Only 59 Senators! The Sky Is Falling!
by Nathan Walpow
I’m sick to death of all the blather about the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat. It wasn’t a repudiation of the president, though ignorant fear of his health care reforms had its part. It wasn’t a sign of the Republican Party’s resurgence. It was (mostly) a good campaign winning out over a crappy one.
But the part I’m most annoyed with is all this crap about the loss of the Democrats’ supermajority in the Senate. Oh, no, we only have 59 votes, we can’t get anything done. I’m not going to get into how lame and ineffective this makes the Dems look. Anyone who’s been watching over the past year knows all about that. No, what drives me crazy is the assumption that, because there’ll be 41 senators with an (R) after their name, that means 41 automatic votes not to end a filibuster, and therefore to block healthcare and whatever other badly-beeded reforms the inept Democrats have managed to get onto the floor.
Where’s the character here? Why is it that we assume the 59 remaining donkeymen and -women will always vote as the president wishes, and the 41 elephant people against? Why doesn’t the press report even the slightest possibility that there might be a renegade Republican who might think enough is enough and vote against their party’s line? Is the support of your party so frikkin’ important that we can count on you to vote the way it wants, no matter what your personal views on an issue?
No. Supermajority gone, healthcare backtracking, Democrats panicking.
And while I’m at it ... isn’t it about time to do away with the filibuster? Doesn’t anyone in government see how ridiculous elected officials standing reading the phone book for hours at a time makes us look to the rest of the world?
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