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Comment by tehwebguy | Hacker News Reader

Incredible, once again the Senate is completely incapable of doing anything good but gets their shit together whenever it’s time to do something stupid and terrible. Would be better to just vote against the majority going forward, at least try to tie things up so they can do nothing instead of what they end up doing whenever they get around to doing something.

Truly amazing how Chuck Schumer gets a pass in the media for being so utterly worthless.

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I don't understand why people keep voting them back in?? They've been useless for so long, yet people continue to check the box next to their name. Why?

Apathy and groupthink, my friend.

Some but not all of the reasons: It's virtually impossible for a primary candidate to unseat an incumbent in their own party, and gerrymandering makes it so that opposing parties rarely have solid candidates.

Same for there simply not being another candidate most of the time. If you have a 70% conservative / republican county or state, running democrat doesn't make much sense, and is an especially bad investment for any donors.

You might call it regulatory capture of democracy.

One big reason is that many people will insist that their representative doesn't contribute to a problem, or has a particular reason for doing so that excuses the behavior. It's essentially always everyone else's representative that is the problem, and so they vote theirs back in and the cycle continues.

Welcome to "democracy," where college studies show that only the rich and powerful ever get what they want while the normal citizen is continuously shafted in new and exciting ways.

Mainly because of the two-party system. The pre-selection of candidates forces you to choose between two evils and it most often becomes a matter of the devil you know versus the devil you don't know.

Right majority or left majority the senate always seems to do nothing but work against the people.

We've never had a left majority in either part of congress.

Depends on your definition of left I guess? Dems held a majority in both houses + presidency 2009-11, and also 1993-95, and 1979-81...

Yeah, but because of obscure technicalities around the filibuster, the Dems need 60 votes to pass their agenda, but the Republicans pass theirs with 50.

The filibuster is just a rule that the Senate made for itself. If you have 50 Senate votes to actually get stuff done you can get it done by changing that rule.

What the Democrats had was 50 votes to wring their hands and say it's impossible. Maybe they have 48 votes to get it done, maybe fewer. But they don't have 50 votes to actually get it done, so it doesn't get done.

It suits several Democrats (famously two, but the real number is likely more) in the senate to say they can't do anything, but that isn't the case, it's a lie. You've probably told lies just like it. Oh, I can't come to the your party, so sorry, we have to er, see my wife's parents yeah. You don't want to go to their party, but you say you can't even though it isn't true.

Almost no definition of "the left" includes all America Democrat party members, much less a majority of them.

https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/...

“Since 1857, the government has been unified 47 times, 22 under Democratic control and 25 under Republican control”

Not entertaining arguments about so and so party isn’t of this or that wing.

Haha okay well I guess if you're just going to ignore facts and substitute it with your own, have at it.

But either way, they didn't say "Democrat" they said "left".

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