right. “if a legislature passes a bill and the governor vetoes it can still become law if it passes by majority vote in a statewide referendum” makes democratic sense, even if i’m not thrilled about it.
when you consider too that michigan republicans have gerrymandered themselves into a majority that can with stand consecutive popular vote defeats, it sure sounds like this is just outright minority rule
not holding my breath as to when mainstream political journalism wakes up to the fact that the republican party is working as hard as it can to curtail democracy and establish one-party rule wherever and whenever it gets its hands on power
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there is no real way to extricate this fantasy of the armed white property owner standing off against thieving hordes from either america’s settler history or from the deep-seated and pervasive antebellum fear of slave revolt
it is arguably one of the ur-american fantasies, something recapitulated again and again in our media and pop culture
“The Senate is structurally biased against the party with a large urban constituency therefore we should use our fleeting majorities to pass as much legislation as we can and the filibuster inhibits this” isn’t that difficult to understand.
Also, there is the little thing of how the Republican Party is radicalizing against majoritarian democracy and the only way to shore up the right to vote is with federal legislation that, hey, the filibuster makes impossible to pass.
Many people have written easily available and detailed arguments against the filibuster in its current form and it is probably worth reading them before pontificating on what filibuster opponents think.
I have seen a few tweets chastising folks for describing this bill as Jim Crow adjacent, a criticism which relies on ignoring the obvious context as well as the basic fact that Jim Crow laws did not say, in the text, that they were discriminatory.
The most well-known Jim Crow voting provisions — literacy tests, poll taxes, etc. — were facially neutral laws justified as measures against fraud.
right. and a 0 percent vacancy rate is the sign of a extremely unhealthy housing market, where demand greatly outstrips supply and people don’t ever move or change residences
also, if it were true, the homeless population and the unoccupied housing aren’t evenly and equally distributed. are we going to round up homeless people in norfolk and ship them six hours out to bristol and abingdon?