nuking the filibuster to pass trillions in aid for the country is honestly the single best circumstance in which to do it. pure political gold.
if sinema or manchin feel weird about it, just negotiate a provision where all aid sent to arizona and west virginia includes a letter with their faces plastered on it
honestly, manchin et al are more likely to get the bipartisanship they want without the filibuster. if legislation can’t be blocked as a matter of course, there’s an incentive to get a piece of the pie.
and if schumer allows more on the floor than mcconnell, you can imagine a situation in which senators actually try to put together majorities for bills they want, knowing that they won’t have to break a filibuster to pass it.
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yep! the main opposition to popular election of the president had little to do with fear of “mob rule” and everything with specific political problems, #1 being “too much of the South’s population is enslaved and white southerners could never muster enough votes to elect a POTUS”
the electoral college as written in the constitution should be understood as an elaborate kludge tossed together at the last minute for the sake of just getting the whole thing done with
yes! so much of the argument about the selection of the president — and so much of the argument about the nature of the presidency — rested on the idea that Washington would be president for some indeterminate amount of time.
imo, fears of what republicans would do without the filibuster should be informed by how the party struggled to do anything during its period of unified control. ACA repeal is the big example, but the tax cuts were a reach too, and barely reached the finish line.
i think this is an underrated dynamic. when you know that nothing you say will amount to anything real, why not say it?
anyway there are a lot of reasons the filibuster should be abolished, but my preferred ones are a) if the public elects a majority to govern, that majority should be able to govern & b) endless senate gridlock has effectively broken congress & undermined the constitutional order
Yes. Think of it this way: How many people voted for Donald Trump the Republican politician, and how many voted for Donald Trump, star of The Apprentice, who plays the most successful businessman in America?
One reason I am a little skeptical that anyone currently within the GOP can rebuild the Trump coalition is that no one else has a lifelong celebrity brand that valorizes entrepreneurship and business success.
Yes! I was just about to make a similar point, which is if you break down the constituent parts of Trump's pre-political celebrity, it's not just "successful businessman" but "charming rogue" and "affable vulgarian."
my favorite part of this is how shapiro speaks as if this is simply something happening in the air and not a sense of siege that he’s dedicated his life to stoking and cultivating
ben shapiro is DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS and he’s using politico to launder his reputation as if he isn’t one of the most toxic figures in the conservative media landscape