James Fallows calls out the Times and others for their buying into the idea that a bill has “failed” after getting a majority of Senate votes with headlines like, “Obama’s Jobs BIll Fails in Senate in First Legislative Test” (Times) and “Obama Loses Big on Jobs Bill” (Daily Beast).

We have gone so far in recent years toward routinizing the once-rare requirement for a 60-vote Senate “supermajority” into an obstacle for every nomination and every bill that our leading newspaper can say that a measure “fails” when it gets more Yes than No votes.

Fallows suggests the headline could have more accurately read, “Obama’s Jobs Bill Blocked by GOP in Procedural Move.”

Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys.

11 replies on “What He Said Times a Million”

  3. @1 Actually, the votes on cutting off debate (when, as in this case, the debate has become a filibuster), so as to bring a motion to the floor, are known as “procedural votes,” as they are not a vote on the bill itself.

    The action of blocking a bill, through use and abuse of the rules, is appropriately called a procedural move.

  4. And I would really love to force the GOP hand to filibuster. Let them talk on and on and see what happens. Don’t just give in, dammit. Advertise it as them being stick-in-the-muds, who won’t let something come to a fair vote.

  5. The Dems had their chance to change the rules of the filibuster at the start of this new congress with a simple majority vote, but nope, they wussed the fuck out. Because, well, that’s about the only thing you can count on Democrats to do anymore.

  6. It’s funny, but it seems like SLOG is on this jag from 2009.

    Current technology is OS.

    Not much mention of boogey-men “Republicans”.

  7. I see it now reads, “President’s jobs bill turned back in key Senate test.”

    Thank you for posting this, Mister H. Such a great one by Fallows. To my mind there’s nothing more fun than spotting a good journalist trying to get away with a little coasting (as my occasional gleeful jab at Slog writers might suggest). He took the Times straight to the woodshed here.

  9. I don’t care about that part. It should read, however, that Obama WINS big because a jobs bill did pass Congress at the President’s behest. Jobs for Columbia, Panama, and South Korea. Free trade you can believe in!

    Your jobs bill was a ruse, always has been. And the Dems are indefensible.

  10. SMFH, Jebus people, I swear.

    Anything requires 60 votes in the US Senate. It’s the current rule for cloture. Anything that can’t garner 60 votes is DOA.

    The stinky cheese that Obama left on the Senate’s doorstep couldn’t even get all the Democrats on board. No chance what-so-ever to get it through the House.

    If I were you, I’d either man up and get ready for a Republican president or primary Obama out the door. Obama is the second coming of Jimmy Carter without the smidgeon of competence that Carter had.

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