It's kind of hilarious how these simple truths don't penetrate the titanium bubble of those who genuinely believe the status quo Senate rules "force compromise".
One truism of our era is that nothing in the real world--not wars, not disease, not even actual politicians' record--budge people from the fortress silos of priors they built decades ago. Self-described "independents" and "moderates" are as bad as the worst partisans and then some on that.
We'll see how serious Dems are about raising the taxes on rich people when they either repeal or keep the SALT deduction caps. A repeal of the cap really would signify the party is for rich, snobbish people that live in big (high tax) cities.
We'll see how serious Republicans are about being the party of the working class when they repeal the carried interest loophole to fund an increased minimum wage. It's easy to play this game.
Methinks Chuck Schumer is as important as the Republican caucus in protecting the carried interest loophole. How do you think he climbed the greasy pole?
That legislation is still possible. The infrastructure bill got 67 votes. If the infrastructure bill can get 67 votes, then other good bills could also get bi-partisan support.
But big changes should not happen with decent bi-partisan support (1 or 2 from the other party isn't enough).
But most of what the Dems are trying to pass isn't bi-partisan in the least.
It's been really interesting to see among the commentators how many people are openly in favor of stasis and limited change. Now, obviously the commentariat here is unrepresentative of the country and even the voters, but it is striking. Sheri Berman has a lot to say on this, but in order for the current elites to stay on top, they need to make room for people's desires. There are clearly now more people challenging politics as usual from both left and right, and it's striking to me how many people don't think anything should change procedurally or substantively to address the current crisis. I'm not sure that will end well.
Implicit in this critique is the idea that there are no external events that require change even if bipartisan super-majorities don't agree. If the system can't respond to events because of deliberate structural impediments, then it doesn't respond to events. Doing nothing is also a choice and can occasionally lead to terrible results.
650,000 deaths and you consider that an example of a success? I don't agree that Congress moved swiftly or competently in response to Covid. Our death rates per capita are high relative to many other countries. Convince me that Congress and the President moved quickly and efficiently to protect US citizens from harm.
You make some interesting and sensible points about ways in which the filibuster damages the US political process, but I find your bottom-line claim unconvincing. The current sense of paralysis is infuriating, but over the long run, I feel that ensuring at least a hint of super-majoritarianism in legislation is important. Our current tribalism is both foolish and dangerous, and perhaps maintaining the power of Manchins could help to restrain its further growth. In any case, it seems likely that at some point in the next decade Republicans will control both the presidency and both houses of congress....
Simple majority works for lots of other countries and plenty of states. And if the Republicans have a trifecta and pass lots of stuff people don’t like, they’ll get voted out.
I think Montesquieu suggested that "true" democracy is effective only in very small and homogeneous communities, but the US is extraordinarily large and diverse. Accordingly, the protection of minority interests and avoidance of the "tyranny of the majority" is both more important and more difficult for the US federal government than it is for its constituent states or for most countries.
I'm curious how to reconcile the recent Weeds podcast where Matt and David Shor discussed the public being mostly change resistant with the desire to remove the filibuster. My read is that the filibuster allows the public to vote more progressive than it actually is because they assume the government won't/can't make radical change. If you remove the filibuster and actually have one wave election create the potential for much more radical change, I think the public will be much more likely to vote conservative.
E.g. Britain has that capacity and has been Conservative for 70% of the time over the last 40 years - and the period of Labour control was under Tony Blair a VERY moderate Labour leader.
Agree with Binya. If we care about outcomes instead of branding and symbolism, the UK has instituted (in general) more of the Democratic party's platform than here in the US.
There was also that great moment in Ezra Klein's podcast with Fareed Zakaria when Ezra pitched his similar abolish the filibuster argument and Fareed responded with basically ... ok, so you'd to simulate parliamentary politics here in the US, but that's basically trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and I don't know if it'd work out exactly as you intend (e.g., as you mention, it could just shift the power to the more conservative temperament movement).
If you are suggesting we remake congress and have a parliament, I would support that. There is a difference between that and some sort of hybrid contraption that is awkwardly created under the existing constitution.
More to the point - HAVE A STATE DO THIS! If its so clear that a parliamentary system is better, why not have a referendum in California on it?
(The answer is because it would lose! 80% of the public are moderate/conservative which essentially means they are small "c" conservative.)
By looking at the historical record. Juan Linz goes into detail on this. Presidential republics tend to undergo various crises and collapse, as seen in Central and South America and even places like France. The US narrowly dodged the bullet on this during the US Civil War, and was genuinely lucky to have people like Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant in positions of power during that time. It could be argued that the US has certain characteristics that make it unusually resilient to the pressures faced by other governments that divide power between strong executive presidents and parliaments, and I'm curious if you have thoughts on that.
Already we've started not staying lucky. Trump was pretty unlucky (even a lot of Republicans — maybe most — will admit that privately. January 6th was pretty unlucky. Elections nullification legislation in myriad states is unlucky. The question isn't do we stay lucky. The question is how much more unlucky do we get.
I agree that a parliamentary system is better. However, the real kicker is always the strength of various institutions in constraining political actors from ignoring the rules. There are plenty parliaments that are just as bad as any presidential system.
No veil of ignorance Binya. I do like the current structure. As others have mentioned here in the comments and I agree, these are features not bugs. Only pointing out that trying to "simulate parliamentary politics" within our current structure isn't actually implementing a parliamentary system ... so Fareed's square peg + round hole comment.
To re-inforce one of David Shor's points ... 80% of America is either moderate or conservative. Their conversation spells out the implications of that quite well.
probably worthwhile noting that 80% of Americans self-identifying as moderate or conservative is virtually meaningless. Identifying as a moderate is one of American life's great acts of virtue signaling that is functionally irrelevant. 80% of Americans think Congress is broken, it's hard to argue there's a constituency for stasis even if both parties would implement policies more extreme than the median voter. It'd actually be healthy for our civic and political cultures to refocus on policy arguments rather than the incessant beat of culture war bullshit and obfuscation that currently dominates political coverage. If Democrats were able to pass their immigration and abortion policies and force republicans to have debates on the merits it'd probably do some political damage to both sides but be a more honest debate than Susan Collins lying about the implications of her Supreme court votes and then pivoting to Sara Gideon being a socialist.
IDK Anonymous ... David Shor's opinion seems well regarded on this Substack. Meaningless seems pretty strong there. Did you catch that last The Weeds podcast? Both he and Matt felt that this 80% of the electorate is "not-Progressive" fact explains some of the results across the last three election cycles and further constrains Progressive optionality going forward. I tended to agree with the points of their discussion. Certainly they could be wrong.
Your & Dan S point about the welfare state being difficult to undo is very well taken. I think the point has been made here before that Boris Johnson has been a much more successful Trump in that he has taken populist positions on NHS while being significantly more conservative in other areas.
The key difference is that people are little "c" conservative. They don't want Republicans taking away current benefits/systems that seem to work okay, but are suspicious that new programs will make things worse instead of better. This creates an inherently anti-progressive mood that is overcome currently with "identity" politics. The identity stuff is so strong because the filibuster makes it hard to do radical things. Remove that and I think you will see a people much more focused on stuff not breaking.
Talking about "the median Senate seat [being] something like R+2 rather than R+6" is really quite disingenuous. The median Senate seat is R+6 for a Democratic Party that's indulges affluent white progressives' social liberalism. Is R+6 for "celebrate your abortion" and decriminalizing border crossings.
But it's not R+6 for Barak Obama, who opposed same sex marriage, railed against exporting jobs to Mexico, and cracked down on illegal immigration. It was less than a decade ago, when Obama's blue wall still held, that Democrats were preening about a permanent electoral college advantage: https://www.salon.com/2012/12/01/do_democrats_have_a_permanent_electoral_college_advantage/
No... it's simple math which points out sparsely populated states are over represented in the senate by design. Pretending otherwise is quite disingenuous.
Divide the states into four tranches by population:
Smallest 15 states: equally split between D and R Senators
Next group of 15: dominated by Republicans (primarily southern states)
Next group of 15: dominated by Democrats
Top 5 states: equally split between D and R Senators
State population is really very weakly correlated with partisan bias. It's time for Democrats to stop whining about how the Senate is skewed against us and get good candidates, run great campaigns, and win more seats. You know, like we did so well in 2006 and 2008 (peaking at 60 Senators!) when we had exactly the same fifty states.
Agree. In 2010, 5 of 6 statewide elected positions in Montana were held by Democrats. Today, its the opposite. I don't think the party got that much more liberal, although the ACA was very unpopular here ten years ago. Instead the Democrats just stopped trying to appeal to rural voters and went all-in on cities. They don't have any rural-directed messaging, except for some hand-waving about broadband, and it'll cost them the Senate and maybe the White House.
I'm afraid Montana may be negative evidence for my recommendations. Can you explain why Steve Daines thumped Steve Bullock by a pretty dominating 10 point margin? I thought Bullock was pretty popular in the state.
Two reasons: one, Bulock's presidential run, followed by promising not to run for Senate, and then running for Senate, was a bad look. He didn't take any unpopular positions, necessarily, but he had to focus on the national Democratic conversation, instead of regional concerns, which damaged his credibility/authenticity. Also, the pandemic: turnout was up, due to an all-mail election, which, in a conservative state, helped GOP candidates more than Dem candidates.
Sure, you've got to play the hand you're dealt as best you can, but why pretend the playing field isn't skewed significantly to the right of the median voter? Pointing that out is just stating the obvious, and I'd contend working to make things somewhat less skewed (say by making DC a state) is a perfectly reasonable response... not whining for the sake of whining.
"Obviously, political coalitions can change over time. Maybe you’re reading this article in 2036 and it seems incredibly silly because Mormons have become a super Democratic group and Montana, Utah and Idaho are all blue states … who knows. But for the time being, the Senate is effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole, which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally. "
I'm fine with making DC a state. High time we did it. Unfortunately, I just found out my name is not Joe Manchin and my friends tell me I'm not the Senator from West Virginia. He's not going to do it, so it's simply not going to happen . . .
Unless we get really good at this election thing and win net 3 or 4 more Senate seats and then we may have more flexibility to get things done like ending the filibuster and adding new states.
There is no one weird trick for getting what you want done in such a narrowly-divided country. There is only one strategy that can work:
Run the country competently. Do everything we can to have a booming economy with no COVID. Get rid of the incendiary woke stuff and run on popular issues with attractive candidates. In 2022, 20 Republican seats are up versus 14 Democratic seats. Let's go get them, for heaven's sake.
We should make DC a state because DC citizens should have representation in Congress. That's how democracies work. I would support DC as a state even if it helped Republicans.
I wouldn’t support DC as a state even if it helped Republicans. The seat of federal power shouldn’t be treated as a normal place. It’s right out of Hunger Games.
You do realize how weird it is that citizens who live in the capital city can't vote in legislative elections? People in the Federal Region in Brazil elect people to seats in the legislature. Same for Berlin, Paris, London. I'm struggling to find an example overseas where this is not true. Evoking a novel seems neither here nor there.
I would support making DC a state if its no longer the center of the federal bureaucracy. Remove 90% of the federal jobs and spread them around the country so that DC has about the same % as Vermont or Maine - which would take it from about 350k to about 10k.
The question is would DC be willing to make that trade?
Why? Do you think DC residents get some special benefit over and above Northern VA, southern MD, New Mexico, or Nevada in terms of government largesse? Median income in DC is larger than MD's, but pretty close.
Agreed. We're in an unusually narrowly divided party environment, more like the 1867-1895 period than anything that came after it.
Consider how long each party controlled the House of Representatives at a stretch. Starting in 1867, it went 4 Republican terms, then 3 Democratic, then 1 Republican, 3 Democratic, 1 Republican, and 2 Democratic. That was a chaotic environment! (And not much got done).
But for the next 100 years (!) things moved glacially: 8 Republican terms in control of the House, then 3 Democratic, then 8 Republican, 8 Democratic, 1 Republican (1947-49), then the monster 22 terms controlled by the Dems.
Starting in 1995 it went 6 Republican terms, 2 Dem, 4 Republican and 2 Democratic (so far -- we'll see if they hang on for #3 next year).
With such fragile and often narrow majorities like we've seen in recent history, it just makes it a lot harder to get things done.
Obama was *exactly* a Democratic Party that indulges affluent white progressives’ social liberalism and “celebrate your abortion” and decriminalizing border crossings. Biden is the one who is reinforcing Trump’s border and tariff policies.
The difference in the electoral issues has nothing to do with the candidates or their messaging. It’s entirely based on how many young college educated people from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have moved to Virginia or Colorado or Texas or Georgia or Arizona. There’s also an effect of greater educational polarization during that time, but that isn’t being driven by the presidential candidates (except maybe Trump).
Go back and listen to Obama’s pre-2008 speeches. That’s where the party went, but that’s not how he campaigned.
The 2004 DNC speech that made him famous was all about unity (identifying commonality between his white native and Black immigrant family), hard work, the Declaration of Independence, shipping Union Maytag jobs to Mexico, etc. He sounded more like Nikki Haley’s 2020 RNC speech than Kamala “they never saw as as fully human” Harris.
Obama came out strongly against illegal immigration in 2005, and implemented eVerify in office. He deported more people than Trump. He opposed same-sex marriage. He talked about Black people needing to take personal responsibility.
I attended 2019 DNC events in Iowa. The contrast with how Obama campaigned just a decade before was incredible.
And no, there was no mass exodus of young college educated people from these states from 2012 to 2016. Demographics is shifting, but much more slowly than Party attitudes are changing.
TBH I agree with both of you here and I think you both make important points. Sadly I don't have time to really flesh this out more but just a few quick thoughts. I think it's a mix of the effects you described Kenny (people moving + increasing partisanship) but also a shift on trade & border policies (rightward on the latter, protectionist on the former) + a shift leftward on social spending and some other things + a big shift on narrative/framing (as e.g. described here https://www.slowboring.com/p/obama-pander/comments). I don't have any strong sense of how big each of these factors are and if there's a winning strategy without giving up huge parts of the platform (or even just period) but I do think Ray brings up an inconvenient fact that's often ignored by us liberals.
You want to talk global standards? How is voting done in France or Germany? How often do their courts override voters on key social issues? How are less religious countries like Germany allowed to have religious education in schools, and the most religious country in the developed world isn’t? How is second trimester abortion unusual in Europe, but constitutionally required in the US? Why is there a right to gay marriage in the US constitution, but not the European Convention on Human Rights?
In terms of how much elites override the people on cultural issues, the US left is batshit insane by global standards.
Maybe, maybe not. Other countries have established religions and enforce cultural and religious ideas on populations. There's never been a Catholic PM in the UK, for example. We've had at least two Catholic Presidents here in the US. The amount of elite enforcement of laicite in France (ostensibly leftist from the French Revolution) would make your head spin here in the US.
Many people are proposing the solution of ending the filibuster, no one is providing the path to doing that. The situation with Joe Manchin is extremely infuriating because he has all the leverage. I hope Biden can pull this one off.
I think they’ve made a great deal of progress… if you polled senators in 2010 vs today you’d see a strong momentum towards abolition. Anyone who thought it was going to happen in 2020 with a 50/50 senate was delusional.
The pressure is constructive… you do your best to publicly discredit, push your candidates in primaries to talk about eliminating or at least "reforming" it. Then when you get lucky and win 54 seats in 2032 you make the change.
I think this is a long-term struggle, i.e. "slow boring of hard boards". The long-term goal is to make the idea of preserving the filibuster ridiculous intellectually, and simultaneously create pressure on hide-bound Democratic senators until they can no longer hide behind performative "bipartisan" justifications for the filibuster that don't actually make sense. Overcoming status quo bias is hard, and the media, the Republicans, and even some Democrats will work to obscure what is really going on. You even see this in this thread, where people are really afraid of what could happen when the Republicans take over and assume that filibuster will protect them. What they don't realize is that the Republicans don't care and will shred the filibuster immediately when it no longer serves their interests. See Merrick Garland vs. Amy Barrett.
I think you could critique this article, though, using your own style of "realistic politics" arguments.
Joe Manchin isn't getting rid of the filibuster because he knows you're right and doesn't *want* power. With great power comes great responsibility. More to the point, with great power comes "getting things done," and with getting things done comes... losing in West Virginia.
I think Democrats underestimate the practical, real-world, intractable problem that comes with the 50th Democrat in the Senate serving in a state where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 39%. Democrats have literally no leverage over Joe Manchin, and it's in Joe Manchin's rational political interest to ensure that nothing gets done. It's still better than majority leader Mitch McConnell.
Allegedly, Manchin didn't want to run in 2018 anyway; Schumer all but held a gun to his head. And he's 74. I don't think reelection is a primary concern.
"Realist Joe Manchin", who was not obsessed with nostalgic fantasies about the bipartisan comity of the past, would recognize that he is not going to win his next Senate race. (Even if he tried to switch parties he'd lose the GOP primary to a Trumpist.) Given that, he would care about having an actual legacy, and reforming the Senate to actually bring back bipartisan legislation would be a pretty great legacy.
Manchin's going to lose in 2024, he should just use these last three and a half years to help people and build a legacy for himself in his state and nationally. If he's pathologically addicted to holding office Biden can give him DHS or something if he wins reelection.
Matt did a podcast several months back about the filibuster, and the point was made that functionally, the filibuster protects the moderate wing of the majority party from the extreme wing by allowing them (the moderate senators) to avoid voting on controversial bills that are no-wins for them. As long as the filibuster exists, they can pretend to have it both ways by declaring lukewarm support for the bill but never having to actually vote yes and blaming the minority party for preventing its passage.
This is true for both Democrats and Republicans which both have crazy extreme wings and both have a good number of moderates that wish the crazy ones would shut up.
This isn’t complicated- Manchin is in a red state that went for Trump by double digits. Like every Senator, he is looking after his re-election prospects above other concerns including this bill. And he is in a vulnerable position that politicians in safe D seats don’t face which makes it more difficult for him to tow the party line.
True, but if he believed that this is a make or break moment (and given his age and some rumors about his potential retirement) he could go along with these and then not seek re-election. It's a lot to ask but I think that'd be the only way to make it happen in practice.
Relying on moderate politicians to perform political seppuku and then retire is not a winning strategy IMO.
My view is that the main problem is our primary system and the weakness of political parties which is what is really driving the lack of compromise. It's just simply the case that politicians in safe seats should have much more room to compromise than those in competitive seats but that room is less than it used to be thanks to the threat of being primaried.
"But precisely because he’s the key actor here, he’s the one who ought to be talking about which measures he does believe in strongly enough to push on a party-line vote.
But he’s not, and his intransigence isn’t a coherent theory of political change any more than the left’s."
Manchin can't name the measures because he does not 'believe' in any of them. He will sign only on those bills (Dem or otherwise) that will not diminish his changes of keeping his seat in a red state. He will go with ANY bill that can get some red votes (to cover his bases), ideology be damned. Contrast that to the Left's view, "Give us the bill/Ideology, votes be damned".
Alternatively, Democrats could work in a bipartisan fashion to create bills that are supported by more than 60 Senators. Though that wouldn't add up to $3.5T, restructure the welfare state, lay the groundwork for adding new states, revamp voting in all 50 states, increase taxes on "the rich" and attempt to eliminate the oil & gas industry.
In other words, try to pass moderate, incremental changes that reflect the views of most of the electorate rather than the slightly-modified wish list that originated from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.
That used to work when the minority party cared about policy. But under McConnell, it’s become clear that the minority party gets better electoral strength through unanimous opposition.
The problem is that when you go to 60 votes, you start vastly reducing the amount of overlap there is. Going by 538’s ranking of how often senators vote along with the Democrats’ position, the 10th most cooperative R Senator is *Mitch McConnell*. Which means to get a bipartisan bill through the filibuster, you need something that every Democrat plus Mitch McConnell and everyone at least as willing to play ball as him to agree to.
I'm curious if you think increasing the number of Senators would do something here. Keep the 60% requirement, but increase the number to 200. All of a sudden you will have more people to find trade offs. Would that help or make no difference?
Addendum: I don’t know why Matt’s advice to Kamala Harris (take positions that appeal to the median, swing voter) differs so much with his advice to Senate Democrats. Seems like a broad and popular bill would be better than whatever can scrape by with 51 votes.
His advice to Harris would help her become more popular (and so stand a better chance of winning a presidential election some day). His advice to Senate Democrats would help them enact legislation. Different goals for different methods.
Governing requires doing things that are unpopular. Regardless of political affiliation, virtually no one thinks our immigration system is anything better than broken. Should it just be ignored because any legislation will be unpopular?
Except for the fact the (establishment) GOP economic ideas are actually unpopular. The rise of Trump with his unabashed 'soak the rich' approach proves it. GOP base would love to have a generous safety net just and they don't mind taxing Wall Street for it. People who DO mind about taxing Wall Street (to fund Medicare) are the Limousine Liberals & Norquist Conservatives. Interestingly enough, they both agree on Culture War that it doesn't matter.
Is this a joke? The only things that pass with 60 votes are infrastructure bills and anything that says “screw China.” Republicans are too politically interested in disfunction.
If control of the Senate weren't balanced on a knife's edge, that *might* happen. But all the incentives for the Republicans are to avoid giving Democrats huge wins that would help them retain control next year.
It's hard to pursue good governing for the sake of good governing when the tiniest movement can cause enormous changes in the balance of power.
Ah, but this is the exception that . . . um . . . doesn't prove the rule. It certainly seems out of character for the Republicans, outside of the Secret Congress stuff. The only explanation I can come up with is that they decided it wouldn't be that politically valuable enough of a win for Biden, and it would make Manchin (et al?) even more adamant that no bill can pass that is not bipartisan, meaning other, more important things won't pass.
Your theory sounds highly plausible. A small ball infrastructure bill that increases spending very little on net (and won't do much to fuel MAGA primary challenges) is a small price to pay for preventing permanent, large scale increases in the size of the welfare state.
I am fairly certain that for at least _some_ of the Republicans that voted for the bipartisan infrastructure package, the primary goal was keeping Manchin and Sinema on-side to prevent the larger package from passing. (And they may be hoping that in the end if the larger package doesn't pass, the progs in the House will tank the bipartisan package too, as they have threatened.)
I'd be interested in your answer to this too. Some of my wishlist items would be cutting bad regulation and spending more on innovation and I could see Republicans going for those but likely few Dems.
The devil is in the details, as we've found out in the past forty years. Tell me what's bad regulation and what's good regulation and I'll let you know if I agree. Whenever I see a poll asking people if they're for cutting regulation without being specific I want to gag. Are we talking about the regulation of homicide, or zoning restrictions?
I agree, though I would argue that if you asked people on the left like to have more regulation and people on the right less, so there some general assessment based on political orientation.
I think all regulation creates some small cost because of added complexity and the more of it there is the higher complexity (probably in some non-linear fashion). This by itself should mean that we should (all other things being equal) keep regulation somewhat in check and not add to it "needlessly" (yes, devil is in the details on all of this, just making general points).
In terms of the content it's obviously a mix and people's judgment of it will vary, but there's probably a bunch of regulations that many people agree are very good, some that many people can agree are bad (though most don't think about them), and then a bunch that are hotly debated though likely only by those who pay attention to them.
Let me rephrase to make my initial statement slightly more useful: "Eliminate or change regulation that has failed to have its intended effect or that has had perverse outcomes." The devil is still in the details and many of these choices would be controversial, but again this is my wishlist. Some random choices: Reduce/improve zoning, get rid of or rework many aspects of state licensing, streamline environmental reviews, figure out how to streamline FDA approval and make it faster/cheaper.
I'm all for faster/cheaper so long as it weeds out drugs with no particular benefit other than ever-greening incumbent pharmas' patents at higher prices and what turn out to be dangerous drugs like thalidomide. The FDA today seems to have become subject to a lot of regulatory capture and 'faster/cheaper' is a mantra that exacerbates, rather than solves, the problem, like 'cutting bad regulation'.
What do you think Republicans are interested in passing? Specifically, what will they actually vote for, as opposed to saying they will vote for it, then pulling out at the last minute and forcing a party line vote that fails due to the filibuster? I want to see evidence from you that there are actually bipartisan bills available to pass. Name them.
1. tax receipts actually went up from the tax reform bill.
2. Margin tax rate reductions were also coupled with elimination of a lot of special interest deductions, so the effective tax rate most people pay stayed about the same.
I'm not enamored of the filibuster per se, but I'm deeply skeptical of the take that eliminating it will contribute to breaking gridlock through successful centrist legislating, rather than empowering an even more destructive partisan pendulum. It seems just as likely that the parties circle the wagons around agendas with zero overlap whatsoever and yank the country back and forth until it goes entirely off the rails. The gridlock in response to party polarization is a feature of the system not a bug. The system is intended to constrain legislation within pluralistically acceptable bounds, not hand unchecked powers to whatever coalition can cobble together 51% support at any given moment.
I used to think that, but Matt has made a strong case to me that the 60-vote requirement as used in practice is a fairly recent (within my mid-40's lifetime) development. And it sure doesn't seem like it's made things better.
First, this reconciliation stuff means the pendulum gets to swing _anyway_, but on strangely written giant bills where it's very hard for you to petition your senator/representative one way or the other. If you love/hate the dental benefits in this bill, or community college, well - there is so much tied up in this that you kind of have to accept the whole deal.
And nobody has to go on the record as opposing any of it - because it would take 10-12 Republican votes (or more) for any of this then any individual Republican who needs the cred can say they support it but likely without having to actually vote against it.
Second - this seems to have ended up making the supreme court even more of a fight - because if you can't legislate then you may have to do executive actions, and then we fight about that all the time.
I think if we had a multi-party system that requiring > a majority might be worthwhile to prevent that pendulum swinging(although I'd like to look at what other first world democracies have seen from needing/not-needing this to be sure), but that's not what we have.
I think there's an obviously compelling argument that congress is broken, and pretty much everything you said is true, I just happen to think getting rid of the filibuster alone, without some broader set of reforms, is more likely to make the problem worse than better. Breaking congressional gridlock by empowering greater national majority rule will deepen the fracturing of the country. When losing a single vote to the other side flips major legislation it turns up the pressure to turn every election into a national one and makes electing a congressperson with idiosyncratic views an even greater liability.
This path ultimately ends up with fewer idiosyncratic or centrist congresspersons being elected and the unconstrained extremes of the parties dragging their centers even further apart. The only way dropping the filibuster helps is if there's a substantial enough overlapping of the parties for you to empower into a sustainable coalition.
I think it really comes down to whether you want congressional gridlock or not. Right now, the filibuster prevents the passage of bills and the feedback that comes from doing things and getting voter feedback on your performance. If you are happy with the status quo and lack of action by Congress, then I understand your position. If you are motivated by a fear of what comes next by removing the filibuster, then I would just say that the country survived without a filibuster for many many years (it essentially was only used on civil rights legislation historically). So we can probably survive without it. And it is fundamentally unjust that a majority of a legislature cannot pass bills.
I think the gridlock that we have right now is the intended outcome of our partisan polarization. Both parties are in a race to expand and commandeer the power of the government to install a "permanent" ruling coalition. Getting rid of the filibuster at this point point empowers that end rather than impedes it. Impeding that outcome means electoral reforms that promote the success of idiosyncratic candidates, things like ranked choice voting, and systemic limits on the ability of the federal government to impose the sweeping policy preferences of small national majorities on places where they are deeply unpopular.
Outside electoral reforms, I actually think the best thing that could happen to congress is if Justice Gorsuch can actually revive the non-delegation doctrine. Congress should be spending much more time an taking many more actual votes directing the mundane operation of government, rather than being allowed to hand everything off to the executive and only voting on things they want to use as a campaign ad. The fundamental problem right now is that there's no actual mechanism for making sure congress has a job to do, so they all sit around being pundits and only voting on the things that fire up their primary voters.
What I get from this comment is that you like gridlock and are worried about changes in laws. That's ok, but that's a fundamentally conservative viewpoint, and is focused on protecting past successes as opposed to making changes now.
I think congress should function efficiently within it's properly constrained pluralistic box. Expansive changes rightly require amendments, not legislation. There are such amendments I would support. Gridlock is bad, but it's better than letting either party break the system in the name of their own permanent rule.
I recognize that some people support vision of governance that in America is effectively revolutionary. The question those people need to ask themselves is if they're interested in the bloody kind. Because if they can't even pass an amendment, that's what they're gonna end up with if we keep tearing down the checks and balances of the system.
Congress should have to vote and go on record for or against changes to the Code of Federal Regulations - they are legislation in every meaningful sense of the word, and approving legislation is the job of the legislature. They don't have to write them - agencies have the expertise for that - but we shouldn't have a system that favors members of Congress who are so unserious they'd rather be grandstanding pundits than dirty their hands with legislative compromise.
That's interesting to consider. The Rs want to steal elections with maybe more petty ambitions. The Ds want to throw out all the constraints in the name of expansively remaking society. The Ds mostly want to do it in good faith. The Rs are almost entirely corrupt. It's definitely not symmetrical in many ways, but I regularly struggle to decide which is more dangerous.
I'm reminded of the common Republican refrain from the later Bush years about the Iraq war claiming that the Republicans were exonerated from the consequences of that debacle because the resolution to invade was supported by so many Democratic senators. It's wrongheaded thinking, in a way, but it somehow still carries credibility in American politics today.
I'm pretty sure the real truth of the matter that Manchin doesn't want any bills to become law unless they earn support from a significant chunk of Republicans. That way, he can parry his GOP opponent's accusation that he is a "tax & spend liberal" in 2024 by saying the bill was approved not only with the support of known idiosyncratic Republicans like Rubio & Romney, but also solidly conservative backbenchers like Deb Fischer.
Whenever Manchin says he does or does not support a bill, he is just grandstanding. He really doesn't care if this spending bill passes or not. Same goes for his voting rights bill. Being kingmaker gives the Manchin tons of power, but he wants none of the responsibility that entails. He wants Fischer to carry that water for him. Of course, it won't stop him from taking credit whenever that fantasy becomes reality (like what happened with the physical infrastructure bill).
unrelated but does anyone know what Deb Fischer does all day? Seems like she's been there awhile and I couldn't name a single press release or bill she's contributed to.
I think she's actually a good senator. She keeps her head down, doesn't get involved in stupid Twitter debates, and works to shape legislation that affects her state (like ag stuff) behind the scenes.
We need a lot more Fischers in both parties especially the GOP.
It's kind of hilarious how these simple truths don't penetrate the titanium bubble of those who genuinely believe the status quo Senate rules "force compromise".
One truism of our era is that nothing in the real world--not wars, not disease, not even actual politicians' record--budge people from the fortress silos of priors they built decades ago. Self-described "independents" and "moderates" are as bad as the worst partisans and then some on that.
"Last week, Joe Manchin pumped the breaks on Democrats’ legislative agenda....
Brakes, for heaven's sake. Brakes.
"The Sunrise Movement responded to Manchin’s break-pumping op-ed...."
Good grief.
TIL what "catbird seat" means
We'll see how serious Dems are about raising the taxes on rich people when they either repeal or keep the SALT deduction caps. A repeal of the cap really would signify the party is for rich, snobbish people that live in big (high tax) cities.
We'll see how serious Republicans are about being the party of the working class when they repeal the carried interest loophole to fund an increased minimum wage. It's easy to play this game.
Methinks Chuck Schumer is as important as the Republican caucus in protecting the carried interest loophole. How do you think he climbed the greasy pole?
Right, so if Democrats lose the Senate, do you think that the Republicans will get right on that over Schumer's supposed objections?
Nope, nor do I think a Democratic Party under the leadership of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi will either.
Maintaining 100% party cohesion on dozens of different issues is hard.
That legislation is still possible. The infrastructure bill got 67 votes. If the infrastructure bill can get 67 votes, then other good bills could also get bi-partisan support.
But big changes should not happen with decent bi-partisan support (1 or 2 from the other party isn't enough).
But most of what the Dems are trying to pass isn't bi-partisan in the least.
It's been really interesting to see among the commentators how many people are openly in favor of stasis and limited change. Now, obviously the commentariat here is unrepresentative of the country and even the voters, but it is striking. Sheri Berman has a lot to say on this, but in order for the current elites to stay on top, they need to make room for people's desires. There are clearly now more people challenging politics as usual from both left and right, and it's striking to me how many people don't think anything should change procedurally or substantively to address the current crisis. I'm not sure that will end well.
I think change should be limited. And that the bigger the change, the bigger the need for bi-partisan support.
Implicit in this critique is the idea that there are no external events that require change even if bipartisan super-majorities don't agree. If the system can't respond to events because of deliberate structural impediments, then it doesn't respond to events. Doing nothing is also a choice and can occasionally lead to terrible results.
If external events really require change, then you should be able to get bi-partisan buy in.
Congress moved with speed when COVID first hit. And then came together again to pass more stimulus.
650,000 deaths and you consider that an example of a success? I don't agree that Congress moved swiftly or competently in response to Covid. Our death rates per capita are high relative to many other countries. Convince me that Congress and the President moved quickly and efficiently to protect US citizens from harm.
You make some interesting and sensible points about ways in which the filibuster damages the US political process, but I find your bottom-line claim unconvincing. The current sense of paralysis is infuriating, but over the long run, I feel that ensuring at least a hint of super-majoritarianism in legislation is important. Our current tribalism is both foolish and dangerous, and perhaps maintaining the power of Manchins could help to restrain its further growth. In any case, it seems likely that at some point in the next decade Republicans will control both the presidency and both houses of congress....
Simple majority works for lots of other countries and plenty of states. And if the Republicans have a trifecta and pass lots of stuff people don’t like, they’ll get voted out.
I think Montesquieu suggested that "true" democracy is effective only in very small and homogeneous communities, but the US is extraordinarily large and diverse. Accordingly, the protection of minority interests and avoidance of the "tyranny of the majority" is both more important and more difficult for the US federal government than it is for its constituent states or for most countries.
I'm curious how to reconcile the recent Weeds podcast where Matt and David Shor discussed the public being mostly change resistant with the desire to remove the filibuster. My read is that the filibuster allows the public to vote more progressive than it actually is because they assume the government won't/can't make radical change. If you remove the filibuster and actually have one wave election create the potential for much more radical change, I think the public will be much more likely to vote conservative.
E.g. Britain has that capacity and has been Conservative for 70% of the time over the last 40 years - and the period of Labour control was under Tony Blair a VERY moderate Labour leader.
Agree with Binya. If we care about outcomes instead of branding and symbolism, the UK has instituted (in general) more of the Democratic party's platform than here in the US.
There was also that great moment in Ezra Klein's podcast with Fareed Zakaria when Ezra pitched his similar abolish the filibuster argument and Fareed responded with basically ... ok, so you'd to simulate parliamentary politics here in the US, but that's basically trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and I don't know if it'd work out exactly as you intend (e.g., as you mention, it could just shift the power to the more conservative temperament movement).
If you are suggesting we remake congress and have a parliament, I would support that. There is a difference between that and some sort of hybrid contraption that is awkwardly created under the existing constitution.
More to the point - HAVE A STATE DO THIS! If its so clear that a parliamentary system is better, why not have a referendum in California on it?
(The answer is because it would lose! 80% of the public are moderate/conservative which essentially means they are small "c" conservative.)
“In general they function a lot better…”
By what measure?
By looking at the historical record. Juan Linz goes into detail on this. Presidential republics tend to undergo various crises and collapse, as seen in Central and South America and even places like France. The US narrowly dodged the bullet on this during the US Civil War, and was genuinely lucky to have people like Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant in positions of power during that time. It could be argued that the US has certain characteristics that make it unusually resilient to the pressures faced by other governments that divide power between strong executive presidents and parliaments, and I'm curious if you have thoughts on that.
I think the US’s record vis a vis Central and South American is abundantly clear. And the US president isn’t an especially strong executive.
Already we've started not staying lucky. Trump was pretty unlucky (even a lot of Republicans — maybe most — will admit that privately. January 6th was pretty unlucky. Elections nullification legislation in myriad states is unlucky. The question isn't do we stay lucky. The question is how much more unlucky do we get.
I agree that a parliamentary system is better. However, the real kicker is always the strength of various institutions in constraining political actors from ignoring the rules. There are plenty parliaments that are just as bad as any presidential system.
What, Congress is a legislation factory or something?
No veil of ignorance Binya. I do like the current structure. As others have mentioned here in the comments and I agree, these are features not bugs. Only pointing out that trying to "simulate parliamentary politics" within our current structure isn't actually implementing a parliamentary system ... so Fareed's square peg + round hole comment.
To re-inforce one of David Shor's points ... 80% of America is either moderate or conservative. Their conversation spells out the implications of that quite well.
probably worthwhile noting that 80% of Americans self-identifying as moderate or conservative is virtually meaningless. Identifying as a moderate is one of American life's great acts of virtue signaling that is functionally irrelevant. 80% of Americans think Congress is broken, it's hard to argue there's a constituency for stasis even if both parties would implement policies more extreme than the median voter. It'd actually be healthy for our civic and political cultures to refocus on policy arguments rather than the incessant beat of culture war bullshit and obfuscation that currently dominates political coverage. If Democrats were able to pass their immigration and abortion policies and force republicans to have debates on the merits it'd probably do some political damage to both sides but be a more honest debate than Susan Collins lying about the implications of her Supreme court votes and then pivoting to Sara Gideon being a socialist.
IDK Anonymous ... David Shor's opinion seems well regarded on this Substack. Meaningless seems pretty strong there. Did you catch that last The Weeds podcast? Both he and Matt felt that this 80% of the electorate is "not-Progressive" fact explains some of the results across the last three election cycles and further constrains Progressive optionality going forward. I tended to agree with the points of their discussion. Certainly they could be wrong.
Your & Dan S point about the welfare state being difficult to undo is very well taken. I think the point has been made here before that Boris Johnson has been a much more successful Trump in that he has taken populist positions on NHS while being significantly more conservative in other areas.
The key difference is that people are little "c" conservative. They don't want Republicans taking away current benefits/systems that seem to work okay, but are suspicious that new programs will make things worse instead of better. This creates an inherently anti-progressive mood that is overcome currently with "identity" politics. The identity stuff is so strong because the filibuster makes it hard to do radical things. Remove that and I think you will see a people much more focused on stuff not breaking.
Obamacare another case in point.
Talking about "the median Senate seat [being] something like R+2 rather than R+6" is really quite disingenuous. The median Senate seat is R+6 for a Democratic Party that's indulges affluent white progressives' social liberalism. Is R+6 for "celebrate your abortion" and decriminalizing border crossings.
But it's not R+6 for Barak Obama, who opposed same sex marriage, railed against exporting jobs to Mexico, and cracked down on illegal immigration. It was less than a decade ago, when Obama's blue wall still held, that Democrats were preening about a permanent electoral college advantage: https://www.salon.com/2012/12/01/do_democrats_have_a_permanent_electoral_college_advantage/
No... it's simple math which points out sparsely populated states are over represented in the senate by design. Pretending otherwise is quite disingenuous.
Being sparsely populated isn’t the same as leaning Democrat. Farmers were a key part of the FDR coalition.
Some basic facts about Senate representativeness.
Divide the states into four tranches by population:
Smallest 15 states: equally split between D and R Senators
Next group of 15: dominated by Republicans (primarily southern states)
Next group of 15: dominated by Democrats
Top 5 states: equally split between D and R Senators
State population is really very weakly correlated with partisan bias. It's time for Democrats to stop whining about how the Senate is skewed against us and get good candidates, run great campaigns, and win more seats. You know, like we did so well in 2006 and 2008 (peaking at 60 Senators!) when we had exactly the same fifty states.
Agree. In 2010, 5 of 6 statewide elected positions in Montana were held by Democrats. Today, its the opposite. I don't think the party got that much more liberal, although the ACA was very unpopular here ten years ago. Instead the Democrats just stopped trying to appeal to rural voters and went all-in on cities. They don't have any rural-directed messaging, except for some hand-waving about broadband, and it'll cost them the Senate and maybe the White House.
I'm afraid Montana may be negative evidence for my recommendations. Can you explain why Steve Daines thumped Steve Bullock by a pretty dominating 10 point margin? I thought Bullock was pretty popular in the state.
Two reasons: one, Bulock's presidential run, followed by promising not to run for Senate, and then running for Senate, was a bad look. He didn't take any unpopular positions, necessarily, but he had to focus on the national Democratic conversation, instead of regional concerns, which damaged his credibility/authenticity. Also, the pandemic: turnout was up, due to an all-mail election, which, in a conservative state, helped GOP candidates more than Dem candidates.
Ah, thanks. This makes me feel better. (Also, I note his gubernatorial victories weren't *that* big (less than 4 percentage points in his reelect)).
Lots of "basic facts in this article" as well.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senates-rural-skew-makes-it-very-hard-for-democrats-to-win-the-supreme-court/
Sure, you've got to play the hand you're dealt as best you can, but why pretend the playing field isn't skewed significantly to the right of the median voter? Pointing that out is just stating the obvious, and I'd contend working to make things somewhat less skewed (say by making DC a state) is a perfectly reasonable response... not whining for the sake of whining.
"Obviously, political coalitions can change over time. Maybe you’re reading this article in 2036 and it seems incredibly silly because Mormons have become a super Democratic group and Montana, Utah and Idaho are all blue states … who knows. But for the time being, the Senate is effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole, which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally. "
I'm fine with making DC a state. High time we did it. Unfortunately, I just found out my name is not Joe Manchin and my friends tell me I'm not the Senator from West Virginia. He's not going to do it, so it's simply not going to happen . . .
Unless we get really good at this election thing and win net 3 or 4 more Senate seats and then we may have more flexibility to get things done like ending the filibuster and adding new states.
There is no one weird trick for getting what you want done in such a narrowly-divided country. There is only one strategy that can work:
Run the country competently. Do everything we can to have a booming economy with no COVID. Get rid of the incendiary woke stuff and run on popular issues with attractive candidates. In 2022, 20 Republican seats are up versus 14 Democratic seats. Let's go get them, for heaven's sake.
We should make DC a state because DC citizens should have representation in Congress. That's how democracies work. I would support DC as a state even if it helped Republicans.
I wouldn’t support DC as a state even if it helped Republicans. The seat of federal power shouldn’t be treated as a normal place. It’s right out of Hunger Games.
You do realize how weird it is that citizens who live in the capital city can't vote in legislative elections? People in the Federal Region in Brazil elect people to seats in the legislature. Same for Berlin, Paris, London. I'm struggling to find an example overseas where this is not true. Evoking a novel seems neither here nor there.
I would support making DC a state if its no longer the center of the federal bureaucracy. Remove 90% of the federal jobs and spread them around the country so that DC has about the same % as Vermont or Maine - which would take it from about 350k to about 10k.
The question is would DC be willing to make that trade?
Why? Do you think DC residents get some special benefit over and above Northern VA, southern MD, New Mexico, or Nevada in terms of government largesse? Median income in DC is larger than MD's, but pretty close.
Yes, clearly true. It's not a tough call...
Agreed. We're in an unusually narrowly divided party environment, more like the 1867-1895 period than anything that came after it.
Consider how long each party controlled the House of Representatives at a stretch. Starting in 1867, it went 4 Republican terms, then 3 Democratic, then 1 Republican, 3 Democratic, 1 Republican, and 2 Democratic. That was a chaotic environment! (And not much got done).
But for the next 100 years (!) things moved glacially: 8 Republican terms in control of the House, then 3 Democratic, then 8 Republican, 8 Democratic, 1 Republican (1947-49), then the monster 22 terms controlled by the Dems.
Starting in 1995 it went 6 Republican terms, 2 Dem, 4 Republican and 2 Democratic (so far -- we'll see if they hang on for #3 next year).
With such fragile and often narrow majorities like we've seen in recent history, it just makes it a lot harder to get things done.
Obama was *exactly* a Democratic Party that indulges affluent white progressives’ social liberalism and “celebrate your abortion” and decriminalizing border crossings. Biden is the one who is reinforcing Trump’s border and tariff policies.
The difference in the electoral issues has nothing to do with the candidates or their messaging. It’s entirely based on how many young college educated people from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have moved to Virginia or Colorado or Texas or Georgia or Arizona. There’s also an effect of greater educational polarization during that time, but that isn’t being driven by the presidential candidates (except maybe Trump).
Go back and listen to Obama’s pre-2008 speeches. That’s where the party went, but that’s not how he campaigned.
The 2004 DNC speech that made him famous was all about unity (identifying commonality between his white native and Black immigrant family), hard work, the Declaration of Independence, shipping Union Maytag jobs to Mexico, etc. He sounded more like Nikki Haley’s 2020 RNC speech than Kamala “they never saw as as fully human” Harris.
Obama came out strongly against illegal immigration in 2005, and implemented eVerify in office. He deported more people than Trump. He opposed same-sex marriage. He talked about Black people needing to take personal responsibility.
I attended 2019 DNC events in Iowa. The contrast with how Obama campaigned just a decade before was incredible.
And no, there was no mass exodus of young college educated people from these states from 2012 to 2016. Demographics is shifting, but much more slowly than Party attitudes are changing.
TBH I agree with both of you here and I think you both make important points. Sadly I don't have time to really flesh this out more but just a few quick thoughts. I think it's a mix of the effects you described Kenny (people moving + increasing partisanship) but also a shift on trade & border policies (rightward on the latter, protectionist on the former) + a shift leftward on social spending and some other things + a big shift on narrative/framing (as e.g. described here https://www.slowboring.com/p/obama-pander/comments). I don't have any strong sense of how big each of these factors are and if there's a winning strategy without giving up huge parts of the platform (or even just period) but I do think Ray brings up an inconvenient fact that's often ignored by us liberals.
You want to talk global standards? How is voting done in France or Germany? How often do their courts override voters on key social issues? How are less religious countries like Germany allowed to have religious education in schools, and the most religious country in the developed world isn’t? How is second trimester abortion unusual in Europe, but constitutionally required in the US? Why is there a right to gay marriage in the US constitution, but not the European Convention on Human Rights?
In terms of how much elites override the people on cultural issues, the US left is batshit insane by global standards.
Maybe, maybe not. Other countries have established religions and enforce cultural and religious ideas on populations. There's never been a Catholic PM in the UK, for example. We've had at least two Catholic Presidents here in the US. The amount of elite enforcement of laicite in France (ostensibly leftist from the French Revolution) would make your head spin here in the US.
Many people are proposing the solution of ending the filibuster, no one is providing the path to doing that. The situation with Joe Manchin is extremely infuriating because he has all the leverage. I hope Biden can pull this one off.
The path to doing that is to get up to 53-55 Democratic Senators and then convincing 50 or 51 of them to end the filibuster.
It's not an impossible number. As recently as 2009, we had 60. This is seven less!
In the meantime, find out what would make Joe Manchin happy, pass it, and work to win future elections.
I agree, the day will come when Joe Manchin is irrelevant.
I think they’ve made a great deal of progress… if you polled senators in 2010 vs today you’d see a strong momentum towards abolition. Anyone who thought it was going to happen in 2020 with a 50/50 senate was delusional.
The pressure is constructive… you do your best to publicly discredit, push your candidates in primaries to talk about eliminating or at least "reforming" it. Then when you get lucky and win 54 seats in 2032 you make the change.
I think this is a long-term struggle, i.e. "slow boring of hard boards". The long-term goal is to make the idea of preserving the filibuster ridiculous intellectually, and simultaneously create pressure on hide-bound Democratic senators until they can no longer hide behind performative "bipartisan" justifications for the filibuster that don't actually make sense. Overcoming status quo bias is hard, and the media, the Republicans, and even some Democrats will work to obscure what is really going on. You even see this in this thread, where people are really afraid of what could happen when the Republicans take over and assume that filibuster will protect them. What they don't realize is that the Republicans don't care and will shred the filibuster immediately when it no longer serves their interests. See Merrick Garland vs. Amy Barrett.
I think you could critique this article, though, using your own style of "realistic politics" arguments.
Joe Manchin isn't getting rid of the filibuster because he knows you're right and doesn't *want* power. With great power comes great responsibility. More to the point, with great power comes "getting things done," and with getting things done comes... losing in West Virginia.
I think Democrats underestimate the practical, real-world, intractable problem that comes with the 50th Democrat in the Senate serving in a state where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 39%. Democrats have literally no leverage over Joe Manchin, and it's in Joe Manchin's rational political interest to ensure that nothing gets done. It's still better than majority leader Mitch McConnell.
Allegedly, Manchin didn't want to run in 2018 anyway; Schumer all but held a gun to his head. And he's 74. I don't think reelection is a primary concern.
"Realist Joe Manchin", who was not obsessed with nostalgic fantasies about the bipartisan comity of the past, would recognize that he is not going to win his next Senate race. (Even if he tried to switch parties he'd lose the GOP primary to a Trumpist.) Given that, he would care about having an actual legacy, and reforming the Senate to actually bring back bipartisan legislation would be a pretty great legacy.
People underrate the degree to which Manchin genuinely believes that the filibuster fosters bipartisanship
Manchin's going to lose in 2024, he should just use these last three and a half years to help people and build a legacy for himself in his state and nationally. If he's pathologically addicted to holding office Biden can give him DHS or something if he wins reelection.
Matt did a podcast several months back about the filibuster, and the point was made that functionally, the filibuster protects the moderate wing of the majority party from the extreme wing by allowing them (the moderate senators) to avoid voting on controversial bills that are no-wins for them. As long as the filibuster exists, they can pretend to have it both ways by declaring lukewarm support for the bill but never having to actually vote yes and blaming the minority party for preventing its passage.
This is true for both Democrats and Republicans which both have crazy extreme wings and both have a good number of moderates that wish the crazy ones would shut up.
This isn’t complicated- Manchin is in a red state that went for Trump by double digits. Like every Senator, he is looking after his re-election prospects above other concerns including this bill. And he is in a vulnerable position that politicians in safe D seats don’t face which makes it more difficult for him to tow the party line.
True, but if he believed that this is a make or break moment (and given his age and some rumors about his potential retirement) he could go along with these and then not seek re-election. It's a lot to ask but I think that'd be the only way to make it happen in practice.
Relying on moderate politicians to perform political seppuku and then retire is not a winning strategy IMO.
My view is that the main problem is our primary system and the weakness of political parties which is what is really driving the lack of compromise. It's just simply the case that politicians in safe seats should have much more room to compromise than those in competitive seats but that room is less than it used to be thanks to the threat of being primaried.
Yes, I agree with all of this.
🙇 for "political seppuku"
"But precisely because he’s the key actor here, he’s the one who ought to be talking about which measures he does believe in strongly enough to push on a party-line vote.
But he’s not, and his intransigence isn’t a coherent theory of political change any more than the left’s."
Manchin can't name the measures because he does not 'believe' in any of them. He will sign only on those bills (Dem or otherwise) that will not diminish his changes of keeping his seat in a red state. He will go with ANY bill that can get some red votes (to cover his bases), ideology be damned. Contrast that to the Left's view, "Give us the bill/Ideology, votes be damned".
“Contrast that to the Left's view, ‘Give us the bill/Ideology, votes be damned’.”
Ah, so the Left prefers ideology to democracy? Got it.
The Senate counts all votes equally, so I don’t know what you’re on about.
Alternatively, Democrats could work in a bipartisan fashion to create bills that are supported by more than 60 Senators. Though that wouldn't add up to $3.5T, restructure the welfare state, lay the groundwork for adding new states, revamp voting in all 50 states, increase taxes on "the rich" and attempt to eliminate the oil & gas industry.
In other words, try to pass moderate, incremental changes that reflect the views of most of the electorate rather than the slightly-modified wish list that originated from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.
That used to work when the minority party cared about policy. But under McConnell, it’s become clear that the minority party gets better electoral strength through unanimous opposition.
The problem is that when you go to 60 votes, you start vastly reducing the amount of overlap there is. Going by 538’s ranking of how often senators vote along with the Democrats’ position, the 10th most cooperative R Senator is *Mitch McConnell*. Which means to get a bipartisan bill through the filibuster, you need something that every Democrat plus Mitch McConnell and everyone at least as willing to play ball as him to agree to.
I'm curious if you think increasing the number of Senators would do something here. Keep the 60% requirement, but increase the number to 200. All of a sudden you will have more people to find trade offs. Would that help or make no difference?
Interestingly, changing the size of the Senate --- in either direction --- doesn't require unanimous consent by the states.
Addendum: I don’t know why Matt’s advice to Kamala Harris (take positions that appeal to the median, swing voter) differs so much with his advice to Senate Democrats. Seems like a broad and popular bill would be better than whatever can scrape by with 51 votes.
His advice to Harris would help her become more popular (and so stand a better chance of winning a presidential election some day). His advice to Senate Democrats would help them enact legislation. Different goals for different methods.
Governing requires doing things that are unpopular. Regardless of political affiliation, virtually no one thinks our immigration system is anything better than broken. Should it just be ignored because any legislation will be unpopular?
Except for the fact the (establishment) GOP economic ideas are actually unpopular. The rise of Trump with his unabashed 'soak the rich' approach proves it. GOP base would love to have a generous safety net just and they don't mind taxing Wall Street for it. People who DO mind about taxing Wall Street (to fund Medicare) are the Limousine Liberals & Norquist Conservatives. Interestingly enough, they both agree on Culture War that it doesn't matter.
Because he wants more people on welfare.
How do you determine what is popular? Seems like some blind partisanship might be clouding your vision in that regard.
Raising taxes on the rich, providing the child tax credit, dental care for seniors etc etc ARE popular among the majority of electorate.
Is this a joke? The only things that pass with 60 votes are infrastructure bills and anything that says “screw China.” Republicans are too politically interested in disfunction.
Wait, you mean Republicans don't want to pass a progressive wish list? oh noes...
I bet you could fit both an immigration bill and a climate bill under the "screw China" column.
Those aren't the only things Republicans think about. Those are the things blind partisans think Republicans think about.
If control of the Senate weren't balanced on a knife's edge, that *might* happen. But all the incentives for the Republicans are to avoid giving Democrats huge wins that would help them retain control next year.
It's hard to pursue good governing for the sake of good governing when the tiniest movement can cause enormous changes in the balance of power.
"But all the incentives for the Republicans are to avoid giving Democrats huge wins"
but 17 of them voted for the infrastructure bill...
Worth noting that the bipartisan infrastructure deal passed with 19 GOP votes in the Senate!
Ah, but this is the exception that . . . um . . . doesn't prove the rule. It certainly seems out of character for the Republicans, outside of the Secret Congress stuff. The only explanation I can come up with is that they decided it wouldn't be that politically valuable enough of a win for Biden, and it would make Manchin (et al?) even more adamant that no bill can pass that is not bipartisan, meaning other, more important things won't pass.
Or maybe my theory isn't airtight. Not sure.
Your theory sounds highly plausible. A small ball infrastructure bill that increases spending very little on net (and won't do much to fuel MAGA primary challenges) is a small price to pay for preventing permanent, large scale increases in the size of the welfare state.
I am fairly certain that for at least _some_ of the Republicans that voted for the bipartisan infrastructure package, the primary goal was keeping Manchin and Sinema on-side to prevent the larger package from passing. (And they may be hoping that in the end if the larger package doesn't pass, the progs in the House will tank the bipartisan package too, as they have threatened.)
I'd be interested in your answer to this too. Some of my wishlist items would be cutting bad regulation and spending more on innovation and I could see Republicans going for those but likely few Dems.
The devil is in the details, as we've found out in the past forty years. Tell me what's bad regulation and what's good regulation and I'll let you know if I agree. Whenever I see a poll asking people if they're for cutting regulation without being specific I want to gag. Are we talking about the regulation of homicide, or zoning restrictions?
I agree, though I would argue that if you asked people on the left like to have more regulation and people on the right less, so there some general assessment based on political orientation.
I think all regulation creates some small cost because of added complexity and the more of it there is the higher complexity (probably in some non-linear fashion). This by itself should mean that we should (all other things being equal) keep regulation somewhat in check and not add to it "needlessly" (yes, devil is in the details on all of this, just making general points).
In terms of the content it's obviously a mix and people's judgment of it will vary, but there's probably a bunch of regulations that many people agree are very good, some that many people can agree are bad (though most don't think about them), and then a bunch that are hotly debated though likely only by those who pay attention to them.
Let me rephrase to make my initial statement slightly more useful: "Eliminate or change regulation that has failed to have its intended effect or that has had perverse outcomes." The devil is still in the details and many of these choices would be controversial, but again this is my wishlist. Some random choices: Reduce/improve zoning, get rid of or rework many aspects of state licensing, streamline environmental reviews, figure out how to streamline FDA approval and make it faster/cheaper.
I'm all for faster/cheaper so long as it weeds out drugs with no particular benefit other than ever-greening incumbent pharmas' patents at higher prices and what turn out to be dangerous drugs like thalidomide. The FDA today seems to have become subject to a lot of regulatory capture and 'faster/cheaper' is a mantra that exacerbates, rather than solves, the problem, like 'cutting bad regulation'.
Actually I'd probably just support whatever Eli Dourado wants to do. That would likely work out well in practice.
What do you think Republicans are interested in passing? Specifically, what will they actually vote for, as opposed to saying they will vote for it, then pulling out at the last minute and forcing a party line vote that fails due to the filibuster? I want to see evidence from you that there are actually bipartisan bills available to pass. Name them.
1. tax receipts actually went up from the tax reform bill.
2. Margin tax rate reductions were also coupled with elimination of a lot of special interest deductions, so the effective tax rate most people pay stayed about the same.
Mathew, Economist, CPA
Of course the benefits tended to go to the top households, they pay most of the tax.
The top 10% earns 40% of the money, but pays 70% of the tax.
I'm not enamored of the filibuster per se, but I'm deeply skeptical of the take that eliminating it will contribute to breaking gridlock through successful centrist legislating, rather than empowering an even more destructive partisan pendulum. It seems just as likely that the parties circle the wagons around agendas with zero overlap whatsoever and yank the country back and forth until it goes entirely off the rails. The gridlock in response to party polarization is a feature of the system not a bug. The system is intended to constrain legislation within pluralistically acceptable bounds, not hand unchecked powers to whatever coalition can cobble together 51% support at any given moment.
Yes, I agree that yanking back and forth is the more likely outcome.
I used to think that, but Matt has made a strong case to me that the 60-vote requirement as used in practice is a fairly recent (within my mid-40's lifetime) development. And it sure doesn't seem like it's made things better.
First, this reconciliation stuff means the pendulum gets to swing _anyway_, but on strangely written giant bills where it's very hard for you to petition your senator/representative one way or the other. If you love/hate the dental benefits in this bill, or community college, well - there is so much tied up in this that you kind of have to accept the whole deal.
And nobody has to go on the record as opposing any of it - because it would take 10-12 Republican votes (or more) for any of this then any individual Republican who needs the cred can say they support it but likely without having to actually vote against it.
Second - this seems to have ended up making the supreme court even more of a fight - because if you can't legislate then you may have to do executive actions, and then we fight about that all the time.
I think if we had a multi-party system that requiring > a majority might be worthwhile to prevent that pendulum swinging(although I'd like to look at what other first world democracies have seen from needing/not-needing this to be sure), but that's not what we have.
I think there's an obviously compelling argument that congress is broken, and pretty much everything you said is true, I just happen to think getting rid of the filibuster alone, without some broader set of reforms, is more likely to make the problem worse than better. Breaking congressional gridlock by empowering greater national majority rule will deepen the fracturing of the country. When losing a single vote to the other side flips major legislation it turns up the pressure to turn every election into a national one and makes electing a congressperson with idiosyncratic views an even greater liability.
This path ultimately ends up with fewer idiosyncratic or centrist congresspersons being elected and the unconstrained extremes of the parties dragging their centers even further apart. The only way dropping the filibuster helps is if there's a substantial enough overlapping of the parties for you to empower into a sustainable coalition.
I think it really comes down to whether you want congressional gridlock or not. Right now, the filibuster prevents the passage of bills and the feedback that comes from doing things and getting voter feedback on your performance. If you are happy with the status quo and lack of action by Congress, then I understand your position. If you are motivated by a fear of what comes next by removing the filibuster, then I would just say that the country survived without a filibuster for many many years (it essentially was only used on civil rights legislation historically). So we can probably survive without it. And it is fundamentally unjust that a majority of a legislature cannot pass bills.
I think the gridlock that we have right now is the intended outcome of our partisan polarization. Both parties are in a race to expand and commandeer the power of the government to install a "permanent" ruling coalition. Getting rid of the filibuster at this point point empowers that end rather than impedes it. Impeding that outcome means electoral reforms that promote the success of idiosyncratic candidates, things like ranked choice voting, and systemic limits on the ability of the federal government to impose the sweeping policy preferences of small national majorities on places where they are deeply unpopular.
Outside electoral reforms, I actually think the best thing that could happen to congress is if Justice Gorsuch can actually revive the non-delegation doctrine. Congress should be spending much more time an taking many more actual votes directing the mundane operation of government, rather than being allowed to hand everything off to the executive and only voting on things they want to use as a campaign ad. The fundamental problem right now is that there's no actual mechanism for making sure congress has a job to do, so they all sit around being pundits and only voting on the things that fire up their primary voters.
What I get from this comment is that you like gridlock and are worried about changes in laws. That's ok, but that's a fundamentally conservative viewpoint, and is focused on protecting past successes as opposed to making changes now.
I think congress should function efficiently within it's properly constrained pluralistic box. Expansive changes rightly require amendments, not legislation. There are such amendments I would support. Gridlock is bad, but it's better than letting either party break the system in the name of their own permanent rule.
I recognize that some people support vision of governance that in America is effectively revolutionary. The question those people need to ask themselves is if they're interested in the bloody kind. Because if they can't even pass an amendment, that's what they're gonna end up with if we keep tearing down the checks and balances of the system.
Congress should have to vote and go on record for or against changes to the Code of Federal Regulations - they are legislation in every meaningful sense of the word, and approving legislation is the job of the legislature. They don't have to write them - agencies have the expertise for that - but we shouldn't have a system that favors members of Congress who are so unserious they'd rather be grandstanding pundits than dirty their hands with legislative compromise.
That's interesting to consider. The Rs want to steal elections with maybe more petty ambitions. The Ds want to throw out all the constraints in the name of expansively remaking society. The Ds mostly want to do it in good faith. The Rs are almost entirely corrupt. It's definitely not symmetrical in many ways, but I regularly struggle to decide which is more dangerous.
I'm reminded of the common Republican refrain from the later Bush years about the Iraq war claiming that the Republicans were exonerated from the consequences of that debacle because the resolution to invade was supported by so many Democratic senators. It's wrongheaded thinking, in a way, but it somehow still carries credibility in American politics today.
I'm pretty sure the real truth of the matter that Manchin doesn't want any bills to become law unless they earn support from a significant chunk of Republicans. That way, he can parry his GOP opponent's accusation that he is a "tax & spend liberal" in 2024 by saying the bill was approved not only with the support of known idiosyncratic Republicans like Rubio & Romney, but also solidly conservative backbenchers like Deb Fischer.
Whenever Manchin says he does or does not support a bill, he is just grandstanding. He really doesn't care if this spending bill passes or not. Same goes for his voting rights bill. Being kingmaker gives the Manchin tons of power, but he wants none of the responsibility that entails. He wants Fischer to carry that water for him. Of course, it won't stop him from taking credit whenever that fantasy becomes reality (like what happened with the physical infrastructure bill).
unrelated but does anyone know what Deb Fischer does all day? Seems like she's been there awhile and I couldn't name a single press release or bill she's contributed to.
I think she's actually a good senator. She keeps her head down, doesn't get involved in stupid Twitter debates, and works to shape legislation that affects her state (like ag stuff) behind the scenes.
We need a lot more Fischers in both parties especially the GOP.