I’m so tired of all the talk about “bipartisanship.”
“If there is any chance we can do a bipartisan bill, it has to be in the Finance Committee,” Harry Reid said yesterday about health care reform.
Currently the Senate has 59 Democrats, 40 Republicans, and a vacancy in Minnesota.
If the Senate had 51 Democrats and 48 Republicans, and 8 Republicans joined 51 Democrats to pass a bill by a vote of 59-40, everyone would gush about how wonderful it was that a bipartisan bill passed.
But the Senate has 59 Democrats and 40 Republicans. If all Democrats vote for a bill today and all Republicans vote against it, it still passes, 59-40. But in that situation, it’s not “bipartisan.” So it’s a very bad thing.
Why is the same vote acceptable in one context but not in another?
If there were 90 Democrats and 10 Republicans, Harry Reid and others would still be fretting about winning over one or two of those Republicans in the name of “bipartisanship.”
Enough with the fetishizing of bipartisanship. If spineless centrists are going to worry about winning over members of the opposition no matter how small that opposition is, then what is the point of having a 59- or 60-member Democratic Senate caucus instead of a 51-member caucus or 54-member caucus? Yes, it’s nice to be able to break filibusters. But Congress recently decided that health reform could pass by a simple majority vote if necessary. So why are Reid and others being so obsessive about “bipartisanship”?
The Senate is an exclusive club divided into two teams. There’s a Democratic caucus and a Republican caucus, a Democratic leader and a Republican leader. Members of each party have their own retreats. Party controls everything. Most Americans aren’t loyal to one party or another — they vote for whoever seems like the better choice in any given year — but senators are obsessed with party. That’s especially true today, when party loyalty is much stronger than it used to be. Only three Republicans broke ranks to vote for Obama’s stimulus bill — and one of them switched parties soon after.
The bipartisanship fetishists in the Senate and the media are making an important mistake: they’re confusing bipartisanship with consensus.
We emerged from the 2008 elections with a Senate containing 59 — and it really should be 60 — Democrats. The Republican Party currently has a 25 percent approval rating. So the consensus of the American people is that the Republicans suck.
The consensus is that the Democrats should use their 60-member caucus to pass health care reform. Nearly three-quarters of Americans think there should be a public health care plan; this is a consensus. But “Democrats in the Senate have considered nixing the proposal in order to win Republican support for the bill,” according to that link.
Politicians do not have to listen blindly to what majorities want — people can be ill-informed and majorities can be wrong — but if they’re going to buck the public, they should do so for substantive reasons, not because they’re worried about upsetting the guy who jogs next to them in the Senate gym or sits next to them in the Senate dining room.
Bipartisanship is meaningless. It’s as antidemocratic as the Senate itself. In the Senate, every state gets two seats, no matter how big the state’s population; likewise, each of the two major parties apparently gets a voice, even if the American people think one of those parties is intellectually bankrupt.
Exactly how big a majority do we need before we can start using it?
This is one of the many reasons why the Democratic Party sucks. They don’t know how to use power when they get it — and they probably wouldn’t have even gotten it in the first place if Bush hadn’t been such an embarrassing failure. The election that put the Democrats in the majority was not so much a vote in favor of the Democratic Party but rather a repudiation of the Republicans. They certainly did not put up any kind of real opposition until the electoral winds started blowing against the GOP, and even then they wussed out.
There are many problems, but I think the most salient in this instance is that Democrats want to be liked, and they don’t handle criticism well from the other side. Witness all the Democrats post-9/11 trying to outdo each other in protestations of patriotism and bloodlust lest they be tainted as “anti-American” by the right.
The conservative propaganda machine is expert at controlling the dialogue and putting liberals on the defensive. Despite deliberately fanning the flames of the most bitter American political divide in living memory, conservative politicians and talking-heads can at the same time give lip-service to the virtue of “bipartisanship” and tut-tuting Democrats who don’t compromise enough of their agenda to make them happy. Democrats, afraid of being seen as arrogantly governing unilaterally, shy away from this criticism and try to be as “bipartisan” as possible. Obama himself said he wanted to heal the division in the country and bring people together.
The bottom line is that the Democratic Party has no spine, no courage, no balls. Too bad their the only thing we’ve got :(
I will say, though, that as much as I deplore the circus going on in Albany, I’m actually impressed that the Democrats in the State Senate had the nerve to contest the Republican take-over of the Senate and even went do far as to constitute themselves yesterday as the legitimate Senate and start passing laws. Democrats at the Federal level would have caved in to the Republicans. State Senators, however, are a bit closer to their voters and are less exposed to the media. Also, the more local the politics the more vicious they become, so they had that in their favor over their national colleagues.
AMEN!!!!
You have hit the nail directly on the the head, and sent in to the heart of the matter.
I am ready for the majority to ACT like a majority.
The nation is ready for leadership. If the Dems act like timid weaklings no one will trust them, nor want to follow them. But with the issues that are out there (health care leading the way) voters want change and action. The Dems have the power and people on their side.
All they seem to lack is spine and spunk.
And perhaps more phone calls from folks like us, and verbal jabs in the rear.
I suspect that the “bipartisan” concerns about the public health care plan are nothing more than a smokescreen for their fear of offending the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, who would stand to lose a lot and who coincidentally are very generous campaign donors. The one thing any politician truly cares about is getting re-elected, and they certainly would never want to offend any important donor.
I’m afraid that the “health care reform” that emerges from the Congressional sausage machine will reflect the “one dollar, one vote” reality of the American political system. There will be a few cosmetic enhancements to make voters think something has happened, but the gravy train will continue to chug right along for all the interests who now profit handsomely at the expense of millions of people.
In politics, balls don’t mean much compared to sacks of money.