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In 2008 democrats crushed it, getting the White House and both chambers of the Congress. They could have done as much as they wanted to.
by ptero 2y ago
In 2008 democrats crushed it, getting the White House and both chambers of the Congress. They could have done as much as they wanted to.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cute_boi 2y agoBut they don't want to do anything. They just want republican to mess up things and tell people republicans are bad etc..
- acc4everypici 2y agoyou've pointed out the problem with the contemporary american two party state. it's a see saw of nobody does anything but blame their systemic rival either USA party system gets more than two parties because they're on a steady stalemate, like other poster was saying, 35 years of gridlocked congress because of two way ties. or look at china, my prediction is that soon enough a ballsy european monarchy is gonna go full-blown one-party democracy or something clever like that
- jfengel 2y agoYou can't pass legislation without a majority. Adding more parties won't make that easier. It just creates more rivals.
- acc4everypici 2y agoor maybe it gives a voice (i.e. political representation) to a larger pool of diverse people and communities?
- jfengel 2y agoSure. Lots of voices. No actual legislation (or listening), but plenty of talking.
- batch12 2y agoAnd temporary allies. Maybe with more than two parties we could move past the idea that the platform of one party has to be the exact opposite of the other on every issue. Then, maybe, not every effort would result in a gridlock. Perhaps a nice side effect could be that people stop seeing others who disagree with them as evil.
- jfengel 2y agoIt's hard to make progress with temporary allies. They're going to expect some kind of mutual benefit. That is easiest when you've got trust, and the belief that you will have my back in the future. It's hard to have faith in temporary allies, and less opportunity to make compromises and trade-offs. It's far easier when your allies are long term. Which functions a lot like a single party even if you don't call it that.
- nequo 2y agoSeems false. They did quite a few things. They passed the Affordable Care Act. They oversaw the recovery from the 2007-2008 crisis that engineers talk about to this day. They got two SCOTUS justices confirmed too.
- hypothesis 2y agoOr they will just complain how republicans only did “tax cuts” during their recent federal trifecta. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_trifecta https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_trifecta
- kouru225 2y agoThey only had 21 days of a majority tbh
- jfengel 2y agoThey only had a filibuster proof majority very briefly. They used it to pass an extremely significant piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act. After that they lost one seat, and the Republicans explicitly made it their mission to ensure that not a single thing got passed.
- arrosenberg 2y agoThats overstating it. Minnesota was held up in court, Ted Kennedy was dying, the GOP became totally intransigent, and they had help from a few corporately owned Democrats.
- zjp 2y agoThey wanted to do a lot. Then, as now with Manchin and Sinema, our coalition contained blue dogs that stopped us from enacting a lot of the agenda.
- elihu 2y agoThey had a very brief time window when they had a 60-vote super-majority though. Al Franken wasn't seated for months, and then Ted Kennedy died. Scott Brown won the special election. Harry Reid opposed filibuster reform at the time, which I think was a mistake but there might not have been enough votes in the Senate to pass any reforms. Also, the "blue dog" Democrats were a pretty big block in the House, and would have opposed a lot of things that would be considered mainstream Democratic positions now.
- neltnerb 2y agoDo folks not remember the impact of Lieberman on the Affordable Care Act? The person with the 60th vote has a ton of policy influence. This is why we don't have a public option, or at least an awfully public example of how "having 60 votes" during that short window didn't get much done. Not that I want to apologize for the democrats or anything, I just agree that no one has had a meaningful 60-vote majority in my lifetime.
- trealira 2y agoYoung people genuinely may not remember. Being born in 2003, I was 7 years old when the Affordable Care Act was passed, and I wasn't paying much attention to politics. I didn't keep much track until shortly before the 2016 presidential election, although I picked up bits and pieces before then. It's only because I read about politics online that I know about Lieberman's impact on the ACA. Someone else said they were born in 2001; that would have made them 9 years old in 2010. Although, because little kids nowadays have access to smartphones with social media, I suspect that 7 and 9 year olds are now paying more attention to politics than they used to.
- mburns 2y agoDems also had a trifecta in 2021-2023 as well. There wasn’t (and still isn’t, sadly) political appetite for ending the Senate filibuster, so reform is limited to Byrd rule nonsense. The ~5 months Democrats had an a functional supermajority under Obama in 2009/10 was used to get the ACA passed as written.
- kouru225 2y agoI saw someone do the math recently. There were only ~21 days when they actually had all members in congress. It was a majority in name only.