5 ms·

If only a democrat majority had been elected at any point in the last 40 years that could have fixed this.

smeej 2y ago
The article even makes it sound like the law is still on the books, just not being enforced. Pretty sure enforcing the laws is the responsibility of the executive branch, isn't it? So it's not like any big combined majority action would be necessary, just an executive who said, "We enforce this now." I'd like to think the article left out some important context that I'm now missing, because it'd sure be a weird thing to complain about from a partisan perspective if it could have been solved with the stroke of a pen.
- relaxing 2y ago
  The article does mention it at the end. The reality is Clinton, Obama, and Biden were all corporate-friendly centrists.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Can you really blame the Democrat party for embracing pro-business liberalism when Reagan's landslide victory, and the house and senate control that came with it demonstrated so clearly that AMERICA wanted a pro-business liberal policy? If Democrats didn't adopt a more pro-business face, would there even be a democrat party anymore? People seem to want democrats to do what FDR did. FDR's democrats held like a 70% control in the Senate! He was able to cow the supreme court because he had a credible threat to actually pack the court, like, according to the actual rules. As long as party majority leader is not a democrat for example, you cannot guarantee any judge actually gets their appointment voted on. Yet young democrats are dissatisfied with democrats "letting" McConnell steal the appointments. Want democrats to do something? You have to give them the power to do so!
JadeNB 2y ago
> If only a democrat majority had been elected at any point in the last 40 years that could have fixed this. I think that thinking of it this way shifts the blame unduly; it's not like Republicans as well as Democrats don't bear the blame for continuing harmful policies, just because those policies were instituted by Republicans. As to Democrats, the first Democratic administration that was elected after Reagan did so by running away from many traditional Democratic priorities, and both other Democratic administrations had to deal with a recalcitrant Congress for at least a substantial portion of their time in office. Even if they hadn't, though, I think that the general fact is that it's much easier to create problems quickly than to fix them quickly, so that the idea that any administration, even a 2-term one with a hypothetical cooperative Congress, could undo such changes (as opposed to just starting to undo them) isn't plausible—or, if it could be done, then it would surely be as all-consuming of political capital as the ACA was, at the expense of pursuing any of that administration's other priorities—and being able to pursue a longer-term solution would require electoral patience with political promises that weren't accompanied by immediate delivery.
GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Democrats have not had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate since before Reagan, and they're constantly up against the asymmetry that breaking things is a lot easier than building them. The side that wants government not to work has a huge structural advantage in any argument (even apart from their structural electoral advantages thanks to letting empty fields carry as much weight as cities) since they "win" by default. It only takes a few years or even months of Republican rule to install judges that will deem any regulations unconstitutional, to allow time-bounded authorizations to lapse, to fire large numbers of public servants who keep the administrative state running, or simply to use the bully pulpit to tarnish the reputation of federal bureaucracy so that individuals will refuse to interact with them. Building those institutions as credible, competent forces takes somewhere between years and lifetimes.
- hindsightbias 2y ago
  > filibuster-proof majority They had 72 Days in 2009 to fix everything! Both parties are the same! /s
  - relaxing 2y ago
    And all the while they had blue dog conservatives like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson handicapping the proceedings.
    - acuozzo 2y ago
      I've wondered for a while now: why don't the Democrats get their own agents elected as pseudo-Republicans? The Republicans keep doing it... Lieberman, Nelson, Manchin, Sinema, et al.
      - relaxing 2y ago
        The current Republican party is the product of a decades long effort to purify and drive out liberal elements. The Rockefeller Republicans are long gone. Romney is gone. Murowski and Collins can’t even be counted on to stand up for women’s issues. The Democrats on the other hand are beholden to corporate interests which limits how far left they can go.
cogman10 2y ago
Democrats are too busy trying to convince the american public that they are actually republicans for some weird reason.
- JohnBooty 2y ago
  Thank our two-party system, among other factors. Around election time they go after undecideds, who are generally centrist to the extent that they have any ideology or opinions at all.
tcbawo 2y ago
Many or nearly all policy votes happen along party these days. Has any party been able to overcome the Senate filibuster? There was a brief period in 2009 after the inauguration of Al Franken until Senator Kennedy’s death in August of that year. Not a lot of time to change policies, and every new act of Congress brings in both good, bad, and unintended side effects. Very little in the intervening years has improved bipartisan cooperation.

The article even makes it sound like the law is still on the books, just not being enforced. Pretty sure enforcing the laws is the responsibility of the executive branch, isn't it? So it's not like any big combined majority action would be necessary, just an executive who said, "We enforce this now." I'd like to think the article left out some important context that I'm now missing, because it'd sure be a weird thing to complain about from a partisan perspective if it could have been solved with the stroke of a pen.

relaxing 2y ago
The article does mention it at the end. The reality is Clinton, Obama, and Biden were all corporate-friendly centrists.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Can you really blame the Democrat party for embracing pro-business liberalism when Reagan's landslide victory, and the house and senate control that came with it demonstrated so clearly that AMERICA wanted a pro-business liberal policy? If Democrats didn't adopt a more pro-business face, would there even be a democrat party anymore? People seem to want democrats to do what FDR did. FDR's democrats held like a 70% control in the Senate! He was able to cow the supreme court because he had a credible threat to actually pack the court, like, according to the actual rules. As long as party majority leader is not a democrat for example, you cannot guarantee any judge actually gets their appointment voted on. Yet young democrats are dissatisfied with democrats "letting" McConnell steal the appointments. Want democrats to do something? You have to give them the power to do so!

JadeNB 2y ago

> If only a democrat majority had been elected at any point in the last 40 years that could have fixed this. I think that thinking of it this way shifts the blame unduly; it's not like Republicans as well as Democrats don't bear the blame for continuing harmful policies, just because those policies were instituted by Republicans. As to Democrats, the first Democratic administration that was elected after Reagan did so by running away from many traditional Democratic priorities, and both other Democratic administrations had to deal with a recalcitrant Congress for at least a substantial portion of their time in office. Even if they hadn't, though, I think that the general fact is that it's much easier to create problems quickly than to fix them quickly, so that the idea that any administration, even a 2-term one with a hypothetical cooperative Congress, could undo such changes (as opposed to just starting to undo them) isn't plausible—or, if it could be done, then it would surely be as all-consuming of political capital as the ACA was, at the expense of pursuing any of that administration's other priorities—and being able to pursue a longer-term solution would require electoral patience with political promises that weren't accompanied by immediate delivery.

GeneralMayhem 2y ago

Democrats have not had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate since before Reagan, and they're constantly up against the asymmetry that breaking things is a lot easier than building them. The side that wants government not to work has a huge structural advantage in any argument (even apart from their structural electoral advantages thanks to letting empty fields carry as much weight as cities) since they "win" by default. It only takes a few years or even months of Republican rule to install judges that will deem any regulations unconstitutional, to allow time-bounded authorizations to lapse, to fire large numbers of public servants who keep the administrative state running, or simply to use the bully pulpit to tarnish the reputation of federal bureaucracy so that individuals will refuse to interact with them. Building those institutions as credible, competent forces takes somewhere between years and lifetimes.

hindsightbias 2y ago
> filibuster-proof majority They had 72 Days in 2009 to fix everything! Both parties are the same! /s
- relaxing 2y ago
  And all the while they had blue dog conservatives like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson handicapping the proceedings.
  - acuozzo 2y ago
    I've wondered for a while now: why don't the Democrats get their own agents elected as pseudo-Republicans? The Republicans keep doing it... Lieberman, Nelson, Manchin, Sinema, et al.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      The current Republican party is the product of a decades long effort to purify and drive out liberal elements. The Rockefeller Republicans are long gone. Romney is gone. Murowski and Collins can’t even be counted on to stand up for women’s issues. The Democrats on the other hand are beholden to corporate interests which limits how far left they can go.

cogman10 2y ago

Democrats are too busy trying to convince the american public that they are actually republicans for some weird reason.

JohnBooty 2y ago
Thank our two-party system, among other factors. Around election time they go after undecideds, who are generally centrist to the extent that they have any ideology or opinions at all.

tcbawo 2y ago

Many or nearly all policy votes happen along party these days. Has any party been able to overcome the Senate filibuster? There was a brief period in 2009 after the inauguration of Al Franken until Senator Kennedy’s death in August of that year. Not a lot of time to change policies, and every new act of Congress brings in both good, bad, and unintended side effects. Very little in the intervening years has improved bipartisan cooperation.