Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire. (Obama's promise to televise health care negotiations)

Complaining about a filibuster threat in a 60/40 congress is like Manchester United complaining about spitting in a game against Leeds.

 

So you think there was no practical impact to the Republicans deciding whether they would filibuster or allow an up or down vote? Are you that divorced from reality?

 

I hate danny's disingenuous side. Did I complain? You and your pal vfish are complaining, claiming that the Republicans played no role in the process. Clearly, they did, or we would be looking at a very different bill, I suspect.

 

The republicans played NO role in the creation of the bill. They did their best to stop the bill from ever going forward...but it was democrats who wrote the bill, democrats who made demands and conditions for signing it, and it was democrats who eventually made the bill pass.

I guess that is the problem with being the party of the moderates.

I would have loved for the republicans to have contributed to the bill. But they had something like 3 bills shot down...what makes you think the democrats cared at all what they thought?

 

Because MAx Baucus bent over backwards for Olympia Snowe... The Democratic leadership could have crafted the bill they pretty much wanted if it wasn't for the republican filibuster. Instead, they had to rely on Lieberman -- an independent -- vote and a few outlier conservative democrats.

If the Republican leadership decided to play a constructive role, or decided to let a matter of this importance to not get bogged down in anti-democratic arcane senate rules, the mainstream of the Democratic party would have gotten more of what they wanted and the bill would be different. You're being disingenuous when you agree with Vfish that the Republicans couldn't possibly have had an effect on the process.

Again -- not complaining. just responding to the pathetic whining and victim complexes of the conservatives on here.

 

Oh, pobrecito...the democratic leadership didn't get exactly what they wanted.

WHEN HAS THAT EVER HAPPENED?????!!!!!!!

 

Really? Well, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Me too. I'd love to see something systematic and unassailable to shut up the conservatively biased media forever.

Keep this in mind. The Republicans wouldn't allow an up or down vote. That gave every single Dem (and Dem affiliated Independent) a veto.

I guess one could argue that filibusters are semi-quasi-kinda normal for such big items. But, really, I don't think they are...filibusters have mostly, historically, been used to keep Southern apartheid around.

It's a bit OT, but there's just something fundamentally wrong with our politics right now. A body that already is unrepresentative has slowly but surely (and, since 2006, not so slowly) instituted a new norm, a supermajority norm. It can't work.

 

In a Senate when one party had a caucus 60 members strong?

I'd wager pretty much never. At least since Andrew Johnson was impeached and almost convicted.

danny, you're pretty young, and new to the US. 56 Senators is a hefty, hefty majority. The Dem caucus clears that hurdle by 4. We haven't seen anything like it in our lifetimes, the astonishing electoral failure of the Republican party ca. 2008.

 

Do you know the difference between conservative and democrat? Do you know what an elected official will do to stay in office in a conservative state?

Don't be intentionally dense.

 

I'm not sure health care is the place to do this, but I really wish they would make them actually filibuster. Not a fake one but a real one. Let the cameras focus on them while they emphatically say "no" and then bash the shit out of them for being obstructionists.

15 years ago, you would have seen people like Hatch, Grassley and others cross the aisle long enough to talk . . . . really talk about substance on a bill like this. Now if they do, they get hammered like Graham has. The republicans sold their soul to the far right whack jobs and now it has made them move as one monolithic vote.

 

I don't know why you're insisting on being a dick. You're the one complaining that the Republicans could have no influence over the process, and nothing could be further from the truth.

 

Complaining? I'm laughing at you all for thinking that the crappiness of the legislation is the fault of the republicans. Like somehow the republicans should bend over and take it up the cornhole just so that democrats, who have the strongest majority seen for decades, wouldn't have to put up with finicky moderates from their own party. You guys are pathetic.

 

I understand that not everyone reads every word of every bill. However, when there is 48 hours between the final draft and the vote and you don't even give the senators time to read, research, discuss a once-in-a-generation bill along the like of social security, welfare, etc, that's an issue. If it's just recognizing the East Chilhowee girls basketball team on winning the county championship, that's a bit different.

 

How can people complain about the threat of a Republican Filibuster adversely affecting the bill????? Can you not do math?

Dems caucus with 60 people. The GOP can fillibuster all they want, but 60 is the cloture vote.

This issue, and every single issue in the Senate for the next year is about moderate Democrats--Obama needs them. He doesn't need a single Republican vote. This is common sense.

 

No it isn't. This country is moderate/right.

That's the reality and why Dems do well when they embrace less liberal agendas and trend towards moderation -- or in response to the right going too far right or showing themselves to be completely incompetent.

I think you are seeing the result when people like Pelosi and Reid are setting the agenda -- which is more liberal than the country in general wants.

 

We have a winner.

 

I mostly agree with this. However, I think the overarching Democratic agenda is moderate at most, and that nutty right wing special interests confuse the issues until they are meaningless.

 

Explain how harry reid is a liberal democrat? And explain who you think would be a better suited majority leader than Harry Reid to meet your criteria. Don't say Ben Bernanke, he's not a Senator.

 

Uhmmm, no, I think the crappiness of the legislation is the fault of the Democrats. I am sorry that you are so blinded by partisanship and cheering for your palin republicans that you're missing the point entirely.

 

Which Democrat do you think is "moderate" enough to be the Senate Majority leader?

 

I'm not cheering on the republicans any time soon. I just can't wait for every single democrat in our current congress to be voted out and this legislation reversed. None of them deserve to stay.

 

Here is National Journal's 2008 rankings

Harry's 2008 voting record is scored a 77.3 on the liberal scale (25th in the Senate) and 22.7 on the conservative scale (73rd). That puts him to the left of John Kerry and to the right of Carl Levin.

 

So 25th puts him right in the middle of the democratic range. that sounds like a perfect majority leader.

 

Sorry Mrs. Reid, but that's not really the issue, the real question is how effective a leader has he been.

The Dems were dealt a strong hand, but they overplayed it, and now the Senate Majority Leader’s reelection is in doubt.