US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

and Obama did their big economic stimulus package FIRST in case you don't remember. ARRA funding is just now starting to really hit the private sector afaict

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well o.nate i don't know what to say to you other than, you're wrong. no, it doesn't look desperate.

xp i dunno shakey, harry ried is gonna get burned over this and he knows it. pelosi will be in washington as long as she cares to be.

I think it looks a bit desperate for the Dems that as soon as they get the 60-vote supermajority in the Senate they try to enact one of their perennial, capital-R Reform Agendas, which on the surface at least, seems to have little to do with the probably reasons why they were elected (to wit, the Republicans royally fucked up the economy, the deficit, foreign policy, etc.).

... wait "desperate?"

from eschaton, this is awesome

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/duncanblack/metrofail.jpg

I think I said this before but the real problem here is that Republicans actually understand how federal government works

I salute our new Fearless Leader because he is OTFM here. Compare how McConnell has handled the Republican Senate Caucus compared to the Dems under Dubya, who couldn't maintain any kind of unity and let the Rep majority roll right over them.

what looks desperate is democrats collapsing like a house of cards when their 60-vote majority is reduced to a 59-vote majority

I think I said this before but the real problem here is that Republicans actually understand how federal government works

It helped that being in the minority for 40 years gave them plenty of time to study the mechanisms of the fed bureaucracy.

i dunno shakey, harry ried is gonna get burned over this and he knows it.

yep, he's a goner at this point. I think he can kiss his Senate career goodbye, he's already not well-liked in his home state and now on top of that he won't even be able to point to any accomplishments as Senate Majority Leader as a reason to keep him. He's gonna lose that seat in November.

Dunno who will get the majority leader nod after him (Schumer? Dunno if he's a good fit, tbh.)

healthcare was like number two issue behind the economy for voters in 08

Well, the economy is still shit though, so maybe they should take care of that first. And I don't really buy the argument that healthcare and the economy are one and the same, and I don't think the voters will either. Everyone realizes that the benefits of healthcare reform to the economy (presumably increased efficiency and cost-containment) are not going to happen for many years, regardless of whether the plan is passed now or in a year's time. I think voters are perhaps saying: Yes we voted for you, but not to enact something that looks suspiciously like a Democrat pet project - but because we trusted you more than the other guys to fix the economy. This is a bit like the GOP taking Bush's re-election in '04 as a mandate for Social Security reform - it wasn't.

? well again, what is there to say. no, it's nothing like social security privatization.

o. nate where do you get your news, politico?

why would ppl that voted overwhelmingly for dems be put off by a suspiciously dem pet project?

also, what do you propose the democrats do, besides pass a $700 billion stimulus in the face of unanimous republican opposition?

Well, he's partly right: if the economy sucks, there ain't no way you're going to convince skeptics like my parents that we need to overhaul the health care system, shitty as they acknowledge it to be.

dude you can't fix huge structural economic problems in less than a year. I hate to parrot an Obama talking point but its really true in this case. The gov't doesn't work that fast, and neither does the economy. Its not like boom JOBS BILl and then a month later JOBS!!

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But UNLIKE Bush in 2004 Obama actually had a mandate, so the time to force the issue was now.

yeah maybe some of that eceonomy bill shoulda appropriated funds for an ad campaign to say "HEY JUST FYI WE PASSED THIS BILL SO THE ECONOMY WOULDNT SUCK SO MUCH ASS. YOU'RE WELCOME."

Also: critics have accused Obama of not "explaining" himself. Putting aside the fact that he's blanketed the airwaves for six months, he can't very well explain the direness of the economic catastrophe we just crawled out of without revealing how much he's indebted to his Wall Street cronies.

as someone who works in an industry that is being specifically targeted by the stimulus/ARRA funding I can say that that money has started coming in in just the past few months - public funding has to go through a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to ensure that its properly handled; there's controls and oversight built into every step of the process, and it takes a little while (i.e., more than a year) for that money to get out into the general economy and spur growth, allow companies to hire more people, get projects built etc. It IS working, but to act like some miracle wand could be waved and change the economy in just a few months is like uh waht

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on any "economic" issue you care to name: mortgage cramdowns, expanded unemployment insurance, tighter banking regs, establishing a finance consumer protection agency, etc, the legislative dynamic is exactly the same as the one for healthcare -- complete phalanx mindless opposition from the GOP, a bunch of wishy-washy and mostly bought-off interest-pandering moderate dems, a few progressives, and the white house trying to herd cats and watching it's poll numbers go down. it's not different. it's... the same thing!

besides, it's medicare that's going to bankrupt the gov't and medical spending, more than anything else, that's dragging on growth.

xp u guys are fast

I'm viscerally against term limits, but perhaps Congress is where they're needed. It might just be exchanging old shits for new shits, but more non-douchies might slip in. Seniority needs to be blown to smithereens.

but anyway, too late

also, what do you propose the democrats do, besides pass a $700 billion stimulus in the face of unanimous republican opposition?

The stimulus was too small, as Krugman never tires of arguing. But beyond that, even if you can't pass a bigger stimulus, at least look like you're working on the problem. Healthcare reform is extremely complicated. People fear change. Instead of getting bogged down in backroom deals to pass something that looks like a typical Washington over-designed solution, now may be the time to address people's feelings about the current situation. I don't think that people expect government to single-handedly fix the economy, but at least look like you're doing something more than bailing out bankers and taking over car companies.

Term limites are horrible. Look what it did to California. Granted its all douches in there, but nobody knows how to fucking run anything.

Well perhaps that is exactly what we need in DC!

in love w/you for this simile tbh

xo, but I know married men are TROUBLE

Term limits are not of themselves horrible. I think two 6-year Senate terms, and four 2-year house terms, is reasonable. If we can have them for the President, I'm not sure what makes Congressdouches so damned special.

Why the hell should Clinton have been limited to two terms but Strom Thurmond served FOREVER?

I'm wondering what the most unintentionally hilarious word in DC is, but I think "mandate" is high on the list.

Mandate is whatever the fuck you want it to be--if you're in power, you get to decide the agenda, no matter what the electorate says. Ergo, 14,000 riders to a spending bill.

o.nate OTM

xp

term limits are never the answer and I'm against them for presidents too

we already have term limits, they're called elections.

things are bad! drop what you're doing and look busy!

is that a plan for legislative success? for any party? i though o.nate was just criticizing the majority for looking desperate?

now if we could only have public financed elections everything would work out fine and dandy haha

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we already have term limits, they're called elections.

"Stop me before I elect Mitch McConnell again" is fine w/ me

all I have to say is term limits have been a total disaster for my state. if you want any evidence of why they don't work, just survey California's completely crippled gov't.

you end up with a bunch of idiots who have no idea about how gov't should work, how to make deals, how to craft legislation, and with no incentive or imperative or TIME to learn (after all, they're all gonna be gone in a few years so who gives a shit, right?)

Ugh publicly financed elections would seem to solve all our goddamn problems.

Thanks for nothing SCOTUS, you fucks.

citizen legislators! xp

all the Republican reps, for example, have signed sworn oaths to NEVER vote for ANY tax increase EVER under any circumstance - and since this is the party line, they just cycle a fresh crop in every few years and the voting patterns remain frozen. no one has any incentive to compromise.

xp

Shakey they dont have time. Thats why we legislate through propositions now. Makes everything easier so nobody has to make tough decisions.

http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/t083827oovv.jpg

and then if you happen to actually get a rep you like in office, you have a law that tells you you can't keep them there! WTF

xp

propositions are a disaster. Prop 13 being the perfect example. Not to mention that we just end up with all these bullshit propositions that clog up the courts and eventually get struck down as unconstitutional (and then we amend/revise the constitution via proposition! which then totally fucks the state because no one actually understands the implications! brilliant!)

executive order to thread, pls

propositions are my favorite thing about california, now that i no longer live in california

Propositions, for those of you who know your CA history, we're implemented in the progressive era to insure that powerful money interests (railroads, primarly) couldn't entirely dominate the assmebly. Should the bar be higher for putting them on the ballot? Of course, but I wouldn't get rid of them entirely.

I have no problem w/the two term limit for President. The American Presidency is very, very powerful and FDR was the only president not to respect the tradition of a limit of two terms, and the last time he ran, he knew how ill he was - it was very irresponsible and it didn't particularly help his party groom new candidates.

I don't necessarily have a problem with term limits for Congress, either but I think they should be tailored to the institution. While one may fear life-long politicians, I also fear constant waves of susceptible neophytes, too, unless we get to some utopia where you could abrogate the First Amendment and put term limits on lobbyists careers, too. Maybe three terms for Senators and ten for Reps, say?

Should the bar be higher for putting them on the ballot? Of course, but I wouldn't get rid of them entirely.

yeah I agree with this

I think I said this before but the real problem here is that Republicans actually understand how federal government works

I don't think the GOP understands how the government actually works - just look at how they mismanaged Iraq reconstruction, Katrina, the SEC, etc. during the Bush years. What they do understand is political theater. In that arena, they do have one natural advantage over the Dems. The Dems believe that government can be a positive force for change - that it has some role besides bombing Arabic-speaking countries back to the Stone Age and maintaining highways. Crafting good government policies is hard work and it takes up a lot of the Dems time. Meanwhile on the GOP side, their policy prescription is easy and universal: whatever the government is doing now, do less of. So that leaves them with lots of time to come up with good political theater: ie., misinformation, obstructionism, proposing symbolic measures that have good optics but do little.

As it is, any crackpot, single-issue group can put something on the ballot, banning us from eating horse-flesh or whatever, instead of concetrating on exerting political pressure on our representatives in the Assembly or State Senate. The problem with democracy in a state of over 30 million people is that it will quickly become a demogoguic tyranny and the problem with the hybrid we have now is that instead of creating a people's escape valve for an unresponsive class of representatives, we regularly just bypass the normal channels of representation and plebescites and referenda are too often the tyrant's path to legitimacy.

yes but michael, back then, it was the railroads. now it is the homosexuals.

maintaining highways

I don't think the GOP even believes in this tbh

I don't think the GOP understands how the government actually works - just look at how they mismanaged Iraq reconstruction, Katrina, the SEC, etc. during the Bush years.

I think you are conflating "actually" with "supposed to" in my sentence.