Time's up for the filibuster

Okay, so Democrats won the election big time. Fifty-five U. S. Senators so far and one more from Alaska to go ...

But this victory isn't going to mean anywhere near as much if those elected Democratic Senators aren't willing to end or at least curtail the filibuster. The filibuster is their own house rule that they have to line up 60 votes to pass anything except a restricted menu of items that have to do with budgets and expenditures. And to confirm judges nominated by a President; they do that by simple majority. Republicans aren't going to give the winners any votes, so these elected leaders are going to have to stop handcuffing themselves.

Why don't they just do it? Basically, they are scared? Or have only a tiny vision of what they could accomplish? What if the nasty Reps get back in power and squelch them with 51 votes? Have a little confidence, guys and gals -- if you make it so you can do something, do something for the country that majorities want and sell it vigorously. You will not be rewarded for your timid faithfulness to procedural niceties!

I'm so old that I remember a time when the primary use of the filibuster was to protect legal segregation and repress Black people in southern states. President LBJ crashed through that barrier in 1965 to pass the Civil Rights Act. For the past 20 years, Republicans have leaned on the filibuster to make the passage of any civically useful legislation both compromised and tortuously difficult.

Jamelle Bouie makes the case he has been making for years:

... The current rules of the Senate make productivity impossible. As long as the filibuster exists, Democrats will be bogged down in endless negotiations to try to win the minimum of four votes necessary to invoke cloture. Worse, the 60-vote threshold gives every Democrat leverage over the entire agenda. 

If, for example, John Fetterman does not want to pass a new Voting Rights Act, then a new Voting Rights Act will not get passed. Looking at the Senate landscape, it is hard to see where Democrats would pick up additional support. At no point in the last 20 years have Republicans shown any desire to work with Democrats to pass the party’s priorities.

I have made the case for abolishing the filibuster before. The supermajority requirement for legislation has bogged down and undermined the legislature’s ability to govern, weakening Congress and empowering the presidency and the courts. The filibuster impedes bipartisanship by killing most legislation; why work together when there’s almost no chance that the bill will pass? And Democrats should understand by now that the filibuster does far more to impede their program than it does the Republican agenda, which rests almost entirely on items — tax cuts and judicial confirmations — that can be accomplished with a simple majority vote.

He concludes:

... as Senator-elect James Talarico of Texas said earlier this month, just before the election: “The majority has the right to govern in this country.”

The filibuster makes that impossible in the name of an illusory bipartisanship. And while I understand those Democrats who want to reach across the aisle in good faith, they should know that the most important, transformative political programs in the history of this country have been partisan.

Put differently, the voting public did not vote for bipartisanship; they voted for Democrats to govern as Democrats. The least the next Congress could do is to respect that choice and proceed accordingly.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo points out that Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) who is challenging Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for the leadership has indicated he would be open to sensible changes in the filibuster rule. Let 'em compete for who would make sensible modifications that empower majority rule. Marshall likes that:

... The standard argument [against change] is that the filibuster drives compromise. But that’s demonstrably false based on the record of the last quarter century. It creates gridlock. Majorities, even large ones, can’t pass the legislation they promised on the campaign trail. 

But there is a logic to saying that really important legislation shouldn’t barrel through the Senate before the public has gotten a chance to know what’s happening. The best argument for some kind of slow-rolling mechanism is that it gives the minority some time to draw public attention to something the public may not really support.  ...

But after that pause -- just vote, for crying out loud.

"You want people to laugh at him and mock him ..."

As the election dust settles, what does the great whirlwind mean for the ongoing project of making this a more just and democratic (small "d") country?

The historian of Eastern European autocracy and atrocity, Tim Snyder, is interviewing Democratic legislators for a podcast series, "Now We Act," discussing, in the wake of this breakthrough election, now what? These short programs can be found at his Thinking About... site.

I have to to confess this is the wrong medium for me; I don't have time to listen to so much talk. And there are no transcripts. Maybe Snyder will construct a book ...?

But I did appreciate that Aaron Rupar of Public Notice turned the tables on Snyder and interviewed him on what comes next, providing a transcript. Snyder is decidedly not just an observer and student of American politics. He's also a guy from Ohio with wishes for his country. Snyder knows what he hopes for ...

“It’s important to think not about what he’s going to do to us, but what we’re going to do to him.”

... When you win an election and have some kind of power and some kind of political and moral mandate, you have to go on the offensive. You’re betraying your constituents, you’re betraying your voters, and you’re also misunderstanding the moment if you don’t. So for me, the question after November is, what are we going to do to them?

It has to be things like investigating the soft targets around the president, preparing the way for prosecutions, deterring other oligarchic figures from being around Trump by showing there’s a cost, making him as lonely as possible, making things hard for him.

That is, for me, the fundamental issue — what we’re going to do to them, and not what they’re going to do to us. A lot of the problems we have stem from a version of obeying in advance where, sure, you oppose Trump, you’re against him, but you may put his power and emotions and mental state too much front and center as opposed to thinking, what am I going to do to make those powers less and that mental state worse? That is where Democrats ought to be in the autumn of 2026 and the first part of 2027.

Trump understands how to bully people who want to be bullied, which can take you a long way, but it can’t take you to a victory in a war. It can’t even take you to a victory in a trade war. It certainly can’t take you to dominating China — in fact, the reverse has happened.

So that 30 percent support or whatever he still has, that depends on him being seen as a strongman whose supporters still say, “He’ll find a way to figure it out. He’ll solve it.” You have to break that. This election may break it, but if it doesn’t, you have to keep pushing. You want people to laugh at him and mock him. ...

Now that scandal over Jensen Huang, Nvidia, Chinese spies, and Trump administration self-dealings breaks open -- when they've been knocked down, don't let our aspiring overlords get out of the muck they have mired themselves in ... That's the people's job now.

When the "war fighters" go into business

Erudite Partner explores the pattern of bloated militaries setting themselves up as economic powerhouses to escape democratic control in a new article published at The Intercept titled Pentagon, Inc. Trump's so-called "Secretary of War" has launched off on such an attempt. Why should our warriors put up with pesky civilian Congressional oversight when they can fund their power from enterprises they control and run?

By Touch Of Light - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

She explains:

... the Trump administration envisions permanent ownership stakes in companies it deems essential to military preparedness and national security. In the case of the Pentagon, two related offices are responsible for overseeing DoD’s equity investments.

... The Office of Strategic Capital was established in 2022 during Joe Biden’s administration and funded under the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024. The OSC’s initial purpose was to facilitate Pentagon loans to industries it deems crucial to national security. Other parts of DoD use grants or purchases to get money to defense industries. Only OSC can lend those corporations money. Still, neither the NDAA for 2024 nor subsequent NDAAs permits the OSC to buy shares in companies.

... The other entity tasked with overseeing Defense equity investments is the Economic Defense Unit. Established this year through an internal DoD memo, the EDU offers a hint that the Pentagon isn’t ready to give up on capital. Like the Office of Strategic Capital, the EDU is overseen by Defense Department Undersecretary Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire, major Trump donor, and co-founder of the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. ... Quoting a knowledgeable inside source, The American Prospect says that the EDU “operates as a ‘venture capital firm-type entity that looks at deals, what the government’s going to do and evaluates them,’” determining what the government’s ownership stake should be. 

In other words, the Economic Defense Unit looks like the beginning of a Defense Department investment bank. ...

We can see what happens to democratic (small "d") control when the generals go into business; that's the state in Egypt and Iran.

Though Trump's pet military billionaire, Mr.Feinberg, may know something about getting something done with money, it seems pretty certain that Hegseth knows nothing useful about running a bank -- except what the famous robber Willie Sutton knew: "that's where the money is."

It seems likely the Democratic Congress will drive out Pete Hegseth in the new year, but the Trump project of combining theft of resources with escape from civilian oversight is likely to remain as long as this administration lasts. 

... Could the Pentagon really emerge as an economic power in its own right, one that operates in tandem with, but parallel to, the federal government? Not tomorrow, certainly, but now is the time to step on the brakes to prevent that scenario. ...

Yet another abomination to seize and flush away when we finish dethroning our autocrat ... 

A satisfying electioneering experience

With my busted hip, I did hardly anything on the grass roots effort to turn out Dem voters for the election -- except a little bit of texting for a couple of House districts in Pennsylvania. (Bob Brooks, PA-7, and Paige Cognetti, PA-8; both won handily amid the landslide.)

But I'm fortunate in the last couple of days to have had a chance to compare notes with a friend who was even more active on that UniteHERE (union-organized) text bank. And we agreed that, among many election persuasion and GOTV efforts, this method of reaching voters seemed one of the better ones we'd experienced.

Why so? Some thoughts:

• the approach to the voter by text ensured that those we interacted with had essentially agreed to talk with us by responding to an initial text. Presumably the system blasted out text approaches to every phone in the district. Or perhaps the recipients where selected by promising criteria like age and gender. In any case, our interactions were limited to those who responded to a text, who thus had indicated a willingness to engage. Probably 90 or 95 percent of people who got the initial text ignored it -- but the small residue were willing for interaction.

• texting volunteers were given persuasion scripts for responses, but were expected to use our good sense to amplify text conversations when needed; for example, if someone was particularly concerned about the rural health care, I was able to pull up newspaper examples of a nearby hospital threatening to close. The texting could start genuine semi-substantive conversations. And the texting medium gave us time to find a good response, something you don't always have in the moment at a door.

• a particularly successful set of text approaches included ones which attacked the incumbents our candidates were running against. "Tell me what Rob Bresnahan had done for you?" Recipients assumed we were supporting Bresnahan, when in fact we were eliciting their discontent in order to promote his opponent (Cognetti). This really got some of them talking.

• I don't know whether amid the scale of the victory of our candidates anyone is assessing how many of the people we texted with actually turned out to vote. It's certainly a drop in the bucket. But a drop is sometimes what you need and for this moment, this medium of voter contact seemed to work.

There's no question this was one of the more successful feeling election interventions I've done in recent cycles. 

Death penalty staggers toward an end in California

So this week, our retiring governor did the right thing and commuted the sentences of 548 convicted criminals who have been sitting awaiting execution on California's death row for decades. Per Gavin Newsom's order, their sentences are changed to "life without possibility of parole".

Right wingers are screaming that Newsom's action is a plot to let dangerous men go free, but not so. According to the San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko who has been covering the death penalty arguments for decades ...

... under legally binding regulations enacted in July by the state parole board — Title 15, Section 2843 b(6) — any inmate whose sentence has already been commuted by the governor “is not eligible” for another commutation, which the inmate would need to become eligible for parole. 

For these criminals, the threat of capital punishment is over. It's possible that under California law that determined local pro-death prosecutors could still bring new cases and new offenders could be given death sentences -- but would the exorbitant cost, financial and emotional, really be worth it? The incoming governor, Xavier Becerra, is no supporter of the death penalty any more than Newsom.

• • •

I spent 2012 working for the ACLU, trying to persuade the California electorate to end the death penalty by popular vote. We failed. I do think we persuaded most of the state's opinion leaders and major media that capital punishment was hopeless, costly, irrational, uncertain, and just not worth what it did to the state. But a majority of voters disagreed. They disagreed again in 2016. There has not been an execution in the state since 2006. Newsom can claim he has finally brought the state into line with reality.

I learned a tremendous amount from working to persuade and organize voters around the death penalty. A full write up of those conclusions appears here.  Two of my thoughts about that campaign hold up well: 

For some people, the mere existence of a death penalty amounts to a promise from the government that justice will be done in response to hideous crimes. Many people feel this instinctively... [now I'd say without reflection]

Many people, including many of those who cling to the death penalty as an expression of the state's commitment to justice, barely know anything about it. ... 

The death penalty isn't exactly dead and buried in California, but Newsom has moved us much closer to a definitive end. 

Credit where credit is due

Because so many Democratic victories last Tuesday were so sweeping, punditry has tended to focus on how relatively weak the victors' cash supply seemed up against the oligarchs and also how strong their messaging was -- how well Dem candidates fit their districts. And all that is true. 

Opinion writers also crow about how Trump made MAGA vulnerable -- failing at lowering prices while launching a failed war. 

But what tends to get lost in the discourse is the vast amount of volunteer human labor that contributed to those victories. My years of electoral organizing have taught me that even well designed efforts by impassioned fans of a candidate to Get Out The Vote can only carry a campaign so far -- perhaps a 2 percent boost if successful. That's not nothing -- Scott Colom in Mississippi is showing this as I write. In 2022, Catherine Cortez Masto won the US Senate seat in Nevada by a mere 8000 votes, many of them turned out by the union UniteHERE and associated volunteers. 

But too many election pros are oblivious to or dismiss of the people-to-people energy that can get a campaign over the top, not only in the last days, but also by setting the climate for the contest. So I appreciated David Cole's reflection in the New York Review of Books which takes a broad view of how so many people contributed to turning back MAGA. Cole is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and the former National Legal Director of the ACLU.

d

... we owe the blue wave not just to Trump’s own failures but to a pattern of sustained popular organizing and resistance since he retook office. Over the past two years the people marched in No Kings Day rallies, supported Democratic candidates who promised to check Trump, joined and donated to organizations that filed lawsuits challenging the legality of his ventures, raised their voices in outrage and derision at his misconduct, lampooned him on late-night television, exposed his incompetence and mendacity through investigative reporting, and knocked on doors to get out the vote. All of that contributed to the results we saw on election night. People often wonder what they can do in the face of assaults like those Trump repeatedly launched; the answer, in retrospect, is “a lot.” 

... Without our collective engagement, using the tools the Constitution gives us, these midterm results never would have happened. With our engagement, the institutions held, and are stronger now for having done so. The fight for our democracy is by no means over, but we know what to do.

The next round will be even harder. Trump and Stephen Miller can be counted upon to make lawless efforts to recapture momentum for their fascist project. Meanwhile, our Democratic electeds are a big tent and can be expected to struggle to maintain unity for the battles ahead. 

One election doesn't mean the MAGA project is over. But millions made last Tuesday happen and let's remember that we the people did this. A functioning democracy continues to depend on all of us.

Good riddance

Today I'm on an airplane, performing our seasonal migration to hither Massachusetts. But I won't resist passing on this delicious tidbit from the wonderful writer from the LA Times, Anita Chabria.  As I always wonder, what she is doing at the dead duck of a rag -- though LA looks likely to be interesting with its new mayor. Here's her good news:

... It’s not unusual for top government officials to skedaddle after a midterm election. The two-year mark offers a somewhat elegant exit for those who have suddenly decided to spend more time with family.

So it was little surprise when Trump’s legal lapdog Harmeet Dhillon announced Thursday that she was resigning from her job as the head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Someone had to be first, and it doesn’t shock me it was one of the few women left in the administration.

Under her tenure, civil rights were dismantled, which is not historically what the office is for. The agency was hollowed out of the nonpartisan legal experts who made a career serving government — more than 75% of the staff left. Instead, she wielded her power to, as she proudly put it, destroy diversity, equity and inclusion — making observers such as myself wonder whether she actually understood what civil rights are.

“Harmeet Dhillon has been the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history,” said Stacey Young, founder of Justice Connection, a group that supports current and former civil servants driven to near-insanity by the lawlessness of the Trump era. Young served in the Civil Rights office herself, across the administrations of five presidents.

“After she upended the division’s mission-critical work, the civil servants who dedicated their careers to protecting vulnerable communities were instead told to target them — and more than three-quarters of the division’s lawyers left,” Young continued in a statement. “Dhillon wielded the enormous power of the Justice Department to threaten universities, state and local officials, and election workers in spurious cases that rarely won in court.”

Rarely won in court is the key part there, because for all her vitriol and energy, Dhillon mostly lost when an actual judge was involved. ...

Unfortunately, she's most likely running away to northern California where she'll continue to afflict the powerless whenever she can from the private sector.

Science is back in the house!

Among the dozens of delighted commentaries on the election I've read, this one particularly struck me. Katelyn Jetelina, a student of public health and epidemiology, writes Your Local Epidemiologist.  She sees a different Congress:

 ... last night, I saw a STEM wave. More U.S. scientists and physicians ran for state and federal office this cycle than ever before. And many won:

    •    A pediatrician in South Carolina
    •    A public health physician in Michigan
    •    A microbiologist in Georgia
    •    A nuclear engineer in Virginia
    •    A physician in Ohio
    •    An ER nurse in Wisconsin
    •    An environmental engineer in Iowa
    •    A mathematician in Illinois
    •    A physician in New Jersey

The United States said clearly: Health matters. Science matters. Integrity matters. Empathy matters. People matter.

But let’s not forget: change matters. Many of these candidates weren’t focused on defense or the status quo. And rightfully so. We cannot go back to 2019. We cannot go back to 2024. 

The health ecosystem was not working for people. It was built for another time and has failed everyone for years. We need an alternative path forward from the one we’ve been on for the past 20 years, and the one we're on now.

This means it’s time for something bigger than repair. It’s not just about putting the pieces back together; it’s about reimagining what’s possible, and, quite frankly, what’s needed.

Let's get behind these people and let them lead. Their rise is not a moment too soon for the country.

Boogeyman proves past its expiration date

Here's a delicious take on one aspect of Tuesday's blowout election. Take this Elon!

The Secret Weapon That Went Pffft: The GOP’s Anti-Trans Attack Ads

... while the American public wasn’t supportive of transgender people, most didn’t really care about the issue because it didn’t affect them or anyone they knew. Republicans found out that you can only wave a boogeyman around for so long before people stopped believing him/her/them.

... YouGov polling that found that the public trusts Democrats (52 percent) on transgender issues more than Republicans (23 percent). In other words, the people who rated transgender issues as a top priority were more likely to be pro-transgender Democrats than anti-trans Republicans. The GOP bet that they could win an election based on fear and loathing directed at less than 1 percent of the population, on an irrelevant issue that Democrats care more about than the Republican base does.

... Polling suggests that when pressed on the issue, it’s Democrats, not Republicans, who were more likely to say transgender issues are a priority. Additionally, polling indicates that the public thought Republicans were talking way too much about this issue. Regardless of whether Democratic candidates threw their transgender constituents under the bus, however, Republicans still attempted to smear them with accusations of supporting trans people.

The only thing it did was anger a core Democratic constituency. Some Democratic candidates who did flip seemed surprised at how much anger and dissent their transphobic platform created. Dealing with the fallout was a distraction and headache for them and their staff in the waning days of their campaigns. Thus, one could also make the argument that had these candidates not done a heel turn, they would have done even better given the lack of evidence that this was the issue that drew in centrist voters. ... 

Journalist Brynn Tannehill is a Naval Academy graduate, former naval aviator, author, and senior defense analyst. She currently lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her wife and three children.  

The emerging majority has emerged

For me, this chart of national voting demographics from the New York Times says it all.

 

Finally we will get to see what the democratically representative USofA will become. This country has been struggling to be born for the last 20 years.

It won't be simple; it will often be messy. It won't be uniformly progressive. California made the demographic transition around the turn of the century. We got lucky in the availability of a used governor (Jerry Brown) who actually knew a thing or two for awhile. Now we're in the humdrum stew of living out what comes next. Welcome, Mr. Becerra!

I'm sure there will be much to learn and to do as we enter the new configuration. I've always believed that Democrats are only as good as the people make them be. The work of civic democracy never ends, but it sure can feel good sometimes.