Serious question: doesn’t this sort of thing change the voting math? Like if you don’t have to be present to vote against, e.g., preserving the filibuster, then why have anyone present at all?
Please tell me that the answer isn’t “We can’t take advantage of senators going home early to force tight votes, because that would be rude”
Folks, the party split in the Senate today was 48-41 Democratic. The nuclear option on the filibuster takes a simple majority vote of senators present.
THIS IS WHY I WAS ASKING
We’re hidebound to procedure, except when we actually do have the votes, we’re also hidebound to absurd norms of fair play
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One thing you see a lot on here is people pointing out the contradictions in the putative views of Trump’s GOP. COVID is a Chinese plot but also a hoax. The insurrection was antifa but also a tour of patriots.
What people need to understand is that these contradictions aren’t a SYMPTOM of Trumpism.
They point to its very core - its emotional, psychological appeal to millions of America. The ability to sustain these contradictions is why Trump was elected, how his movement exists.
Ultimately what Trump offers - what fascism offers - is a philosophy of total emotional and psychological indulgence. Believe whatever makes you feel best. Live your politics examined.
There is so much fear and anger and energy for change bottled up in the Dem coalition right now, and it has nowhere to go because many elected Dems PREFER a world in which they are powerless to one where they take risks, so they play helpless constantly
Elected Dems want to keep their voters on the endless treadmill of campaign donations and turnout drives, and they never ever want to stick their neck out and fight the final boss of Trumpian authoritarianism, so no matter what voters do, the princess is always in another castle
First it was that we didn’t hold either house so we couldn’t obstruct, then investigations or impeachment would backfire, then they wouldn’t listen to subpoenas so why bother, then we needed to focus on the election, or had to show voters we could get things done
love to live in a society where literally anyone with a passing inclination to do so has access to the tools necessary to instantly execute any number of other people
"why is violent crime rising in cities" I don't know maybe it's because we've flooded them with tools of murder and so every single interpersonal conflict now carries the threat of mortal consequence
two solutions: 1. eliminate interpersonal conflict, which has existed since the dawn of time 2. take away guns
oh sorry, I forgot, a tiny political minority has completely foreclosed option 2 and in fact is working to ensure guns are present in an ever-widening array of places
There are countless academic studies out there. When one of them -- especially a narrow one like this -- becomes a talisman in The Discourse, it's usually about something outside of the study itself
Among other things, my issue is with the idea that politics is so mechanical that, faced with the need to build wider support, Democrats can A/B test their way to the perfect message.
As I have suggested many times, the core belief motivating a lot of white peoples’ exhaustion with “race issues” is the idea that race is a parochial topic that affects nonwhite people but is basically a subset of a more universal, more fundamental politics (often economic).
This belief underlies a lot of political choices of white people. I am convinced it is a large part of the appeal of old-style socialism to young men, since that worldview promises to subordinate confusing race talk to a simple, class-based universality.
White people often find it very hard to resist minimizing the role of race or talk of race. It’s an intellectual knot that is difficult or impossible to fully untangle and it’s hard to resist ideas that promise to cut right through it.