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights Act because he stood for 24+ hours letting the country know how he felt. It made him accountable to his voters and the nation as a whole understood where certain political factions stood. Can you name me the Democrats and Republicans who participated in filibusters over the past 5 years? Of course not, because it's not newsworthy and there's no accountability. We should encourage people like Bernie Sanders, the least successful Jew of all time, to stand until he drops dead of a heart attack when he feels like it's necessary. It's clearly not necessary to do that for every fucking bill.