Time to cut ties with Manchin

Unlimited debate was part of Senate proceedings from the very beginning, documented as early as 1789. There was no creation of a debate-limiting rule, cloture, until 1917.
The intent is to compel the majority to amend their bill enough to get some portion of the minority to cross over. That's the point, and that's how the minority protects themselves.

 

That is accurate. The Senate is where the heat of the moment is cooled. The Senate has been described as being like a saucer. The cup and saucer were designed for the saucer to be used to cool down the coffee rather than to shield the table.

The Senate was also designed to speak for states rather than as agents of the public that votes. The error was made in 1913 when the public first was allowed to vote for Senators.

 

I'm afraid not.

First, historical lore says that the filibuster was part of the original design of the Senate. Not true. When we scour early Senate history, we discover that the filibuster was created by mistake.

Second, we often say that the 19th century Senate was a golden age of deliberation. But the golden age was not so golden: Senate leaders by the 1840s were already trying to adopt a cloture rule. But most such efforts to bar the filibuster were filibustered.

Third, creation of the cloture rule in 1917 was not a statement of the Senate’s love for supermajority rules. Instead, it was the product of hard-nose bargaining with an obstructive minority. Short-term, pragmatic politics shape contests to change Senate rules.
https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/the-history-of-the-filibuster/

 

I'd say 1789, the first Senate session, is far enough back.
". . . The tactic of using long speeches to delay action on legislation appeared in the very first session of the Senate. On September 22, 1789, Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay wrote in his diary that the “design of the Virginians . . . was to talk away the time, so that we could not get the bill passed.” As the number of filibusters grew in the 19th century, the Senate had no formal process to allow a majority to end debate and force a vote on legislation or nominations. . . . "
U.S. Senate: About Filibusters and Cloture | Historical Overview
https://www.senate.gov › about › powers-procedures

 

Then lets get back to that.

 

That's fine if you wish, but be careful. The old fashioned "talking filibuster" blocks all other Senate business. The modern version of the filibuster was created to allow other business to proceed.

 

And to allow for bills to be permanently stalled, which is not what the filibuster was for.

I am good with stopping all other business while they talk, this will force them to eventually quit talking.

The modern day version is a lazy man's way out so both parties can blame failure on the other party.

 

Again, I'm fine either way, but I think you'd end up retreating to square one pretty quickly. Remember, for example, that Republicans have no interest at all in facilitating confirmation of Biden's judicial nominees.

 

Chances are I do not agree with most of them anyhow.

 

Don't feel bad just because he's wise enough to realize that getting rid of, or weakening the filibuster is a sure path to have major flip flops in how the country is run each time the opposing party gets into power. The pendulum always swings the other way.

Think about it. Just for once think about it.

1: Democrats get rid of filibuster while in power.
2: Democrats get all of their agenda passed thanks to Kamala being the decider. There is nothing that Republicans can do to stop anything.
3: 2024 rolls around and Republican's get into power with control of both Congress and the WH.
4: Republican's repeal everything that Democrats instituted. There is nothing Democrats can do to stop anything.
5: Republican's institute everything that was on their agenda.
6: 2028 Democrats come into power.
7: Rinse and Repeat.

Do you have ANY idea how chaotic such a system will be? It'd be one thing if we weren't so divided. But right now, getting rid of the filibuster would be extremely stupid.

 

Or perhaps the people would like how one party is doing and keep them in power for a little while longer.

As it is now both parties have a built in excuse for nothing getting done.

Sooner or later that will have the change or we will not have any bridges or roads left to drive on

 

A little levity.

McConnell Says Corporations Should Follow His Example and Not Get Involved in Government

Senator Mitch McConnell urged the nation’s largest corporations to follow his example and not get involved in governing the country.

Speaking to reporters, the Senate Minority Leader said that he “could have easily used my position over the years to make the country a better place, but I have wisely resisted that temptation.”
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/bor...is-example-and-not-get-involved-in-government

 

The flaw I see in your idea is that if the democrats get rid of the filibuster DC is guaranteed to get statehood. That will give them 2 more guaranteed votes. There is also the chance they will give Puerto Rico statehood and that would probably also help them at least in the short run. In the long run they could become republican. That will make it very hard for Republicans to win back the senate in the short run.

 

By All means, drive him out of the Party. All he has to do is say the word, and Mitch McConnell is majority leader again. His state is one of the most Republican states in the nation. A switch from Dem to GOP or Independent caucusing with the GOP would take his next re election campaign from close to an easy lay up. So yes, please heap your hate on Joe "Love's America" Manchin.

JOE MANCHIN: I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster.

The Senate filibuster dates to 1805. It provides an opportunity for heads to cool, reason to prevail and strong majority coalitions to form during the lawmaking process.

While rank and file dems are as fine of people as you'll find anywhere, a small shrill group of very old authoritarians have grabbed and held on to power. Now on their last lap, they don't care about preserving the institutions that have protected our freedom and liberty all these generations, they want what they want and they want it right now.

They obtained power through a freak plague that they use to strip vote fraud protections out of the 2020 elections, and just barely, managed to get the smallest of edges in Congress and a rapidly declining doddering old fool in the WH who will sign their extremist agenda if they can just get to 50 votes so they can rape the 60 vote requirement with an assist from Kackling Kamala.

But, thanks to the patriotic democratic, rather than authoritarian, Democrats from AZ and WV, they can't even get to 49, much less 50, rendering Kamala about as useful as rake on a dance floor.

JOE MANCHIN: I love America too much to vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster.

Authoritarian Democrats began attacking the filibuster as these very old extremists rose to power, on their last terms, willing to burn down the traditions to get what they wanted on their final lap.

America's Joe Manchin was one of only three Democratic senators to vote against this rule change.

McConnel warned the Dems that if they took this step, they would regret it, and maybe far sooner than they expected. You see, every time Dems come to power they tell each other that they will remain in power for 40 years as they strip out the protections for the minority party. They normally lose their power in 2 years, because they are constantly working to pass an extremist agenda that the nation does not support. So, in 2017, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), true to his word, lowered the threshold to end debate on Supreme Court nominees to a simple majority. America's Joe Manchin voted against that change, too.

Now the crazed Democrats want to change the rules again, to make it easier for a transient barest of majorities to quickly ram through an extremist agenda before the Electorate can throw them out again, and once again, America's Joe is standing up to the knuckleheads, the leader of the sensible Democrats who refuse to allow the barest of majorities to ram through its extremist agenda with no tempering from the minority.

Sensible Joe goes on:

Hear! Hear!

 

What “ties” do you propose to cut? He was elected by the voter of West Virginia and is responsible to him. Wanna kick him out of the Democratic Party?


Republicans will gladly welcome him.

 

However, I don't think that negates my point. Since all votes referenced in the Constitution are by simple majority, other than those specified otherwise, it would have been more logical to end debate by a simple majority, following a filibuster rule that would ensure the minority opinion was heard, no? Again, I would contend the intent was to ensure the minority's objections were heard, not what amounts to minority rule.

 

That decision was already made in 1789, regardless of what you or I might contend.

 

Not sure of that. From "The American Legislative Process: Congress and the States," Keefe & Ogul, Prentice Hall, 2nd Ed, 1968, pg 256: "The 'rule' of unlimited debate in the Senate has not always been a fixture in the chamber's practice; in the formative years of government it posed only an occasional problem. The first rules adopted by the Senate made a provision for the 'previous question,' requiring only a majority vote to bring debate to an end and to effect a vote."

 

And in 1789 it was not a permanent end to a bill, it was talking delay and then the bill went forward.

That is the minimum of what we need now

 

DC statehood is just plain unconstitutional, but PR statehood could be done easily enough.

 

And yet the Senate's own history documents unlimited debate in 1789.

 

We disagree.
". . . On September 22, 1789, Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay wrote in his diary that the “design of the Virginians . . . was to talk away the time, so that we could not get the bill passed.”. . . . "

 

Have you read the editorial? I'm wondering if it's worth my effort: does he make lucidly clear what he means by, " will not vote to weaken or eliminate...?" Does that include returning it to a speaking filibuster? He said, not too long ago, that he would consider that.

I think your assumption about, "the purpose of the filibuster," is mistaken. I'm not talking about the original purpose, because it was actually created by mistake, and was often used to prevent civil rights legislation.

Common sense says that the purpose of the filibuster should be about giving the minority a chance to make its case (in the modern world-- to the public, as well as their fellow-Senators), but your supposed axiom, "Partisan bills from either side should never become law because they aren't best for the country," is no such thing as a statement of fact, for all possible, future bills. Nor did our founding fathers have this belief. This is from wikipedia:

Constitutional design: simple majority voting
Although not explicitly mandated, the Constitution and its framers clearly envisioned that simple majority voting would be used to conduct business. The Constitution provides, for example, that a majority of each House constitutes a quorum to do business.[2] Meanwhile, a small number of super-majority requirements were explicitly included in the original document, including conviction on impeachment charges (2/3 of Senate),[3] expelling a member of Congress (2/3 of the chamber in question),[4] overriding presidential vetoes (2/3 of both Houses),[5] ratifying treaties (2/3 of Senate)[6] and proposing constitutional amendments (2/3 of both Houses).[7] Through negative textual implication, the Constitution also gives a simple majority the power to set procedural rules: "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member."[4]

In Federalist No. 22, Alexander Hamilton described super-majority requirements as being one of the main problems with the previous Articles of Confederation, and identified several evils which would result from such a requirement:

"To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. ... The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.

IN THOSE EMERGENCIES of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly A NECESSITY FOR ACTION. THE PUBLIC BUSINESS MUST, in some way or other, GO FORWARD. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the MAJORITY, in order that something may be done, MUST CONFORM TO THE VIEWS OF THE MINORITY; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy.”[8]

<END SNIP>

Now that's REAL prescience. The problem with your prediction of things yet to come is that, while you see all partisan efforts to pass legislation as intrinsically bad-- & I greatly fault & dislike partisanship myself-- you do not consider partisan efforts to BLOCK legislation as, equally, poisonous.
Here is the filibuster, from its beginning, in one more wiki SNIP:

ACCIDENTAL CREATION and early use of the filibuster
In 1789, the first U.S. Senate adopted rules allowing senators to move the previous question (by simple majority vote), which meant ending debate and proceeding to a vote. But Vice President Aaron Burr argued that the previous-question motion was redundant, had only been exercised once in the preceding four years, and should be eliminated, which was done in 1806, after he left office.[9] The Senate agreed and modified its rules.[9] Because it created no alternative mechanism for terminating debate, filibusters became theoretically possible.

During most of the pre-Civil War period, the filibuster was seldom used as northern senators desired to maintain southern support over fears of disunion/secession and made compromises over slavery in order to avoid confrontation with new states admitted to the Union in pairs to preserve the sectional balance in the Senate,[10] most notably in the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

Until the late 1830s, however, the filibuster remained a solely theoretical option, never actually exercised. The first Senate filibuster occurred in 1837 when a group of Whig senators filibustered to prevent allies of the Democratic-Republican President Andrew Jackson from expunging a resolution of censure against him.[11][12] In 1841, a defining moment came during debate on a bill to charter a new national bank. After Whig Senator Henry Clay tried to end the debate via a majority vote, Democratic Senator William R. King threatened a filibuster, saying that Clay "may make his arrangements at his boarding house for the winter". Other senators sided with King, and Clay backed down.[9]

At the time, both the Senate and the House of Representatives allowed filibusters as a way to prevent a vote from taking place. Subsequent revisions to House rules limited filibuster privileges in that chamber, but the Senate continued to allow the tactic.[13
<END SNIP>

The COVID RELIEF BILL was INCONSEQUENTIAL?

 

The Senate's own history suggests otherwise.

". . . . The tactic of using long speeches to delay action on legislation appeared in the very first session of the Senate. On September 22, 1789, Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay wrote in his diary that the “design of the Virginians . . . was to talk away the time, so that we could not get the bill passed.” As the number of filibusters grew in the 19th century, the Senate had no formal process to allow a majority to end debate and force a vote on legislation or nominations. . . . "

U.S. Senate: About Filibusters and Cloture | Historical Overview
https://www.senate.gov › about › powers-procedures

... the right of unlimited debate in the Senate, including the filibuster, has been a ... allow a majority to end debate and force a vote on legislation or nominations.