Progress, Anyone?

I have to think there are tiny rays of sunshine peeking thru the gloom - cuz I'm such a hopeful and optimistic fuck, don'tcha y'know.

One of the problems I have is that I rarely find a really good analysis of what any given piece of legislation actually says, and tries to accomplish.

Talking about what we need to do on our southern border, we have to put something in place that allows for compliance with our treaty obligations, while gearing up for possibly massive increases in human migration because of political and economic disruptions driven by Climate Change - and while trying to be humane about the whole fuckin' mess.

It's a puzzlement, as usual.

Anyway, we can take a shot at cutting it into bite-size chunks so we don't have to try swallowing the whole big ugly thing at once.

And maybe we're also getting a look at some pretty slick politicking on the part of some so-far-not-very impressive players.

Chuck Schumer and Mitt Romney and Tom Tillis and Bill Lankford are not names that come tripping easily off my tongue when I try to speak of the great thinkers and statesmen of the US Senate. But I have to reserve judgement until I see if this thing they're cooking up can actually serve the dual purpose of moving better Border Security into place, while also prying loose a few of Trump's fingers from the throats of Republicans.

Today's Wingnut

Tommy Tuberville is known as the dumbest member of the US Senate.

Classic bit of abuser's bullshit at about 10:55

"I hate to have to do this."

Translated: "I'll stop hitting you when you stop making me hit you."

 

Hey, asshole - nobody's "making" you do anything. You're doing it because you choose to do it. Take responsibility for your own actions and stop blaming your victims for what you're doing.

What a fuckin' dick this guy is.

Listen Up

From @DanteAtkins

"Lol we don't need Warnock" is what people say who haven't worked in Congress and don't know how it works. Here are the differences that a 51st Senator can make, just off the top of my head:

• A 51st Dem means no power-sharing in the organizing resolution. Dems have a majority on committees. no more deadlocks, no more discharge petitions for floor votes. That massively accelerates both the legislative process and the confirmation process.
• The individual power of the two chaos muppets (Manchin and Sinema) is drastically reduced. Both of them will now need to be opposed to whatever Dems are trying to do in order to block progress.
• The Senate is a gerontocracy. These guys are not healthy a lot of the time, or not present a lot of the time. We could have a death in a state with a Republican governor. A lot of things could happen. 51-49 versus 50-50 means you can have up to 2 absences/noes.
• A 51-49 majority means that VP Harris won't be required to be in DC to babysit the Senate all of the time, and can actually be a much more effective VP who can be deployed for both policy and campaigning.

So the upshot is, work for Warnock just as hard as you would if you thought Schumer's gavel depended on it. Because as far as you know, at some point in the next two years, it just might.

A Survey

The kicker - spoiler alert - is that when Joe Manchin tries to assert that 20-25% of Americans don't feel terribly confident in our elections and woe is me, we can't take the chance on making it worse...?

What the actual fuck, Joe?

First, that means 75-80% of us do in fact have confidence in our elections, so your argument is pretty weak shit to begin with.

Second, you're in a position to change those minds, SENATOR Manchin. Jeezus H Fuq, you have access to everything thing you could possibly want if you decided just to do your fucking job, asshole.

Vox:

Back in March, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer obtained a recording of an adviser to Mitch McConnell privately bemoaning, on a call with conservative group leaders, that Democrats’ big voting rights bill, the For the People Act, polled quite well. “When presented with a very neutral description” of it, “people were generally supportive,” the adviser said.

A new Data for Progress poll conducted as part of a partnership with Vox backs up that assessment. The poll surveyed 1,138 likely voters nationally between April 16 and April 19, and it finds that much of what the 800-page bill claims to do is overwhelmingly popular.

More than 80 percent of respondents said they supported preventing foreign interference in elections, limiting the influence of money in politics, and modernizing election infrastructure to increase election security. More than 60 percent of respondents supported requiring nonpartisan redistricting commissions, a 15-day early voting period for all federal elections, same-day registration for all eligible voters, automatic voter registration for all eligible voters, and giving every voter the option to vote by mail.

There are, of course, a few caveats. The poll presented these questions without partisan cues about which party supports which proposal. Indeed, the one question that mentioned the parties — about whether Democrats should change Senate rules so they could pass redistricting reform without Republican support — was much more closely divided. (Forty-seven percent of respondents said they supported doing this, and 42 percent said they opposed it.)

The questions also didn’t spotlight Republicans’ preferred arguments — for instance, Republicans would stress concerns that same-day and automatic registration could allow ineligible people to vote, which would likely make some respondents more concerned about these proposals.

And other parts of the bill, like its limits to voter ID laws (it would allow voters without ID to submit a sworn statement vouching for their identity) and its creation of a public financing system to match small donations, may be more controversial. Voter ID requirements generally poll quite well and support for public financing can vary greatly based on question wording. (In polling for a separate client, Data for Progress found 56 percent support for one detailed description of the For the People Act’s matching program, but the conservative polling firm Echelon Insights found very little support for the general concept of “using government dollars to match donations to political campaigns.”)

The poll also asked about a competing redistricting reform proposal not currently in the For the People Act — setting proportional standards such that, if a party wins about half of votes in a state, it should win about half the seats. (I recently wrote about the debate among Democrats over this idea.) This got less support than any of the other provisions above but still was backed by 51 percent of poll respondents, with 34 percent saying they opposed this.

In any case, Democrats’ problem when it comes to enacting the For the People Act isn’t the polls — it’s the Senate filibuster. The bill that already passed in a near party-line vote in the House will require a 60-vote supermajority to pass in the Senate. Since no Republican support appears to be in the offing, activists have argued that the Senate should change its rules to let the bill pass. But moderate Democratic senators don’t want to do this.

One key holdout, Joe Manchin, told me in a recent profile that he fears passing a major voting bill on party lines would only further divide the country. He argued that 20 to 25 percent of the public already doesn’t trust the system and that a party-line overhaul would “guarantee” that number would increase, leading to more “anarchy” like that at the Capitol on January 6. He added, “I just believe with all my heart and soul that’s what would happen, and I’m not going to be part of it.”

Unless he changes his mind, the For the People Act can’t pass the Senate.

Mitch Mitch Mitch

Mitch McConnell threatens to do shitty things if we make him stop doing shitty things.

WaPo: (pay wall)

“Let me say this very clearly for all 99 of my colleagues: Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin — can even begin to imagine — what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” Mitch McConnell said in a speech Wednesday, explaining his opposition to reforming the filibuster.

At this, a low laughter began somewhere near the ceiling of the Senate chamber. It went on a very long time until the walls rang, like the Liberty Bell would if it hadn’t been for the incident.

“No?” a voice said, and then the laughter redoubled. “We can’t? We can’t even begin to imagine? I think … I think I can begin to imagine it.”

Mitch McConnell started to explain that the Senate was a body where, technically, you needed unanimous consent to turn the lights on before noon, and the laughter began again.

“I’m sorry,” the voice said. “It’s just, you are Mitch McConnell, no? (R-Ky.)?”

Mitch McConnell agreed that he was.

“The Senate minority leader, the ‘party of no’ guy, thanks to whose tireless efforts judicial vacancies piled up all through the Obama era like unread messages in the Gmail of a moderately depressed millennial?”

Mitch McConnell agreed that he was, although he was not certain about the simile.

“And you’re saying it will be really difficult to imagine a Senate where business grinds to a halt because you’re making it difficult to get things through?”

Mitch McConnell said that yes, he was.

“And you’re Mitch McConnell.”

The laughter started up again, and Mitch McConnell waited for it to finish. “I’m sorry,” the voice went on, “it’s just — you have seen the Senate lately, yes? Or wait, are you a time traveler? That would explain it.”

Mitch McConnell explained stiffly that he only traveled forward in time, unless something was trying to get to the floor of the Senate that he disapproved of, in which case he could remain suspended indefinitely between motions.

“What year do you think it is?” the voice asked. “If you thought it were, say, 2009, I could see how you would think a threat that ordinary business in the Senate would be bogged down by constant bad-faith appeals to arcane procedures, leaving all legislation subject to the whim of Mitch McConnell, might carry weight. But hearing you say it now — it is like Mitch McConnell dropped me in the middle of a desert from a helicopter and I have lived here for years and now I know what lizards are safe to eat and what lizards are not safe to eat, and suddenly Mitch McConnell is here saying he will drop me in the middle of a desert from a helicopter as though it’s a threat, and it’s like, Mitch, where do you think we are?”

“You really like similes,” Mitch McConnell said. “But my threat still carries weight. Picture a Senate where everything is very unpleasant all the time. Picture a Senate where nothing gets through unless it gets through me, and where I exult in thwarting the agenda of the opposing party at every turn, even for wafer-thin reasons. Picture a Senate where I, Mitch McConnell, rule supreme, through sheer contumaciousness. You can’t picture it, can you?"

“Uh,” the voice said. “You are just having fun and accepting the premise now, yes?”

“This scenario bears no resemblance to anything anyone has lived!" Mitch McConnell said. “Use your utmost imagination to envision a forbidding place where nothing got through without constant opposition from me —"

“I’m sorry,” the voice said. "Do you have any other threats? If this doesn’t work, are you going to replace an increasing number of Republican members of Congress with appeasers of the lunatic fringe? Are you going to make Donald Trump the president? I’m just trying to imagine what threats you have left in the bag. If we don’t let you block the upcoming series of necessary voting rights measures, are you going to — undermine Americans’ voting rights? Do you see what I’m getting at here? Banishing us to the outer darkness just isn’t very much of a threat if we’re already in the Senate with Mitch McConnell.”

Rules

Sometimes, you have to wield your power simply to demonstrate to the other side that you have it and you intend to use it.

Call it dick-waving or whatever you think is fitting, but the Dems have to understand that they're in a brick fight, and that snappy repartee and throwing witty jibes at assholes like Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul just ain't gonna cut it. They don't care about your superior vocabulary or paying homage to institutional traditions - they care about getting smashed in the face with heavy, smartly-thrown masonry.

Two things:

1. Biden has nothing to do with whether or not the filibuster stays or goes, and he needs to respect the separation of powers
2. Biden does have that Bully Pulpit thing to work with

WaPo: (pay wall)

Pressure grows on Biden to end the filibuster

Pressure is building on President Biden, a longtime backer of traditional Washington rules, to do away with the filibuster and other procedures as Democrats press him to seize what could be a fleeting moment of power to enact his agenda.

Liberals have long pushed for sweeping changes such as expanding the Supreme Court, ending the electoral college and banning gerrymandering. But as Biden faces a critical stretch of his presidency, even moderate Democrats are urging more-immediate changes — particularly rewriting the filibuster so that at the very least fewer bills need 60 votes to pass the Senate.

Democrats increasingly worry that popular pieces of Biden’s agenda will hit a wall in the Senate, including his plans for climate change, immigration, gun control, voting rights and LGBT protections. Failing to enact them, they fear, could be a political disaster for Democrats.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a centrist, said Wednesday she wants to “get rid of the filibuster,” her toughest comments to date on the matter. By Thursday, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) announced via social media that she, too, now wants to abolish the filibuster, because “the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the filibuster has long been the enemy of progress.”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), also a moderate, told The Washington Post he could envision the Senate changing the filibuster if bills are floundering. “We’ve got to figure out whether leadership on both sides wants to have obstruction or if they want to come together and try to get some things done,” Tester said.

For the moment, Democrats do not have the votes to fully abolish the filibuster, which allows a senator to block a bill by refusing to yield the floor unless at least 60 senators overrule the speaker. Some Democrats, such as Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), oppose repeal. (“Never!” he shouted recently at a journalist who asked.) So advocates are looking for ways to limit the filibuster instead of ending it — and hoping Biden weighs in.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) warned that if Democrats fail to pass a popular agenda because of arcane Senate rules, the party will suffer in the midterm elections. “It will be a Democratic Party Armageddon in 2022 if we sit here on our butts and say, ‘Oh, we’re sorry, we’re not as determined to get our agenda passed as Republicans were,’ ” said Merkley, who is spearheading an overhaul effort.

Republicans say such changes would create a free-for-all in the Senate and contend Democrats are threatening to toss the rules to gain an unearned political advantage.

“The same party that wants to change Senate rules when they lose a vote, pack the Supreme Court when they lose a case and throw out the electoral college every time they lose the White House now wants to forcibly rewrite 50 states’ election laws from Washington,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said recently on the Senate floor, speaking in opposition to a Democratic election bill.

He added, “Millions of American voters elected 50 Republican senators and a whole lot of House Republicans to make sure that Democrats play by the rules, not rewrite the rules.”

As the presidential campaign unfolded and the depth of many Democrats’ dissatisfaction became clear, Biden softened his vociferous opposition to changing Washington’s rules. In July, he conceded that his approach to the filibuster would “depend on how obstreperous [Republicans] become.” After resisting proposals to expand the Supreme Court, he promised a commission to look into changes of the court’s structure.

Now that Biden is president, such middle positions could be harder to sustain. Biden faces a choice, some activists say, between ruling mostly via executive fiat — which permits modest accomplishments at best — and pulling down the structural obstacles.

For now, the White House is keeping its options on the table.

“One thing that is nonnegotiable is him delivering for the American people,” said Emmy Ruiz, the White House political director. “The number-one priority here is to get this agenda, this bold agenda, passed through Congress.”

A White House official, not authorized to the discuss the administration’s legislative approach and speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the “strategy is adjusting every single day,” reiterating Biden’s position that the filibuster is not sacrosanct, while the agenda is.

But with Democrats potentially losing their narrow House or Senate majorities in 2022 — a president’s party usually fares poorly in midterms — the Democrats’ window for change may be short-lived.

The vulnerability of Biden’s agenda became clear last week when a proposed minimum-wage increase ran into a procedural hurdle and was removed from his coronavirus relief package. Some Democrats, and many activists, saw that as a warning sign for the rest of Biden’s agenda.

And while Biden hopes to soon pass a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, the second-largest stimulus bill ever to go through Congress, he may struggle to repeat that feat with measures that do not fit as easily into “reconciliation,” a maneuver allowing a bill to pass the Senate with a simple majority instead of 60 votes.

Biden will have just two more opportunities to use reconciliation before the midterms, and only budget-related bills qualify. It is the Senate parliamentarian who decides whether a bill fits under reconciliation, and while her advice can be ignored, Democrats have chosen to abide by her rulings.


“It’s not an ideal procedure to get things done, but politically this is the only palatable path right now to progress on key issues,” said Ben LaBolt, an aide in the Obama administration.

Some liberals in Congress sent a letter this week to Biden and Vice President Harris urging them to sidestep the parliamentarian’s decision on the minium wage, a move that has historical precedent.

“There is an institutional deference that maybe would have been fine in times past, but a defense of the status quo is inadequate to the challenges of our time,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). “We have to follow the rule of law, but we don’t have to defer to traditions and norms.”

Without such changes, Senate rules force advocates into a tortuous process of making sometimes circuitous arguments for why their bills fit reconciliation.

Kerri Talbot, deputy director of the Immigration Hub, a pro-immigrant organization, said reconciliation may be the best hope for passing a citizenship measure for at least some of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. “We think we can qualify, due to the economic impact of providing a path to citizenship,” Talbot said. “Ultimately it’s a big boon for the economy, but in the short run there are some costs involved as well.”

Advocates and 100 lawmakers have asked Biden to consider legalizing at least 5 million undocumented immigrants via budget reconciliation. Three people with detailed understanding of Senate rules, however, said it is unlikely that a broad immigration plan would pass the parliamentarian’s muster.

Immigration activists are preparing for that eventuality. “We have to understand that the ruling of the Senate parliamentarian is not the end of the story,” said Carlos Rojas Rodriguez, who was among 150 supporters and ex-staffers of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who wrote Sanders last week urging him to use reconciliation.

If the Senate parliamentarian disagrees, Rojas Rodriguez said, Democrats should overrule her.

Merkley said he is seeing steadily more receptiveness from his colleagues for ending the filibuster. In 2009 when he first joined the Senate, the push for change was “a very lonely journey,” he said, but now “there’s been a massive shift.”

Proponents are casting about for proposals that could win over the last few votes for change. For example, a current Democratic bill to overhaul elections is expected to attract no Republican support, prompting some Democrats to suggest an exception to the filibuster for civil rights and voting matters.

Biden’s climate agenda, a top priority for the party’s liberal wing and many young voters, also would probably struggle to attract 60 Senate votes, nor would it easily qualify for reconciliation. One lobbyist familiar with Biden’s plan said it would be unlikely to meet the reconciliation test without being substantially redrafted.

Some lawmakers believe that if a stack of popular bills passes the House but cannot get through the Senate, it would put critical pressure on Senate Democrats to consider revamping their system.

“The longer the Senate doesn’t function as it used to, pressure will keep building for changes that would allow overwhelmingly popular policies to move forward,” said Phil Schiliro, who headed legislative affairs in the Obama White House.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has sidestepped questions about how Biden’s agenda could make it through the currently configured Senate.

“The bottom line is we’re going to come together as a caucus and figure out a way to get the bold action that the American people demand,” Schumer said recently. “We will put bills on the floor. We’re not going to be the legislative graveyard.”

Biden is uniquely situated to push for a major change to the Senate proceedings, some Democrats say, because of his credibility as a Senate institutionalist. He served in the chamber for more than three decades and frequently speaks of it with affection.

In his previous stint in the executive branch, Biden showed flexibility. As vice president he supported the Obama administration’s push to end the filibuster on most judicial nominations, lobbying his former colleagues to make the change, said Ed Pagano, a legislative-affairs aide in the White House at the time.

But Biden is also on the record defending Senate traditions such as the parliamentarian’s rulings, saying in a 2005 floor speech that heeding them had “been the practice for 218 years.”

As for killing the filibuster — that, he warned at the time, would be “a fundamental power grab by the majority party.”

Just Cuz

I think it would be all totally awesome and stuff to have somebody in the US Senate named Mazie.