Hacker News Reader

>I don’t think OP is denying that there are differences between the parties.

I'm not sure we read the same comment then.

Your own comment even circles back around to agreeing with the basic premise, so I'm confused as to why you're even disputing something that you're in fundamental agreement with.

The parties are in disputably different, and electoral outcomes lead to massive differences in policy choices which are clear to anyone who's willing to bother to do the research. It takes a lot of finessing and hedging and caveats and broad meandering musings on political grand strategy to start to attempt to equate the political parties. The reason it requires that much work is because the parties are indeed different.

>> It’s hard to deny that the result of the current democratic strategy is not meaningfully different from what Mitch McConnell wants, whether it’s deliberate or not.

The result you are talking about is not the result of Democratic strategy, but of Manchin’s (and to a lesser extent, Sinema’s) blocking of anything meaningful and impactful.

This is unknowable. There could be 5 other Democrats that agree with Manchin but why voice it when Manchin can take the heat with no political consequences.

The current composition of the senate, 50-50, and the antiquated filibuster process, mean that the senate cannot do anything without bipartisan consensus. Not sure why you are railing about democrats that are secretly republicans when that is clearly not the issue.

The current composition of the Senate is the product of a deliberate choice by socially liberal pro-business democrats (i.e. Rockefeller republicans) to prioritize social issues such as abortion and immigration over economic ones.

There is no constitutional basis for the filibuster. It's just a rule the Senate invented. And they can un-invent it. Whenever the new Congress forms, the Senate Majority Leader sets the rules for that Congress. This includes the number of seats on committees and so forth.

What you have is Democrats who hide behind "institutions" as an excuse to do nothing and Republicans who quite literally will change the rules whenever it suits them. Examples include:

1. Firing the Senate parliamentarian when he blocked the Senate from advancing Bush tax cuts;

2. Deciding completely without basis that with 11 months left of Obama's term, it somehow wasn't proper to hold a hearing or a vote on Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court; and

3. Deciding that any nomination (not just judicial) couldn't be filibustered (Harry Reid had previously changed the rules to make Supreme Court nominations filibuster-proof).

But what is the filibuster? Up until I believe the 1970s it was a process where a Senator who had the floor could refuse to yield and keep talking to block a vlote as long as they could keep standing. This is real "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" type stuff [1].

This Senate refused to change the rules on this so here we are. Two proposals have been made:

1. Eliminate the filibuster entirely. It's pretty much only ever used to block progress (eg by blocking civil rights legislation in the 1960s); or

2. Require a Senator to actually filibuster by going back to the old system of holding the floor and refusing to yield.

Both of course failed. Why? Because the corporate interests that own Manchin and Sinema don't want that because that might allow some form of progress, all under the guise of institutionalism. But this is a post-facto justification. I guarantee you the second the next Republican president holds office and the Republicans hold a majority in the Senate, the filibuster is gone.

The current rotating villains of the Democratic Party couldn't even bring themselves to bypass the filibuster to pass legislation to protect voting rights, which shouldn't even be controversial. But of course it is controversial because voting rights might endanger the red wave of voter suppression.

None of this has to be the case. Schumer won't go nuclear on this either because Schumer represents the interests of Wall Street.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPv0S1-ETdI

"Firing the Senate parliamentarian when he blocked the Senate from advancing Bush tax cuts"

Not a great example. Democrats and Republicans have both switched up the parliamentarian when they've taken control of the Senate.

Democrats fired Alan Frumin in 1987 when they won a majority and appointed Robert Dove.

In 2001 (your example), four years after winning the majority back, Republicans fired Dove and reappointed Alan Frumin. Frumin went on to be a key figure in helping Obama with passage of elements of the ACA, so not exactly a hardcore partisan.

The parliamentarian has hardly been a nexus of cutthroat politics, just the normal ebb and flow of power and control in the Senate.

To be clear, my argument isn't firing him was right or wrong. My argument was that Republicans are willing to bend, change or just completely ignore rules when it suits them. Republicans talk about institutions when it suits them and don't when it doesn't. Democrats largely are LARPing in a world that doesn't exist of civilized debate.

My argument more simply is that Democrats should be more like Republicans. Not in policy issues but in terms of effectiveness: whipping votes, advancing an agenda and punishing dissent.

If you talk to a Republican supporter they will say the same thing about their side, that the useless Republican politicians in Congress won’t stand up to the Democrats and actually accomplish anything, and the Democrats are full of dirty tricks that the Republicans just roll over for, and so on.

For both parties it’s partially right and partially wrong, but what it’s not is anything unique or inherent to one side.

Eh I mean some of them are though. Manchin and Sinema get the biggest hate, but there are others who agree with him who are just not as obvious or loud about it.

I mean abortion rights which were settled for 50 years just got completely destroyed, and if the entire Democratic party actually cared about this issue, they'd enshrine it as a right in law with 51 votes, but they won't because a handful secretly agree that abortion should be illegal.

> they'd enshrine it as a right in law with 51 votes

That enshrinement will last ~6 months. A supreme court decision on the subject of body autonomy was a far stronger form of protection than legislature ever could have been.

I'm not sure why people keep repeating the falsehood that claims the contrary (other than to repeat the both-sides meme).

> The current composition of the senate, 50-50, and the antiquated filibuster process, mean that the senate cannot do anything without bipartisan consensus. Not sure why you are railing about democrats that are secretly republicans when that is clearly not the issue.

When Trump wanted to kill the remaining bits of Obama era banking reform, he didn't have 60 votes in the Senate, which didn't matter because the Centrist Democrats voted with him.

>The “Crapo bill,” a bank deregulation measure co-authored by Senate Banking Committee chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and several centrist Democrats, passed Congress this spring with the help of 17 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus and 33 House Democrats.

https://theintercept.com/2018/11/10/dodd-frank-deregulation-...

In the same manner, the Centrist Democrats saved the Bush era tax cuts for the rich from automatically expiring during the Obama years despite the fact that the party had control of the House, Senate, and White House at the time.

The Bush era Republicans had passed those tax cuts under Senate reconciliation rules requiring only 50 votes in the Senate which placed a time limit after which they would automatically expire with no action needed.

The Centrist Democrats voted, repeatedly, with the Republicans to make sure they wouldn't expire.

Then, of course, history repeated itself with the Trump tax cuts, which ALL the Democrats claimed to find abhorrent (yes, even Manchin), until it became possible to do something about them.

https://prospect.org/economy/the-impossible-inevitable-survi...

I really just think the issue is the senate. Look at all the bills that passed the house. They passed a bill that try’s to solve gerrymandering. They passed abortion legislation. They passed all the economic stuff Biden wanted, including his signature legislation universal pre k. But the senate needs 60 votes to pass anything other than a budget, which no one will ever have. I’m inclined to agree that the filibuster is mostly an excuse to not vote for things manchin and sinema wouldn’t vote for either way, but at that point it’s hard to say democrats have a majority in the senate.

> But the senate needs 60 votes to pass anything other than a budget

Incorrect.

One of the other things it can do with a simple majority is alter or eliminate the 60 vote requirement.

Right but it’s pretty clear that there isn’t a majority willing to do that.

Being able to pass a budget with a bare majority is a lot of power! They could raise taxes and increase funding for existing programs with that power. You know, the stuff people vote in Democrats to do.

I mean they sort of did increase funding. They passed a 2 trillion dollar stimulus bill.