{"id":183796,"date":"2012-11-16T20:06:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-17T01:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/11\/16\/snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory\/"},"modified":"2012-11-16T20:06:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-17T01:06:00","slug":"snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/11\/16\/snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Snatching defeat from the Jaws of Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some people call the US Senate, &#8220;the World&#8217;s greatest deliberative body&#8221;.  I call the US Senate, &#8220;A petri dish for narcissistic sociopaths,&#8221; thanks to the need for unanimous consent (of failing that a vote of 60 Senators) to proceed.<\/p>\n<p>Theoretically, the Senate Democrats can change filibuster rules by a simple majority vote at the start of the next Congress.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, it appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/senate\/267471-dems-short-on-votes-for-filibuster-reform\">Harry Reid does not have the votes to make a meaningful reform<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Democrats don\u2019t have the 51 votes they need in the Senate to change filibuster rules that could make it harder for the GOP minority to wield power in the upper chamber.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Lawmakers leading the charge acknowledge they remain short, but express optimism they\u2019ll hit their goal. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI haven\u2019t counted 51 just yet, but we\u2019re working,\u201d said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a leading proponent of the so-called constitutional or \u201cnuclear\u201d option, in which Senate rules could be changed by a majority vote. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cWe\u2019re building the momentum right now,\u201d Udall said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to say at this point, but I think it\u2019s looking very good. The last two years have really helped coalesce people\u2019s minds around the idea that we need to change the way we do business.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The problem for Udall and other supporters of filibuster reform is that many veteran Democratic senators remember when the filibuster was a useful tool in their years in the minority. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In the tradition-bound Senate, these veterans aren\u2019t thrilled with changing the upper chamber\u2019s rules, particularly with the use of the controversial constitutional option \u2014 which has never been used to change the chamber\u2019s rules. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s all well and good to respect Senate tradition, but part of that tradition was to use a bit of restraint, and using the filibuster for the little things.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s sh%$ like this that makes people voting for Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>As repugnant as their agenda, and their values, are at least Republicans are willing to fight for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some people call the US Senate, &#8220;the World&#8217;s greatest deliberative body&#8221;. I call the US Senate, &#8220;A petri dish for narcissistic sociopaths,&#8221; thanks to the need for unanimous consent (of failing that a vote of 60 Senators) to proceed. Theoretically, the Senate Democrats can change filibuster rules by a simple majority vote at the start &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,1051,978,985,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-hypocrisy","category-politics","category-regulation","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}