Should Schumer nuke the last remaining filibuster?

Okay, so would 'fiscally conservative and socially liberal' be accurate?

Anyway, if you don't like the EC in it's current form, what form would you like it to be in?

 

In general sure. In absolute terms probably not.

I have written about this a lot in the past even on this forum. I don't really want to rehash the whole topic again but here is a very general summary.

The reason I do not like the EC is it leads to swing states. This essentially means that if you do not live in a swing state your vote is almost meaningless. What a voter wants in Georgia or Pennsylvania is infinitely more important that what a voter wants in California. So in a sense I support the removable of the EC. The concept I do support of the EC is that not all votes are equal. Some people votes are worth more than others. I think the problem is currently we apply this principle based on geography and not a more meaningful measure.

What I have advocated for in the past is a weighted voting system but not in the conventional sense. I realize the idea is fairly extreme and we would not even be able to imagine it without the aid of computer tallied voting system. Given all of the claims of voter fraud I doubt the public would accept it currently but as we get more accustomed to computers in our lives the younger generations will start to accept the idea. The basic premise is everyone's vote has a base value of one. Based on other factors that vote can increase but never decrease. I have never made public what I think the factors should be but it could be things like occupation, military or government service, education level, taxes paid, age, years of citizenship etc... So for example a person that has lived his whole life in the US that had a career in the military and paid X amount of taxes could have a vote count as 1.4 as opposed to the 1 base. Essentially we want to reward people that contribute in a positive way to society. The reward will not be huge for example the factor may never exceed 2 so at best one person vote is worth 2 base votes.

 

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I doubt that idea will ever get traction, it defies the one man one vote principle.

YOur idea creates a nightmarish scenario which my mind contemplated, but it gets complex, so no.......

Bad idea.

I have an idea, get rid of 'winner takes all' and divy up the electors proportionately.

So, if California has 55 electors, and someone wins 1/5 of the vote, they get 11 electors. But, the problem gets sticky on states with only 1, 2, or 3 electors. So, the solution is to up the electoral count, all states get ten time the number of electors, in order to divide them with greater facility according to the proportions of the vote won by candidates.

Whaddaya think?

 

Ironically, McConnell is also begging Democrats, by his actions, to eliminate the filibuster. McConnell is FILIBUSTERING THE SENATE'S ORGANIZING RESOLUTION, for the new Senate session. This does not prevent Democrats from taking control of the Senate's voting agenda. But it does prevent the Democrats from SEATING their new members on committees. So, though the Senate could do business, it would be under the rules of the previous Senate, and with the Dems having a MINORITY of members on its Committees.

The two possible ways of dealing with this obstruction by McConnell, as described by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (in an interview on All In, with Chris Hayes), are 1) to either physically outlast the Republicans, on the filibuster-floor or 2) to allow McConnell's move to succeed, for the moment, but force his surrender by bringing to a vote any of the bills that had passed the prior House session (which, if passed by the new Senate, would need to return to the new House for re-passage, before proceeding to Pres. Biden for his signature) but which McConnell had resisted bringing to the floor, because they split his caucus.

While it is true that McConnell wouldn't want to force his members to take votes on many of these issues, his giving up his opposition to the Organizing Resolution would not prevent that from happening (since, either way, a large number of these will come to a Senate vote; it's unimaginable that Schumer would make a deal not to bring up any of these matters in the Senate). So we're left with a war of attrition or, in more practical terms: time-wasting, when our current situation doesn't offer our legislature, if it is to serve its constituency, the luxury of an excess of time to be wasted.

The problem here, is that it is all well & good for a boxer, beginning a bout, scheduled for 15 rounds, to want to pace himself. But if that boxer finds himself facing someone rabidly fighting, at an intensity not meant to go on for 15 rounds, then that fighter must either adjust his plan, or will next be getting up, having just been counted out. McConnell realizes that he cannot, "play fair," and have any hope of being a majority leader, again. That is always his over-riding concern. In his mind, he is now fighting for his life. Dems are still trying to maintain proper etiquette.

To be clear, I am not endorsing acts of vengeance by the Democrats, or of haughty disregard of the basis for their power. But one must match tactics; it is a losing strategy to continue playing flag-football, when your opponents are playing tackle.

To play this game to win-- meaning to be successful legislating & not overly-hampered by those who have no real interest in it-- means doing something like this: Schumer calls a vote to eliminate the filibuster, which will succeed because, in a full meeting of his caucus, he's got them to agree that they are not going to actually be making a decision on this at this time; rather, this is merely part of a tactical move. As soon as the filibuster is gone, the Senate votes on the Organizing Resolution, to set the new Senate rules & seat the new members. IMMEDIATELY after that, the Senate holds a third vote, reinstating the filibuster. It could all, easily, be done in one afternoon.

This way, nothing MONUMENTAL has changed. The filibuster remains. And its momentary disappearance had clearly been necessitated only to allow the normal functioning of the Senate to continue: to prevent the success of McConnell's monumental departure from Senate protocol, not to mention, from common sense.

 

The current system places importance on land or lines on the map. The "one person one vote" allocates its by people. My idea by contribution. If you had 4 people in a household, and each person contributed different degrees to the household should they all have an equal vote on how resources are spent? Would other factors come into play? Why?

Allocating electors proportionately is already done by a few states based on districts. They usually give 2 for the popular vote and one for each district. You cannot have a state with fewer than 3 electoral votes. This is what gives us the disproportional representation problem. Small states getting greater representation than more populace states. If you move to a purely proportional vote system then you are just looking at the popular vote system unless you allocate more electoral votes to a state than their proportional population deserves and we are back to a system based on lines on a map.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.y...-threatens-block-senates-power-190547923.html

This is an article to go with post #29 (two posts back), about McConnell threatening to block the Senate Organizing Resolution. If Schumer won't agree to not bring a vote to eliminate the filibuster, McConnell will filibuster the Resolution, necessary to compete the transfer of power, in the Senate, to the Democrats.

 

Whose to say if repubs gain the senate back in 2022, that they won't nuke the filibuster?

From where I sit, given that the filibuster has been eviscerated from it's glory days, and McConnell just has been gaming the system to bog down Democrat's agenda ( which does appear to be the strategy,) why not just say, to hell with republicans, and nuke the filibuster and get to work. But, somewhere down the line, do an exposé on TV or in the NYTimes all the games that McConnell has been playing, making it clear why democrats have no choice but to go off onto our own, without them. So, why reinstate it?

Anyway, this is the story I heard on Morning Joe, this morning
https://news.yahoo.com/mcconnell-threatens-block-senates-power-190547923.html

 

There's another dynamic to this you seem oblivious to, but it hits me right in the face. no one will accept the idea, on principle, it's REPUGNANT to think that this person gets 2 votes, that person gets 1.5 votes, it's like first class second class third class citizens, no man, noooooooooo it's NOT going to fly. You can't equate a 'vote', which is a sacred thing in America, and chop it up. You don't see it like that, but that's how it will be seen, lik you are reducing a vote a mercantile thing and splicing it up, you can't do that to a man's vote, a man's vote is as good as any other man's vote, and that's that. It smacks of the days when blacks got 3/5. So, of joe blow gets 2, and jim blum gets 1, you don't see a problem with that? NO one is going to give a **** about 'status', believe me, no one is going to give a hoot about how long you lived here, or your education, or whatever it is you think entitles one person with more than another, votes are not products of labor or status, your solution is too mercantile, it's too 'status-y' people will use their status to browbeat others, think of all the ramifications, it really gets hairy, the more I think about it, and we won't even get into verifying the vote, how does that work? The only SOLID way we have to keep the integrity of the vote so everyone has confidence in the outcome is merely to count paper ballots. There is no way around this. So, how does it work? It's a frickin' nightmare the more I think about it.

you are saying some people deserve more votes than others do. That ain't right. It just isn't.

You are, in essence, stabbing the sacred nature of the vote right in the heart.

Really.

You just can't do it.

Bad idea.

There are ideas floating around

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL34604/7

 

Screw McConnell, nuke the filibuster and get to work,

Really, I'm tired of McConnell's bullshit.

 

We are already doing it now. Maybe not in number of votes but in power of their vote. That is why I said I conceptually like the EC. I just don't want it done based on a map.

https://wallethub.com/edu/how-much-is-your-vote-worth/7932

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-the-electoral-college_b_12891764

 

If the situation were reversed Moscow Mitch would nuke the filibuster in a heartbeat.

If the Dems get rid of it then they can pass all of the GOOD things that BENEFIT We the People without having to PANDER to the GOP Regressives any longer.

Remember what happened with ObamaCare? They went ballistic about "socialized medicine" and yet once they EXPERIENCED what it was like to have AFFORDABLE healthcare they DEMANDED that it REMAIN and stymied all efforts to rescind it.

The same thing will happen with a $15 minimum wage and affordable pre-school and free Community College education. Those that are OBJECTING now will discover that THEY are better off because the economy has improved through those measures.

So FLUSH the FILIBUSTER and then let the GOP try to roll back all of the things that the Dems have done to IMPROVE the lives of We the People when next they assume control in Congress.

By then it will be TOO LATE and the filibuster won't matter because the VOTERS will throw the GOP out of office if they DARE to take away those benefits from We the People.

 

Uhhh, no, that's not the same thing.

'effectively' is one thing, but 'blatantly' is altogether another.

 

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. We should do it, and they will like all the good things, and they can't bitch about 'not getting anything done" anymore, or 'do nothings" at least we got stuff done, and on the next vote, we win on merits, or we done, at least we will know where we stand with the electorate.

But feeling is that we will win the hearts of Americans, and republicans will become irrelevant, unless, they change their ways and become more inclusive, instead of catering only to rich people.

 

NUKE THE FILIBUSTER!
NUKE THE FILIBUSTER!
NUKE THE FILIBUSTER!
NUKE THE FILIBUSTER!
NUKE THE FILIBUSTER!

We need to march on Schumer's office, with banners
NUKE THE FILIBUSTER!!!!!

 

Now you are just playing semantics. A hidden tax has the same impact as an explicit one.

Look, let just take a simple example. Let say I eliminate the EC system and replaced it with mine. All votes have a base value of one. Lets say I introduce one modifier. All goldstar parents receive a modifier of .1. So in my system everyone's vote counts as 1 and votes from goldstar parents count as 1.1. Under the current system a Wyoming voters vote is worth 3.6 times that of a California voter. All you need to do to get that 3.6 advantage is move from California to Wyoming. My system rewards someone for sacrifice in service of the country the current system rewards geographical location.

 

That concept was proposed by Neville Shute in his book called "In the Wet".

Personally I prefer ranked voting instead.

You get to pick your first, second and third choices in all elections.

Whomever gets the least votes is eliminated and their 2nd choice votes are automatically allocated to the remaining candidates. This process is repeated until there is a clear single winner with a majority of votes from 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices.

With a system like this 3rd party candidates can win elections by garnering a majority of 2nd and 3rd choice votes that total an amount greater than either of the two major party candidates.

 

What is a filibuster?
How does it work?

 

Ranked voting has it merits. Isn't used in Australia?

 

Bring back the original filibuster. Scrap the piece of crap the chicken sheet Senate enacted

IMO. It was done because they are cowards. Afraid to Make a stand and vote.
Then there's a public record.

 

This is the best solution! Has Schumer thought of it? If not, seriously, you should call his staff and pass it on.

 

Well, my scenario was to get all Dems on board to do this Toot-sweet, just so that they could accomplish what is usually an administrative 1st step in any new Senate. Joe Manchin, for example, has said he is against nuking the filibuster, as I'm sure there are many others on the fence about it (perhaps Schumer himself, not to mention those Senators who are actually from Purple or Red States). The Blue State Senators who are against it, don't believe the Repubs will get rid of it, if Dems don't; but I agree with you, that this is an unwarranted expectation. The smart play, now, is to govern effectively so that Dems maintain the majority, not to be acting in preparation of being the minority Party, once more.

But, to pass this, since Repubs will, understandably, be dead-set against it, Schumer would need his ENTIRE caucus behind it. My plan does not exclude the possibility of taking up the matter again, down the road. It was just an idea of mine for an expedient way of getting around McConnell's initial road-block, requiring no debate on the Democrats' side, since they would all realize this was not, at this moment, a permanent move.

 

Absolutely the should, then immediately move on DC statehood giving our side 2 more Senators. Enough playing around with these people.

 

I emailed him.

 

Indeed, INDEED! The original filibuster actually required someone to have the guts to make a stand and be seen doing it! Frankly, "cowards" is a gross understatement!

 

I'm NOT in favor of popular vote, but why do you believe those two states will decide the fate of the entire country?
Biden got 16.3M votes from those two states, Trump got 9.2M. So a difference of 7.1M votes.
Total votes cast were around 158M. Take out the 25.5M votes for CA and NY (both candidates) and there are 132M votes up for grabs. You telling me Repub candidates are unable to campaign and appeal to the rest of the country to garner enough votes to win an election based on popular vote?

In 2016..."I would have done even better in the election, if that is possible, if the winner was based on popular vote - but would campaign differently," he said.