At long last, the Democrats in the Senate have ended the filibuster abuse by the Republicans. This is truly good news, making it easy to meet my weekly obligation to recount such things, and this time I doubt that I'll be limning the good news with cynicism, though first by way of aside: “Shame on you, Carl Levin”.
Let me balance that with “Thank you, Harry Reid”. It's about time, for sure, but better late than never.
There will no doubt be many pundits warning that the Democrats will rue this day. I doubt it.
McConnell has made threats that if Reid takes this half measure (it only applies to presidential appointments of the non-Supreme Court variety), he will retaliate by abolishing the filibuster altogether.
The reasons this should not concern us are legion.
First, the Democrats never made effective use of the filubuster in the first place. Witness the composition of the present Supreme Court. Need I remind anyone, that the filibuster did not stop the truly bad things that Bush did, such as transferring money to the rich through his “tax cut”. Democrats are too easily shamed, whereas the Republicans cannot be shamed. The only emotions they know are greed and fear.
In the short run, we have nothing to fear. It is, of course, possible that the Republicans will take control of the Senate next year. I personally have faith that they'll shoot themselves in the foot as they did in 2012, but let us assume for the moment that they don't. They can abolish the legislative filibuster in 2014, but to what end? It takes 67 votes to override a veto, and that's in the constitution.
Should they take the majority, and they abolisth the filibuster altogether, we also win. I suppose it is possible that one can find examples of the use of the filibuster to prevent something truly bad from happening. But the sad fact is that it has mainly been used to stop progress on every imaginable front. The filibuster was used in the thirties to protect lynch mobs, and its use since then has hardly been more noble. There are no Jimmy Stewarts in real life.
Imagine, if you will, what Obama could have accomplished in 2009 were it not for the filibuster. An effective stimulus, for one. Dare I say it? Perhaps he would even have gone for single payor, or at least a public option. The 2010 backlash would not have happened if Obama had been able to deal effectively with the depression in which we are still mired. Perhaps his own lack of vision would have stopped him anyway, but in real life it was the Republican's determination to bring down the economy in order to make him fail.
There is something to be said for a rule that allows a minority to slow the system down a bit. There is no defense for a system that allows the minority to call the shots, particuarly when, in actuality, only one of the two parties gets to do so. Up until today, the Republicans have controlled the Senate whether they were in the minority or majority. Those days are over, at least when it comes to appointments. Now it's up to Obama to pack the courts and the agencies with real Democrats.
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