“Americans spoke out in a clear repudiation of Washington and elected leaders who refuse to listen to the people.”
Which Americans? Americans who voted in San Francisco hardly repudiated their congresswoman. Nancy Pelosi, departing Speaker of the House of Representatives, received 80 percent of the vote on Nov. 2.
John Boehner, incoming Speaker of the House and author of the statement above, received 66 percent of the vote from Americans who live in Cincinnati’s northern suburbs, which is about par for a congressman who has served for 20 years.
In his home state of Ohio, Boehner sure outdid Bill Johnson, a fellow Republican who eked out a victory with 50 percent of the vote. Democrat Marcia Fudge outdid all her Ohio colleagues in the House with 82 percent. Representing a suburban Cleveland district, Fudge has only been in office for two years.
It does count that Republicans now control the House and plan all kinds of mischief. However, they do not represent all Americans. They may not even represent the majority of Americans.
A check of an electoral map courtesy of The New York Times shows that districts in the heartland - what many easterners condescendingly refer to as flyover country - are heavily represented by Republicans, even before the Nov. 2 shake-up.
In America’s coastal sections, you are not in Kansas any more, John Boehner. Few districts on the West Coast or in the Northeast flipped. Especially, most districts in the big cities and their close-in suburbs remained in Democratic hands, though there were disturbing failings.
While Republicans made gains in the Senate, Democratic senators were re-elected in the first and third most populous states (California and New York) while Republicans kept a Senate seat in Florida, fourth most populous state. However, Marco Rubio benefited from a split vote between a moderate independent and a liberal Democrat.
Republicans were elected to Senate seats in Illinois and Pennsylvania, fifth and sixth most populous, but with narrow margins. Democrats also held onto Senate seats in the Northeast and West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, Connecticut, Maryland and Delaware. Not to mention hotly contested races in Colorado, Nevada and West Virginia.
Nine months after Republican Scott Brown won a traditional Democratic Senate seat, Massachusetts Democrats held onto all 10 House seats while Democrats in Connecticut kept all five House seats.
Maryland Democrats lost a congressional seat, but they will still represent six of the state’s eight districts. Delaware’s lone representative will be a Democrat who won the seat vacated by Mike Castle, a popular Republican, so he could run for the Senate. Maybe some readers heard of Christine O’Donnell, who trounced Castle in the Republican Senate primary.
The most gaping conclusion one can reach from checking the electoral map is the difference in political choice between Americans who live in and around major metropolitan areas and many of those who do not.
All told, Democrats in January will represent 22 congressional districts and Republicans seven districts in New York City and its suburbs in Connecticut, New Jersey and Long Island, and Westchester and Rockland counties in New York state. One district, which covers eastern Long Island, is undecided at this writing.
The big cities and their immediate suburbs comprise a mix of masses of poor and vulnerable citizens, the middle-class and the wealthy - the super-wealthy, for that matter.
If the rich want their taxes reduced so sharply, why do they continue to elect Democrats like Henry Waxman to represent Beverly Hills, Carolyn Maloney for Manhattan’s Upper East Side and recently Jim Himes for Greenwich and Westport in Connecticut’s Fairfield County? We’re talking about three of the wealthiest districts in the country.
In the city, a Republican narrowly won back the district covering Staten Island and part of Brooklyn, but Democrats held onto all other districts in the city. Staten Island was previously represented by Republicans for many years.
In the suburbs, Republican Nan Hayworth handily beat incumbent Democrat John Hall in the district covering portions of counties north of New York. Hayworth won all the counties in her district but northern Westchester, the principal suburban county immediately north of the city. Hayworth lives in Mt. Kisco, also home to Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo, which is in Westchester. Hall lives in the northern end of the district, in Dutchess County.
While Hayworth won part of Rockland County, the rest of Rockland and Westchester counties will continue to be represented by Democrats Nita Lowey and Eliot Engel.
However, Republicans will represent the majority of suburban voters around Philadelphia after flipping three districts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. All three Democratic representatives from Philadelphia were re-elected.
In the Philadelphia races, Bob Brady ran unopposed while Chaka Fattah was re-elected with 89 percent of the vote. This was part of an intriguing pattern where many Democrats representing urban districts received 80 percent or more of the votes. A number of Republicans, mostly in Texas, could also claim such heavy victories.
All-time champion for winning representatives of either party was Jose E. Serrano of the south Bronx at 95 percent. In New York City alone, he was followed by Nydia Velazquez, 93 percent; Edolphus Towns, 91 percent; Yvette Clark, 90 percent; and three others at 80 percent or more. Charles Rangel, who was convicted of ethics offenses by a congressional committee, received 80 percent. Thought you wanted to know since we’re on the subject.
Most of the 80 percent or above Democrats are Latinos, African-Americans or whites who represent districts where racial minority groups comprise the majority. As a white Jewish male, I am in the minority in Bob Brady’s district. Brady, who is white, is also the city’s Democratic leader.
A final pattern: Some of the victorious Republicans won with very narrow margins, though some Democrats also eked out their wins.
It is not so significant that Democrats fared better than it might appear, but that moderate and liberal citizens want candidates who will represent their concerns.
Four independent candidates could claim such support. Lincoln Chafee, an independent and lapsed Republican, was elected governor of Rhode Island. Independent candidates for governor in Maine and senator in Florida performed well and might have won if not for the winner-take-all voting system in their states. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, while a longtime Republican, represented Alaska’s middle by beating Republican nominee Joe Miller, an ultra-conservative Tea Party candidate, through write-in votes.
Many independent voters who supported Republicans had only Democrats and Republicans to choose between. They probably recognized that, from their viewpoint, they voted for the lesser of the evils.
Fortunately, the shape of politics in America is not as evil as it might seem.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
A preferred way to elect our leaders
Peter LePage could not convince the majority of his neighbors in Waterville to elect him governor of Maine.
The Republican candidate who suggested he would tell President Obama to “go to hell” received 2,306 votes in Waterville while his main rivals - independent Eliot Cutler and Democrat Libby Mitchell - received 1,521 and 1,484 votes, respectively, overtaking LePage with more than 3,000 votes.
Statewide, Cutler, Mitchell and two other independent candidates shared 62 percent of the vote. LePage, who is mayor of Waterville, received 38 percent; Cutler, 37 percent; and Mitchell, 19 percent.
The Maine election was among at least five three-way or more state races - also, Florida, Alaska, Rhode Island and South Dakota - that were vulnerable to a gloomy outcome because two alike candidates might cancel each other out.
This kind of outcome is nothing new. A check of presidential election results - reaching back more than two centuries - produces some amazing nuggets of information. George Washington, who probably made enemies during his first term, was re-elected to his second term in 1792 with 50 percent of the electoral college votes. John Adams took 25.7 percent of the electoral vote in 1796 to win his only term as president, and was turned out of office in 1800 by his vice president, Thomas Jefferson, who received 26.4 percent of the electoral vote.
Only electoral college vote totals were available for the early presidential elections.
Abraham Lincoln received 39.6 percent of the popular vote in 1860. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, was elected in 1912 with 41.8 percent as incumbent Republican president William Taft and Progressive Party ex-president Theodore Roosevelt split most of the remainder of the vote, respectively 27 percent and 23 percent.
Harry Truman’s election was threatened in 1948, leading to the infamous “Dewey defeats Truman” headline, but it is rarely if ever mentioned that two liberals and a conservative shaved votes from both Truman, the Democrat, and Republican Thomas Dewey. Truman presumably lost more votes to the independent candidates. Truman won 49.5 percent of the votes to Dewey’s 45 percent. Strom Thurmond, the longtime Republican senator, won 2.4 percent while Socialist candidate Norman Thomas took 4.7 percent and Progressive hopeful Henry Wallace, who preceded Truman as vice president, won 2.3 percent.
Whether anyone is pleased or furious with the results on Nov. 2, all five elections scream for a new system of electing the people who could make life-or-death decisions affecting our fates.
Political reform organizations have been promoting a system called Instant Runoff Voting that allows the election of a candidate to receive the majority vote in a race with multiple rivals.
Under this system, roughly, a voter casts a ballot for his preferred candidate (Candidate A) and then votes for other candidates in order of preference. Let’s say his second preference is Candidate B.
The first result leaves no candidate with a majority, but Candidate C has the top spot with a plurality of 40 percent. The voter’s first preference, Candidate A, has 20 percent and Candidate B has 33 percent. His vote for A is transferred to B and, if most voters think this way then B will win with 53 percent of the vote.
Because Maine employs the winner-take-all system, its next governor can now follow through with his intent to tell the president to “go to hell.” Paul LePage, the Republican, was elected with 38 percent of the vote while his two closest opponents shared 56 percent.
“Three is a crowd in our current voting system,” reads a description posted by the Center for Voting and Democracy. “Plurality voting, in which the candidate with the most votes win, is dysfunctional when more than two candidates run.
“It promotes zero-sum politics that discourage new candidates, suppress new ideas and encourage negative campaigns rather than inclusive efforts to build consensus.”
The Center for Voting and Democracy further clarifies how IRV works: “IRV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Voters have the option to rank as many or as few candidates as they wish, but can vote without fear that ranking less favored candidates will harm the chances of their most preferred candidates.
“First choices are then tabulated, and if a candidate receives a majority of first choices, he or she is elected. If nobody has a clear majority of votes on the first count, a series of runoffs are simulated, using each voter’s preferences indicated on the ballot.
“The weakest candidates are successively eliminated and their voters’ ballots are redistributed to next choices until a candidate earns a majority of votes.”
Instant Runoff Voting is currently employed to elect mayors and other officials in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Aspen, Colo., Takoma Park, Md., and London, England, according to the Center for Voting and Democracy.
Australians have elected its House of Representatives this way since 1949 and Ireland has elected its president since 1922 with IRV.
Instant Runoff Voting offers voters many advantages that genuinely makes democracy come alive. Most importantly, IRV precludes the election of the least-desired major candidate. Of course, determining who is least desirable is a subjective matter.
This concern played out in Maine. It is safe to speculate that Cutler would have left LePage in the dust if the state employed Instant Runoff Voting. There were media reports of voters saying they did not want LePage as governor, but nonetheless he is now governor-elect.
IRV would also eliminate petty maneuvering among the candidates, as occurred in Florida’s three-way tug-of-war between Marco Rubio, Charlie Crist and Kendrick Meek.
Rubio, a tea-party candidate who won the Republican nomination, ultimately won with 49 percent of the vote while Crist, running as an independent, took 30 percent and Meek, the Democrat, received 20 percent. To give Rubio credit, he came awfully close to a majority vote while Crist and Meek eked out a combination of the majority.
However, Crist probably would have clobbered either Rubio or Meek in a head-to-head contest. He has emerged as a popular governor whose politics has been vague. Between the three candidates, he came as close to representing the center while Meek would support the liberal Democratic agenda. Of course, Rubio represented the far right.
Meek, a little-known congressman representing Broward and Miami-Dade counties, had never caught fire as a candidate and it was questionable if an African-American could win statewide office in Florida even if he ran one-on-one against Rubio.
The choice was a dilemma for moderates and liberals. Progressives who preferred Meek considered voting for Crist because a split vote would leave Rubio with the job. As the election progressed, even some black Democrats wanted Meek to drop out. Bill Clinton had some talks with Meek, though both denied that Clinton asked him to or demanded that he quit the race and endorse Crist.
The polls were less favorable for Rubio than the end result. His polls never exceeded 45 percent. However, it is likely that the ongoing conflict over Crist and Meek’s chances overshadowed the entire election. Maybe independents who might have voted for Crist were turned off by this sideshow and decided to vote for Rubio.
This system affords voters a greater opportunity to elect independent candidates to office. Lincoln Chafee was elected governor of Rhode Island under the traditional system four years after voters unceremoniously dumped him as senator.
Chafee was a Republican in the Senate, where he seemed to fear that Dick Cheney would spank him if he misbehaved. As a northeastern state, Rhode Island was trending away from the Republican Party in part because of President Bush’s policies, so Chafee’s defeat appeared to be inevitable. Chafee, a decent guy who clearly found his situation during the Bush years distasteful, subsequently quit the Republican Party and ran as an independent this year.
However, Chafee only took 36 percent of the vote this time. The Republican won 34 percent and the Democrat 23 percent. Chafee probably would have received a majority vote if IRV kicked in, but there was no IRV to kick in. He barely rose above the one-third point.
Independents have won elsewhere, but they were usually prominent and/or wealthy people who managed to win overcome the existing system. IRV would have opened up elections to candidates who are less known and have limited treasuries.
Alaska - hardly Sarah Palin’s Alaska - ultimately dumped Joe Miller, who ousted incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary. She returned as a write-in candidate, running against both Miller and the obscure Democrat, Scott McAdams. Democrats hoped that Murkowski and Miller would split the Republican and/or conservative vote, leaving McAdams with a winning plurality. Even without IRV, Murkowski won handily. If IRV was in place, it is a safe bet that Murkowski would have been elected by a majority vote.
The South Dakota outcome should leave us wondering what would have happened had IRV been employed. Democratic Rep. Stephanie Sandlin was ousted by Republican Kristi Noem, 48 to 46 percent. Independent Thomas Marking received 6 percent of the vote.
No question that Marking’s voters wanted neither major-party candidate representing them in Congress. If they had a choice to list a second preference, would they have viewed the Democrat or the Republican as the lesser of the evils? IRV might have altered the course of the South Dakota House election.
The Republican candidate who suggested he would tell President Obama to “go to hell” received 2,306 votes in Waterville while his main rivals - independent Eliot Cutler and Democrat Libby Mitchell - received 1,521 and 1,484 votes, respectively, overtaking LePage with more than 3,000 votes.
Statewide, Cutler, Mitchell and two other independent candidates shared 62 percent of the vote. LePage, who is mayor of Waterville, received 38 percent; Cutler, 37 percent; and Mitchell, 19 percent.
The Maine election was among at least five three-way or more state races - also, Florida, Alaska, Rhode Island and South Dakota - that were vulnerable to a gloomy outcome because two alike candidates might cancel each other out.
This kind of outcome is nothing new. A check of presidential election results - reaching back more than two centuries - produces some amazing nuggets of information. George Washington, who probably made enemies during his first term, was re-elected to his second term in 1792 with 50 percent of the electoral college votes. John Adams took 25.7 percent of the electoral vote in 1796 to win his only term as president, and was turned out of office in 1800 by his vice president, Thomas Jefferson, who received 26.4 percent of the electoral vote.
Only electoral college vote totals were available for the early presidential elections.
Abraham Lincoln received 39.6 percent of the popular vote in 1860. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, was elected in 1912 with 41.8 percent as incumbent Republican president William Taft and Progressive Party ex-president Theodore Roosevelt split most of the remainder of the vote, respectively 27 percent and 23 percent.
Harry Truman’s election was threatened in 1948, leading to the infamous “Dewey defeats Truman” headline, but it is rarely if ever mentioned that two liberals and a conservative shaved votes from both Truman, the Democrat, and Republican Thomas Dewey. Truman presumably lost more votes to the independent candidates. Truman won 49.5 percent of the votes to Dewey’s 45 percent. Strom Thurmond, the longtime Republican senator, won 2.4 percent while Socialist candidate Norman Thomas took 4.7 percent and Progressive hopeful Henry Wallace, who preceded Truman as vice president, won 2.3 percent.
Whether anyone is pleased or furious with the results on Nov. 2, all five elections scream for a new system of electing the people who could make life-or-death decisions affecting our fates.
Political reform organizations have been promoting a system called Instant Runoff Voting that allows the election of a candidate to receive the majority vote in a race with multiple rivals.
Under this system, roughly, a voter casts a ballot for his preferred candidate (Candidate A) and then votes for other candidates in order of preference. Let’s say his second preference is Candidate B.
The first result leaves no candidate with a majority, but Candidate C has the top spot with a plurality of 40 percent. The voter’s first preference, Candidate A, has 20 percent and Candidate B has 33 percent. His vote for A is transferred to B and, if most voters think this way then B will win with 53 percent of the vote.
Because Maine employs the winner-take-all system, its next governor can now follow through with his intent to tell the president to “go to hell.” Paul LePage, the Republican, was elected with 38 percent of the vote while his two closest opponents shared 56 percent.
“Three is a crowd in our current voting system,” reads a description posted by the Center for Voting and Democracy. “Plurality voting, in which the candidate with the most votes win, is dysfunctional when more than two candidates run.
“It promotes zero-sum politics that discourage new candidates, suppress new ideas and encourage negative campaigns rather than inclusive efforts to build consensus.”
The Center for Voting and Democracy further clarifies how IRV works: “IRV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Voters have the option to rank as many or as few candidates as they wish, but can vote without fear that ranking less favored candidates will harm the chances of their most preferred candidates.
“First choices are then tabulated, and if a candidate receives a majority of first choices, he or she is elected. If nobody has a clear majority of votes on the first count, a series of runoffs are simulated, using each voter’s preferences indicated on the ballot.
“The weakest candidates are successively eliminated and their voters’ ballots are redistributed to next choices until a candidate earns a majority of votes.”
Instant Runoff Voting is currently employed to elect mayors and other officials in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Aspen, Colo., Takoma Park, Md., and London, England, according to the Center for Voting and Democracy.
Australians have elected its House of Representatives this way since 1949 and Ireland has elected its president since 1922 with IRV.
Instant Runoff Voting offers voters many advantages that genuinely makes democracy come alive. Most importantly, IRV precludes the election of the least-desired major candidate. Of course, determining who is least desirable is a subjective matter.
This concern played out in Maine. It is safe to speculate that Cutler would have left LePage in the dust if the state employed Instant Runoff Voting. There were media reports of voters saying they did not want LePage as governor, but nonetheless he is now governor-elect.
IRV would also eliminate petty maneuvering among the candidates, as occurred in Florida’s three-way tug-of-war between Marco Rubio, Charlie Crist and Kendrick Meek.
Rubio, a tea-party candidate who won the Republican nomination, ultimately won with 49 percent of the vote while Crist, running as an independent, took 30 percent and Meek, the Democrat, received 20 percent. To give Rubio credit, he came awfully close to a majority vote while Crist and Meek eked out a combination of the majority.
However, Crist probably would have clobbered either Rubio or Meek in a head-to-head contest. He has emerged as a popular governor whose politics has been vague. Between the three candidates, he came as close to representing the center while Meek would support the liberal Democratic agenda. Of course, Rubio represented the far right.
Meek, a little-known congressman representing Broward and Miami-Dade counties, had never caught fire as a candidate and it was questionable if an African-American could win statewide office in Florida even if he ran one-on-one against Rubio.
The choice was a dilemma for moderates and liberals. Progressives who preferred Meek considered voting for Crist because a split vote would leave Rubio with the job. As the election progressed, even some black Democrats wanted Meek to drop out. Bill Clinton had some talks with Meek, though both denied that Clinton asked him to or demanded that he quit the race and endorse Crist.
The polls were less favorable for Rubio than the end result. His polls never exceeded 45 percent. However, it is likely that the ongoing conflict over Crist and Meek’s chances overshadowed the entire election. Maybe independents who might have voted for Crist were turned off by this sideshow and decided to vote for Rubio.
This system affords voters a greater opportunity to elect independent candidates to office. Lincoln Chafee was elected governor of Rhode Island under the traditional system four years after voters unceremoniously dumped him as senator.
Chafee was a Republican in the Senate, where he seemed to fear that Dick Cheney would spank him if he misbehaved. As a northeastern state, Rhode Island was trending away from the Republican Party in part because of President Bush’s policies, so Chafee’s defeat appeared to be inevitable. Chafee, a decent guy who clearly found his situation during the Bush years distasteful, subsequently quit the Republican Party and ran as an independent this year.
However, Chafee only took 36 percent of the vote this time. The Republican won 34 percent and the Democrat 23 percent. Chafee probably would have received a majority vote if IRV kicked in, but there was no IRV to kick in. He barely rose above the one-third point.
Independents have won elsewhere, but they were usually prominent and/or wealthy people who managed to win overcome the existing system. IRV would have opened up elections to candidates who are less known and have limited treasuries.
Alaska - hardly Sarah Palin’s Alaska - ultimately dumped Joe Miller, who ousted incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary. She returned as a write-in candidate, running against both Miller and the obscure Democrat, Scott McAdams. Democrats hoped that Murkowski and Miller would split the Republican and/or conservative vote, leaving McAdams with a winning plurality. Even without IRV, Murkowski won handily. If IRV was in place, it is a safe bet that Murkowski would have been elected by a majority vote.
The South Dakota outcome should leave us wondering what would have happened had IRV been employed. Democratic Rep. Stephanie Sandlin was ousted by Republican Kristi Noem, 48 to 46 percent. Independent Thomas Marking received 6 percent of the vote.
No question that Marking’s voters wanted neither major-party candidate representing them in Congress. If they had a choice to list a second preference, would they have viewed the Democrat or the Republican as the lesser of the evils? IRV might have altered the course of the South Dakota House election.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Senate filibuster can become history
Republicans won control of the House of Representatives, but Democrats won control of the Senate.
Huh? Democrats have held the majority of Senate seats since January 2007, so isn’t that control?
Holding the majority and being in control can be two entirely different matters. Democrats lacked control of the Senate because the filibuster disrupted their agenda. They needed 60 votes to end filibusters, and they frequently watered down bills such as health care reform to pass meaningful legislation.
Now Democrats have an opportunity to water down or eliminate the filibuster, as they are permitted to do on the first day of the legislative session by a majority vote.
If they pass up the opportunity to alter the filibuster and other Senate rules, they are hopeless imbeciles.
Senate rules can be changed by a majority when the next session of Congress opens in early January.
After the trouble the filibuster has caused President Obama’s agenda, it makes sense that the surviving Democratic majority would change the Senate rules applying to the filibuster at its first opportunity.
It is remarkable that the Senate created the filibuster because it disregards the will of the majority.
Under the Constitution, the Senate and the House are authorized to create their own rules. The Senate Web site reports that the filibuster became popular during the 1850’s, but it is unclear how it originated.
Interestingly, some delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 occasionally suggested measures requiring more than a majority in Congress.
Democrats signaled earlier this year that they might move on the filibuster and other rules. A Senate committee was holding hearings on this concern.
Possibly the Democrats’ first inclination would be to amend the filibuster process to ensure that it does not obstruct legislation in any acute way. The filibuster might block movement for a short amount of time, but otherwise the filibuster would be rendered ineffective.
The Democrats probably fear that any change in Senate rules will provoke criticism, especially from Republicans. So what? The Republicans are on the attack no matter what the Democrats do.
The idea of amending rather than ending the filibuster would limit political fallout, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and friends should not worry about it. They should merely do what is best for the nation.
If they do not act against the filibuster and other Senate rules, they will pay for their omission every time they introduce a bill or the president nominates someone for a White House position or judicial seat.
However, Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute offered this measure in a New York Times op-ed last Aug. 28: “The Senate could replace the majority’s responsibility to end debate with the minority’s responsibility to keep it going.
“It would work like this: for the first four weeks of debate, the Senate would operate under the old rules, in which the majority has to find enough senators to vote for cloture. Once that time has elapsed, the debate would automatically end unless the minority could assemble 40 senators to continue it.”
Ornstein emphasizes that the filibuster is useful, and his proposal would allow the filibuster to be put to proper use without being abused. “It gives the minority party the power to block hasty legislation and force a debate on what it considers matters of national significance,” he writes.
If Ornstein’s idea can work, the Democrats might be able to try it. However, does the debate need to extend to four weeks? Isn’t it possible that the Republicans will assemble those 40 senators just to spite the majority?
We may not be sure about its origin, but we know the cost of the filibuster only too well.
Huh? Democrats have held the majority of Senate seats since January 2007, so isn’t that control?
Holding the majority and being in control can be two entirely different matters. Democrats lacked control of the Senate because the filibuster disrupted their agenda. They needed 60 votes to end filibusters, and they frequently watered down bills such as health care reform to pass meaningful legislation.
Now Democrats have an opportunity to water down or eliminate the filibuster, as they are permitted to do on the first day of the legislative session by a majority vote.
If they pass up the opportunity to alter the filibuster and other Senate rules, they are hopeless imbeciles.
Senate rules can be changed by a majority when the next session of Congress opens in early January.
After the trouble the filibuster has caused President Obama’s agenda, it makes sense that the surviving Democratic majority would change the Senate rules applying to the filibuster at its first opportunity.
It is remarkable that the Senate created the filibuster because it disregards the will of the majority.
Under the Constitution, the Senate and the House are authorized to create their own rules. The Senate Web site reports that the filibuster became popular during the 1850’s, but it is unclear how it originated.
Interestingly, some delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 occasionally suggested measures requiring more than a majority in Congress.
Democrats signaled earlier this year that they might move on the filibuster and other rules. A Senate committee was holding hearings on this concern.
Possibly the Democrats’ first inclination would be to amend the filibuster process to ensure that it does not obstruct legislation in any acute way. The filibuster might block movement for a short amount of time, but otherwise the filibuster would be rendered ineffective.
The Democrats probably fear that any change in Senate rules will provoke criticism, especially from Republicans. So what? The Republicans are on the attack no matter what the Democrats do.
The idea of amending rather than ending the filibuster would limit political fallout, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and friends should not worry about it. They should merely do what is best for the nation.
If they do not act against the filibuster and other Senate rules, they will pay for their omission every time they introduce a bill or the president nominates someone for a White House position or judicial seat.
However, Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute offered this measure in a New York Times op-ed last Aug. 28: “The Senate could replace the majority’s responsibility to end debate with the minority’s responsibility to keep it going.
“It would work like this: for the first four weeks of debate, the Senate would operate under the old rules, in which the majority has to find enough senators to vote for cloture. Once that time has elapsed, the debate would automatically end unless the minority could assemble 40 senators to continue it.”
Ornstein emphasizes that the filibuster is useful, and his proposal would allow the filibuster to be put to proper use without being abused. “It gives the minority party the power to block hasty legislation and force a debate on what it considers matters of national significance,” he writes.
If Ornstein’s idea can work, the Democrats might be able to try it. However, does the debate need to extend to four weeks? Isn’t it possible that the Republicans will assemble those 40 senators just to spite the majority?
We may not be sure about its origin, but we know the cost of the filibuster only too well.
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