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So what happens with the filibuster now? Just as the Republicans appear to have not learned what cost Harris the election, it seems likely the Dems will make similar mistakes this time.
Is killing the filibuster one of them? Is it a mistake?
Personally I feel like it would hasten the end of the union, but plenty of people will argue it will improve deadlock and they may even be right.
I hope Democrats get rid of it. It's simply good policy. A majority should govern and it is bad for democracy to invent excuses and traditions of impotence.
Sounds like we should just get rid of congress and make everything a national referendum. Any system that uses 'representatives' is by definition allowing a 'minority' to 'govern.' The President can just be the guy who is in charge of running the elections counting the votes, and he can be swapped out at any time.
In other words, bite the bullet on your logic or accept that the system is designed with a different objective in mind.
I'm not sold on getting rid of it either but a Senate majority doesn't have to be a popular majority, so nothing about this critique follows from the original point. A Senate majority preserves the rights of minor states too, just somewhat less so than an addition 60 vote threshold.
They can argue they need the additional threshold, that it's not enough that Maine neutralizes California, but not really because the US is a republic, not a democracy.
And that's what I'm implying. Once we've accepted that part of the system's purpose is to protect the minority's influence, then an additional safeguard is in keeping with that!
It’s a question of how many safeguards are enough NOT a question in my view that everything in a Democracy should be 50.01% opinion. Too many safeguards and you simply can’t govern or do anything. To little safeguards and the 49.99% can dominated.
My current opinion is we have too many safeguards on passing legislation which has ended up making the Presidency and SC stronger than they should be.
I don't think the safeguards are the real reason legislation isn't getting passed.
I think that's the hyperpolarization, and the incentives of the sitting politicians to try to hold office indefinitely.
Ultimately this THEN sounds like we should be devolving many of the current powers held by FedGov to the states, where there's usually less gridlock and the governing bodies are more representative of their populations.
MY current opinion is that we should lean harder into the Federalist system which means giving states more leeway within their bounds and letting the Federal Government control the relatively few issues of actual national importance.
There are a lot of things that need to be done at the federal level today.
Here’s one example. Let’s call it California. At the state level they experiment with ways to highly encourage technology start-ups. To pay for it they have very high capital gains taxes. So a bunch of people build great tech start ups in California. Two years before they IPO all the big founders move to Florida with 0% capital gains tax.
Do you see the issue? A lot of modern governance issues have similar things that they need to be at national versus local level.
To Clarify: I don’t think Cali has special infrastructure that helps tech start-ups as a policy choice. It was more like a gold mine in California. Agglomeration effects etc happened to start there and are strong. But for the hypothetical I needed to design it like Cali does something special policy wise .
Sounds like a job for a sovereign wealth fund to me. Loan to pay off the deferred taxes and set a time of jubilee commensurate with when IPOs need to occur (such that, if sufficiently late, there's a reasonable chance of them being outcompeted).
It does occur to me that most of the states that have these kinds of funds are states where resource development physically takes place; the same is technically true of California provided it remains capable of attracting tech startups. (Arguably, it's so incapable of this that the "inability to attract new talent" capital of the world has followed the talent after it all moved to Texas.)
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In keeping but not required by adherence to that purpose. The dose makes the poison. It may just be too much.
It's hard to argue that the American system wouldn't have minority protections even with the loss of the filibuster, the question is really about balance. Your argument is really for people who want to abolish the Senate altogether.
Which, of course, some people do want!
I think there's a lot of safeguards built in, and the biggest, most underappreciated one is simply the separation of Federal Authority and State Authority. And I'm also of the opinion that this safeguard got removed without good reason. The 10th amendment is actually fairly clear that the 'powers' of Government are reserved for the States unless specifically granted in the Constitution. But somehow that Amendment passes unremarked upon since many other powers have been read into the existing language, even though 10a arguably imposes the opposite requirement.
Under this system, if Congress 'can't do enough' because they're too stymied, people have the option to go ask their state government to do the thing instead! Its not like we INHERENTLY need to make everything a national congressional debate!
I just like to err way further in favor of safeguards, since I prefer consensus, cooperation, and compromise (and the right to walk away!) over handing power to any particular subgroup to dictate terms for the whole.
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