> When it came to Sen. Roy Blunt, a moderate Missouri Republican who voted no on the commission, Manchin offered a creative solution. “Roy Blunt is a great, just a good friend of mine, a great guy,” Manchin said. “Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that’d be nice and it’d help our country. That would be very good to get him to change his vote. And we’re going to have another vote on this thing. That’ll give me one more shot at it.”
Is it just me, or does this read like carefully worded cash for votes? To me this reads "If you could convince Roy Blunt that he'll be well compensated later if he votes a certain way". Is there a more generous reading? Are there any attempts for reforming this kind of vote buying on the horizon? Perhaps we should restore anonymous voting in Congress (perhaps deanonymized 40 years after the vote so that the public record is useful for historians)?
It's raw power, isn't it? (we can make or break your retirement)
What I found interesting is that there are lots of game politicians play that are actually decent moves.
A friend of mine knew a politician who used lobbyists quite adeptly. If for example he needed help on the school textbook problem, he might call up an unrelated, say oil lobbyist and ask for help. In a short time, the oil lobbyist would deliver a thoroughly researched paper on the textbooks, usually written by a prominent professor. This was in the hopes that the oil lobbyist would be remembered in the future.
I rather like the filibuster. Admittedly I am not a politically minded person, but I’ve always felt there needs to be a brake on the tyranny of the majority. However, the filibuster does seem to have created an overly powerful minority in many instances. Doing away with all of it feels dangerous with no good alternative. Perhaps if we abolished the Senate altogether….
That's why they need to go back to the talking filibuster rather than abolish it altogether. Right now all anyone has to do is claim they will filibuster something and it grinds debate to a halt; there needs to be a cost associated with using such a powerful tool of obstruction.
The talking filibuster would require a senator to stand up and speak for hours and hours on end, wasting everyone's time and burning all their bridges on gathering co-sponsors for the work they want to get done. They would have to care very deeply to invoke such a measure and that would allow the majority to pass laws but retain the ability for the minority to delay and stop legislation they see as truly extreme.
The Constitution incorporates several brakes already, via separation of powers. Any bill requires the Senate and the House and the President. Even on the rare occasions where you have a majority of all three, that majority has to be in agreement -- often unanimous, if the majority is narrow, which it practically always is.
You don't always see that dissent. It's easier to let the opposition filibuster a bill than voice opposition from within your own party. If the filibuster didn't exist, you'd see more instances of single nay votes preventing passage.
So ending the filibuster would not come anywhere near creating a tyranny of the majority. It would just shift the balance a bit. It just so happens that that is also political, since there are ideological patterns of people who want to use the legislature to create change versus those who prefer to maintain the status quo.
Any idea how to donate money to make sure this term is the end of Manchin’s career (unless he gets in line with the rest of the party)?
Despite having a solid majority of the US behind them, the democrats only rarely have the ability to pass legislation, and this senator is literally setting the country back by decades.
We can’t afford to put of vote reform any longer, or we’ll transition from a democracy to apartheid.
Climate change isn’t waiting for congress to get its act together either.
Well, places can change. Texas, despite the Republicans best efforts to the contrary, is shifting somewhat blue (purple?) lately. Demographics and generations change...
I can't speak to the specifics of West Virginia, which I will admit seems like a "conservative" (I dispute their right to this word.) hotbed.
Yes, the answer is to "primary" such center-right Democrats.
The root of THIS particular problem, IMO, as outlined in the article we are discussing here:
Private finance of political campaigns. no limits on campaign spending. the richest one often wins.
Both John McCain (prior to his presidential run with our esteemed Alaskan Russia expert) and Howard Dean (who is currently, ironically, a major Democrat fundraiser) brought up the subject of addressing "campaign finance reform"
THAT is the idea that needs to get past Congress, IMO...
it's truly one of the few bipartisan deals left, IMO...
This is the unvarnished truth at the heart of the matter. Your comment should not be grayed out, as our survival as a species depends largely upon getting past the individual vs society dichotomy and waking up to the realization that our singular species has to be able to act as a singular unit with regards to preserving life on planet earth and making better designed systems. Most of our so-called intractable problems could be solved in short order if badly designed systems that serve vested interests against the wellbeing of the group were altered. (Major long term conflicts, so-called “border crisis”, climate change, desertification, deforestation, overfishing, increasing economic disparities during pandemics, etc…)
All my opinion, of course, but God told me to mention this here, stone tablets being out of fashion and the likelihood of readers viewing this on other sorts of tablets being higher, etc
Solid majority? Senate is 50/50 (not a "majority", only Harris casts the tie breaking vote), and Democrats in the House outnumber Republicans by the slimmest margin in decades. This is hardly a majority.
Biden won only 51.3 percent of the popular vote.
Also, if Manchin will be replaced in West Virginia, it'll be by a Republican in the next election (in 2024).
Biden in 2005: "nixing the filibuster 'upsets the constitutional design' and would 'eviscerate the Senate"
Schumer in 2005: ""We are on the precipice of a crisis. A constitutional crisis. The checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option," Schumer said, referencing an option to eliminate the filibuster, during a 2005 speech. "The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote, you don’t get your way 100% of the time."
Besides the content of the leak, it’s interesting to think about the mechanics thereof. If I recall correctly, Zoom calls are fingerprinted ultra-sonically — I wonder if this poses a meaningful challenge when leaking a recording to the press, or if the fingerprinting can be easily defeated.
Any audio encoder - lame is an open source option for mp3 - will have low pass filters. Most encoders will filter inaudible frequencies to improve compression even if not told to, but there are explicit parameters you can set.
Is it just me, or does this read like carefully worded cash for votes? To me this reads "If you could convince Roy Blunt that he'll be well compensated later if he votes a certain way". Is there a more generous reading? Are there any attempts for reforming this kind of vote buying on the horizon? Perhaps we should restore anonymous voting in Congress (perhaps deanonymized 40 years after the vote so that the public record is useful for historians)?