Over at the Wall Street Journal, Gerald Seib argues against interpreting the Senate as the problem with our political system. He maintains that the issue runs far deeper, which is true, to a point.
Let’s not misdiagnose the disease. The Senate isn’t the problem.… The Senate is merely a symptom of the U.S. political system’s larger dysfunction.
O.K. It isn’t the problem. But this characterization ignores our ability to realistically address “larger dysfunction”, while giving too much credit to the Senate as an institution.
For example:
The common explanation for why the Senate doesn’t work better is that 60 has become the new 50.… There’s no doubt that the filibuster, a tool once used sparingly and only on matters of great import, has become virtually an everyday device used to block action.
It’s true that the Senate barely works because of the filibuster and the ridiculous amounts of power it gives to, say, parties that were voted out of office because their policies ruined the country. And it is true that it used to be used sparingly. However, the next part of the sentence is only true if you replace “only on matters of great import” with “only against laws that gave black people a shot at political equity.”
Before the current fad for filibustering everything, the procedure was usually used to block progressive reforms: chiefly civil rights laws, and occasionally labor law reform. (Anti-lynching bills in 1922, 1935, and 1938 were supported by majorities in the House and the Senate, but were defeated by the filibuster.) In short, the filibuster is an antimajoritarian tool, historically used to protect the interests of white people. It has never been good for our country.
Seib continues:
Yet the real issue here isn’t the number of filibusters… but that there is so little common ground between the parties that the tactic is so easily employed.… [Filibusters] are worth mounting only in a highly partisan, highly polarized environment.… And that’s precisely the environment the nation—not just the Senate—has right now.
Seib goes on to enumerate the changes that have resulted in this process: changing media landscape, lack of civility in the upper chamber, the fact that Senators now get travel stipends and are no longer forced to hang around the Capitol on weekends, drinking scotch and reading the Constitution to each other. These factors probably have a (small) influence, but they smell a little too strongly of nostalgia for a bygone era. The real issue, as Seib eventually admits, is increased party polarization.
Well, yeah.
Seib’s article points out the obvious: the parties are more partisan than they used to be. Of course they are. Pre-1970s the parties weren’t as polarized because Southern conservatives made up a substantial wedge of the Democratic Party. But they were loyal for largely historical reasons. As the Dixiecrats moved to the Republican column after the civil rights reform swept the South, the swollen ranks of purity-minded conservatives were able to force moderates out of the GOP, resulting in the more ideologically coherent parties we have today (on the right more than the left).
Seib presents no solution to this problem, because there isn’t one. As Marxists discovered long ago, it’s really hard to alter world historical forces (or national historical in this case). They are even harder to change than the rules of the Senate. Ending or reforming the filibuster: still the way to go.
How do you come to an agreement with someone you just spent that past year calling an anti-american marxist who wants to kill your grandmother?
Besides, reconciliation would close the debate ando allow the majority to move forward. If only they had a spine.
There actually is no point to the Senate any more. For one thing, the original purpose behind having the Senate at all was to balance out the interests of smaller and larger states, based on the long-dead notion that state delegations in the House vote in blocks. The states today aren’t “mini republics” the way they were in the 1780s; today they are nothing but glorified administrative districts since most major legislation arises and applies federally now.
In every other democracy that has a bicameral legislature, the “upper house” is fairly weak if not merely ceremonial. In most cases, the upper house can delay but not prevent or “veto” legislation passed in the lower house.
What we really need is a constitutional amendment that allows the Senate to delay but not prevent most kinds of legislation passed in the House from reaching a president’s desk. That’s the way it works almost everywhere else in the world.
Many places don’t have two houses at all, however, including Nebraska. And, honestly, wouldn’t abolishing the Senate entirely save the federal government *tons* of money, too?
Is “the problem” in this instance the Democrats being unable to push their legislative agenda through the Senate? If so, this article is just another example of partisanship, since it’s premise is that passing Democratic legislation is good.
The Senate passed some major legislation in the early 00’s, mostly because the minority Democrats were worried about going against public opinion. I think it’s worth asking why the minority Republicans don’t suffer from similar worries now.
How often does the filibuster actually happen nowadays? I know it’s raised as a threat constantly, but how often is that threat realized?
Force a vote. Let them eat it.
The Senate is still being used by the racists. The real reason they don’t want a public option is they don’t want any chance they’ll be forced to pay for poor black’s health care. The all white tea baggers are plenty of proof of that.
oh noez, the WSJ is arguing for the status quo, and wants democrats to share the blame for republicans debasing the political discourse? i’m shocked!
@3: because the are insulated from the majority will by right wing media propaganda, gerrymandering and corporate money?
The problem isn’t the filibuster, it’s the rule that lets them invoke it without actually having to do it. I’d change that.
And y’all can forget about getting health care reform passed through reconciliation – they don’t have the votes even for that.
right and thanks for putting more attention on this. only been sayin’ bout the dumb 60 vote rule for 9 months now, finally slog nyt krugman etc. are picking up on it. good.
Let’s follow your conclusion to the next step, ok?
It’s only going to change when obama biden murray reid cantwell etc. have the balls to vote to fucking change standing rule 22, and this will only happen when we start blaming them for not changing that rule. Because they run on change then we get no change due to this rule then they go around saying “oops! sorry! can’t change that rule! not me! can’t do it!” which is frankly a pile of bullshit.
IT’s rather pointless to keep blaming the GOP and the racists for using this tool, when it’s our own side that lets them have it and refuses to take this tool of minority rule away from them.
We ain’t gonna get a constitutional amendment @2, both b ecause states that are small won’t go for it and because there’s a part in the constitution that I believe doesn’t allow doing away with states’ role in the senate.
BTW getting the leaders who proimse change to deliver on that promise is far easier, too, all it takes in one day in which:
1. The chair pro tem of the senate rules changes to senate rules can be made anytime.
2. McConnel challenges this.
3. [here’s the rub] Democrats need 51 votes to sustain chair’s ruling.
4. Then then vote w simple majority to do away with the dumbass 60 vote rule, telling America they have restored our democracy and our right to vote (because winning doesn’t count if the rule prevents the winners from governing).
That’s all it takes. One day. Oh, there wil be a media outcry and perhaps armed camps of tea baggers….but really it’s either do it or continue to not have national heatlh care and not have all the good shit they have everywhere else that actually is a democracy.
@8: fitty-too, the arugment i’ve heard that if they really have to ‘stand up and read the phone book’, that the filibustering party can call a quorum at any time, and debate stops until the rest of the senate gets there – meaning they don’t have to actually pontificate endlessly.
i still don’t see what the problem is, though.
The Senate is an antimajoritarian tool.
That’s the way the system is supposed to work.
You girls don’t appreciate what an elegant and enlightened instrument our Constitution is.
And as soon as you don’t get your way you want to pitch a tantrum and tear it up….
The Senate is not the problem.
Obama’s lack of a
Health Care Plan
and total lack of
Leadership (and Balls)
is your problem.
All your bitching and whining about filibuster diverts energy and attention from the core problem.
End the filibuster.
Now.
You still won’t get your health care “reform” passed.
Go ahead.
Try….
11 ps
Oh, and working the South in is a nice diversion as well, Jake.
If you feel better blaming them damn racist Suthners than actually getting health care reform done be our guests.
Perhaps the hospital will accept your swollen self sense of moral superiority in lieu of medical insurance….
2
you need to get out more.
there are profound differences among the states and their cultures and their laws.
that acts as a pressure valve to keep the union from flying apart.
try too hard to force segments of the nation to accept what is unacceptable to them and you may break the union…
and the reason Reidtard doesn’t force a vote is he knows when push comes to shove he won’t have 50 Democrats in that foxhole with him.
it doesn’t take much to beat Nothing.
the gop doesn’t have much but the Democraps got NUTHIN…
The Senate is fundamentally anti-democratic. The problem is, because of the way the population is distributed, 40% of the Senate votes represent something like 14% of the population. That’s the answer to #3’s question — the reason the Senate Republicans don’t fear majority retribution is they don’t care about the majority, they care about their minority constituency.
I actually don’t think it’s possible to fix this; it’s fundamentally a cultural problem, not a political one. I think the U.S. is fundamentally ungovernable the way it stands, because it’s culturally split. The divide between the North and the South never really healed, and we’re still seeing echos of that today. Hell, people there still talk about seceding. Maybe we ought to just let them go.
There is no such thing, legally, as the “filibuster” in the Senate.
It’s not in the US Constitution.
And it’s not in the Senate Rules.
It is an “understanding” and could be ended … right now … by a Senate Majority Leader who had ANY balls.
Period.
“Is the Problem the Filibuster? The Senate? Or the Entire Orifice?”
It’s that last thing you said, Jake- you and the Democraps got your heads shoved too far up your orifice.
@15 Actually 40% of Senate votes represent 9.5% of the population, but party representation isn’t skewed all that much. Dem Senate seats represent 63% of the population and Reps seats 37%, which is pretty close to the 59/41 split on the floor. So I’m not sure that the Republicans are getting by on their overrepresented minority.
I agree about the cultural split. But since the Senate can’t be gerrymandered to reinforce that split (like the House has), its tendencies are more centrist.
@18: The Senate comes pre-gerrymandered. The relative populations of the red states vs. the blue states do a pretty good job of making sure that the red states are over-represented.
@19 But the Republicans don’t have that big of an over-representation (41 seats for 37% of the population). In fact, the ten smallest states send 14 Democrats and 6 Republicans to the Senate. Take CA away and the Democrats are the over-represented party.
@20: I think that mostly just shows how far to the right the Republicans have gotten; conservative rural states like Montana and the Dakotas have started to elect conservative Democrats instead of Republicans.
Regardless, it hardly matters whether the senate overall is left, right, or centrist when any one senator can block all legislation at will. It’s inevitably going to be controlled by its most extreme members because they’re the ones that have to be satisfied before forward progress can happen.
@2 I totally agree. Strangely, when you look around the world at places that the U.S. has destroyed and help to rebuild (Iraq, Japan) as well as some former U.S. territories (Marshall Islands), they always set up a Parliament (or similar system). I’d love to also see a system where the President has to stand in front of members of Congress such and answer questions such as in Britain.
@21 But it’s not one extreme senator blocking forward progress, it’s 41 senators. If you want to define every Rep senator (and the 37% of Americans they represent) as holding “extreme” views I guess you can, but I don’t think that’s accurate or useful. For instance I wouldn’t characterize half of MA as a hotbed of extreme conservatism.
Instead I would say that the Democrats failed to convince the political center that their healthcare plan will be an improvement over the status quo. Obama ran on the idea that health reform was an economic necessity. While I personally agree with that I don’t think it has appealed to a majority, and they haven’t successfully replaced it with a different argument.
Ultimately I think the problem is that the US went half-assed on health reform (employer tax break, fee-for-service Medicare) when the rest of the world put together more comprehensive systems, and now that a majority of voters have vested interests in the current system it’s going to be very difficult to change. I think the state of the Senate is just a symptom of this, not the cause.