No. We see almost none of them. And that’s a completely separate off-topic issue.
How?
For real, how? Name one shenanigan that has even the most remote chance of working.
It passed the House. It’s waiting for a Senate vote. Schumer keeps bringing it to the floor. GOP has the legal right, per the rules of the Senate, to prevent it from being debated or voted on. They do so every time it is brought to the floor.
Want to change those rules? It requires a vote on the Senate floor. A vote that the GOP then prevents using their legal powers to do so.
So what, specifically do you propose we do? Biden can’t do anything here: there’s no law. This stuff is explicitly outside of the bounds of executive orders. Even if he did one anyway, SCOTUS would immediately enjoin it.
“Do it anyway” you’ll say. What does that even mean? How do you think executive orders and laws are administered?
They’re administered by the states. You’d see every red state just ignore the executive order. And the blue states are already largely complying with the law as it would be passed.
OK, so does Schumer just ignore the GOP objectors, bring it to the floor, call a vote despite the loud protests of the GOP, kick them out of the chamber, and pass it?
SCOTUS immediately overturns the first action any state takes to uphold it. And red states just ignore it. AND now the GOP runs on the “Democratic coup attempt” in the next election.
AND it’s all moot because you need 100% of the Democratic Sentators to even do that kind of shenanigan. Sinema and Manchin (and probably at least eight other Democratic Senators) would walk out rather than coup.
Does Biden just instruct the states to follow the law and act as though it was passed? Blue states largely already do, red states ignore him, and nothing changes.
Sent the military to red states to enforce the un-passed law? That not only violates fare more sacrosanct parts of the constitution, but the military would almost definitely not go for it. If anything he’d probably be 25th’d out of office.
So what “shenanigan” do you propose to cause the framework of the new Voting Rights Act to be enacted in red states?
This ploy failed:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/29/politics/chuck-schumer-forces-health-care-vote/index.html
This ploy failed:
American Democracy is not.
Unpopulated rural places are extremely over-represented, and are gerrymandered to be invincible to popular opinion.
America hasn’t been majority rule at any point in its history.
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Senators are human beings. They can be influenced by some means, and frequently are. They have something that motivates them, or they wouldn’t have worked the rest of their lives to get to the senate. Find out whatever it is and exploit it.
I can’t give you anything more specific because I don’t know these people personally.
So let’s do this thought experiment. Imagine Rym was a senator. I need to get Rym to vote yea on a bill that benefits cryptocurrency. Can I do it? If I was also a powerful senator, president, or member of the party, I absolutely believe I could. I know what Rym cares about. I know what motivates Rym. I can also potentially change his mind. It won’t be easy, because he (smartly) hates coins. It will take time. But I could make it happen.
OK. Convince me. I’m the junior Senator from New York. This year. Right now. For real.
I’ll do this earnestly and in good faith.
Note that you need to convince 9 other Senators in addition to me or it still doesn’t pass. Or, if you’re playing by the (not likely possible) option of actually overturning the filibuster with 50 and a tiebreaker, you need to somehow have either Manchin or Sinema ALSO on board.
Manchin is the best Democrat we can possibly elect from West Virginia. He’s always the bugbear.
Yes, that’s what I said. But even if we had a perfectly representative democracy, defunding the police is still wildly unpopular. I’d like it to happen, but I can take the L on that. I’m more upset about things like dental care in medicare coverage being cut out despite being wildly popular. There you have a case of representatives voting against the will of the constituents and also not doing any work to change the minds of the constituents. Just brazenly voting according to the will of the oligarchy.
Did you ever wonder why Republicans can literally and openly cut programs that are wildly popular even among their own constituents and yet somehow be re-elected 100% of the time and suffer zero consequences?
You say that. But taking the L on it demotivates progressive voters. They stop showing up. They stop voting. They stop supporting the party.
Continuing to speak to it? Demotivates shitty suburban centrists (or actively motivates them to vote against Democrats). It emboldens our progressive wing, but loses elections.
So what? Be silent on it, angering the progressive wing? Speak to it and lose the shitty centrist suburban voters (who matter more than any other voters due to our shitty broken system?)
Democrats can’t “take the L” on any of these causes or their most energetic base evaporates.
You know what would motivate “centrist” democrats in suburban places?
Make gas free.
For real. Make gas free. Pay for it by cutting social programs. It would be wildly successful and popular.
Well, first I’m going to start posting articles into Fark that are like “bullshit scam coins finally have one good use”.
Then I’m going to level up to some op-eds that say things like “coins are a scam, but this new bill actually does some good things. We should vote yes, despite coins still being awful.”
Convince enough of the artists in your Twitter feed that coins are bad, but the law is good, and get them to tweet about it. Slowly you’ll think maybe this one coin thing is finally ok. Artists aren’t universally hating it now.
Then I’m going to put out the word to all the coin bros who are your constituents to get them to do a letter writing campaign. I’ll also get them to show up at your town hall so you think this is really popular, and might cost you the election to vote no.
I’ll get you invited to speak at a big coin con, on the premise you are going to tell coin bros to their face that coins are horse shit. Then at another panel you’ll be debating two people one of whom is a complete coin nut who is against the bill passing. The other is a reasonable person who says “coins are a scam, but this bill would be good to pass” echoing the op ed.
If I am able to get some of your friends and family rich off coins so that they try to influence you to vote yes.
Even if you can’t be bribed directly, I can try to bribe your staff who have your ear.
You know those pharmaceutical people who get doctors to prescribe their drugs without technically bribing them? I’m hiring at least 10 of them to go after you.
And even if that doesn’t convince you to just vote yes, it should soften you enough to get a yes vote with a little bit of negotiation. Put some anti money-laundring, anti MLM, pro environment provisions in there to make it acceptable to you. Maybe promise to vote for your special ski train from NYC to the Mountain.
Oh, and I’d also do whatever I could to get GPU prices down, so you would have less reason to hate the coin bros.
I got more ideas, I just don’t have more time to write them all.
I’m not actually against it. If I want transportation like trains to be free, why not cars?
The timing just hast to be perfected. I need the gas to be free long enough to get the votes for the super-majority. Then when the supply of gas runs out due to being free, I need to absolutely make sure the other party takes the blame.
How would any of those convince me to pass this? Very few people care about coins at all. Neither I nor my constituents gain anything from this. I have no reason not to hold out.
Also, a lot of things like that have been happening around Manchin for years now. He gives zero fucks. All he wants, repeatedly, is to ensure that no climate change bills ever pass, coal is enshrined and protected forever, and any bill that he votes to force through reconciliation is tiny.
There’s no legislation he wants that could pass the Senate. He basically takes no action on anything except to not vote for overturning the filibuster.
None of those things would pass the broader Senate. That’s exactly the problem. These things aren’t fungible or negotiable. Anything I want requires you to convince the rest of the Senate. They’ve already told me no. If they could pass the broader Senate they already would have been put up for a vote.
Pro-environment positions in particular kill bills. Sinema, Manchin, and likely several others are adamantly opposed to any environmental protection legislation.
I think what you’re missing is that the “rules” of this game, fundamentally, do two things.
- They make it easy to prevent bills from passing or actions from being taken
- They make it almost impossible to force a bill to pass or an action to be taken
By “the rules” I mean the entire political system of the United States. So long as your goal is to make the government worse, it is very easy to do so even if you are the minority party. But if you want to actually change anything it requires a massive supermajority and extreme popular will.
Senators are people. You seem to believe that people are somehow have a locked in brain that is born believing a thing and can not be changed. I do not. Surely some are more stubborn or set in their ways than others, but none are impossible.
All kinds of factors change people’s minds. Their environment. Their genetics. The people around them. The media they consume. If you can control all of those things, you can influence a person’s mind. It’s far from an exact science, but it’s very doable. Maybe slipping him some LSD is the secret, mostly joking. It could work, though!
Passing the “free gas” bill would absolutely win suburban voters in swing states. But you’d lose the entire progressive wing of the Democrats and have the youth turn on you overnight. You’d doom the Democrats who voted with you outside of those “swing” states and (like with the ACA) have a tiny narrow window to pass, at best, 1-2 laws before the reactionary wave unseated the fragile Democratic bare-majority.
That is far from what I believe or what I’ve said.
We are beholden to two individuals. Democrats have been endlessly negotiating with them, offering them extreme incentives. They have ignored every entreaty. Manchin keeps coming back after every concession asking for another one, and every concession he’s asked for is a weakening of the bill. Sinema won’t even ask for anything.
It’s not a matter of “changing their minds.” They’ve already made their decisions. This is all theatre. They aren’t negotiating. There’s no mind to change because it’s not even about the issues. Manchin knows what these bills do. He doesn’t give a shit.
Find me one instance of a Republican Senator (who’s actually running for re-election and not just bailing), Manchin, or Sinema changing their mind on a major issue in the last decade. Just one that translated to a changed vote or support for a bill they previously rejected.
Do you honestly think that, when Biden met with each of them recently in private, he didn’t ask them what they want? Why do you think nothing came of those meetings?
Exactly. You have to limit it to the last decade because something changed. It didn’t change much, but congress went from being mostly partisan to almost entirely partisan. Something changed. Therefore, change is possible. Difficult, time consuming, and unlikely, but possible.
Think of it like breaking some RSA keys. I am certain that this private key has exactly two prime factors. I don’t know what they are, but I know they exist. I might have to find them by brute force, but it can be done with a herculean effort, and maybe some luck.
I’m certain every senator is a human who has a mind that can be influenced somehow. Just don’t ask me exactly how. If we knew that, we wouldn’t be here. But the stakes are too high not to brute force it to find a solution.
Technically it’s been going on since the Civil Rights act. Prior to the Civil Rights act of 1963 and for decades after, there were Democrats that were more conservative than Republicans and Republicans more Liberal. (You may have heard me talk about Northeast Liberal Republicans in the past). Democrats used to completely dominate the South, then they passed the Civil Rights act in 1963 (and a bunch of other things) and that slowly changed both the Republican party and the Democratic party, Take the Reagan revolution, Nixon’s southern strategy and Gingrich’s contract for america were all attempts to win the voters who were now disenchanted with the newly “not as racist” democrats that had taken a stand for civil rights. The idea was that the parties were too non-partisan before and in order to really win and change things for conservatives they needed to grow and purge their party of the liberal wing. There are still a few Liberal republicans left but they tend to still exist in the Northeast like the Gov Of Vermont and Mass and Maryland. (the anti-Trump wing) Anyhow the change in the last 10 to 20 years was the Election of Obama galavantized this change among a lot of voters who were still voting for some democrats and some republicans and started voting totally Republican or totally Democrat. It’s a long progress from 1963.
There is a ton of great articles and books on this. It’s very well studied part of our political history.
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What changed was a tipping point of migration patterns that concentrated people with broad ideological leanings geographically. Due to the political borders of the United States, this in effect ended the competitiveness of most districts.
Another thing that changed was Citizens United. From 2010 onward money literally counted as speech, and Super PACs came into existence. Money became protected speech directly and elections radically changed.
A third thing that changed was the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act. Every state previously covered by the struck provisions enacted severe voting restrictions within two years.
None of these changes are easily undone, and they have had catastrophic consequences.
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