Election 2012: Post-Game Analysis Thread

Ah, but there never was a talking filbuster. It's a myth created by Jimmy Stewart movies; it's always been procedural bullshit.

Huh? That link gives multiple examples of actual, talking filibusters, like the notorious ones to prevent the passage of Civil Rights bills....

Disagree; it's a procedure issue. We've got enough RPG players on here to know this, but almost any set of rules can be gamed to some degree, and most of us have been GM's enough to have said "well played, sir/madam" a few times. While I strongly agree that filibuster reform is badly needed and should be priority of the current leadership of the Senate, I'm hesitant to remove tools that may be useful in certain situations.

If it was only that simple. Let me tell you a story. Some background beforehand; I was born in Texas, parents had the good sense to get me back over the state line to Arkansas quickly, and was raised there. Point is that I know the signs and dogwhistles of racism, but in the part of the state I grew up in we were relatively integrated and people got along well enough. So, when I'm driving up with my GF's* sister and her family (for the first time, this is about 8 years ago now) in north-central Arkansas what do I see? Some dude in a dented old Chevy pickup with, and I'm not making this up, a stars and bars bumper sticker with the words "I Ride With Forrest" on it. I remark to my GF "Look at this fucknut" and she (half Mexican as is her twin sister who we were visting, born in New Mexico, raised in Dallas) had no idea what I was talking about. More to the point, neither she nor her sister (both of which have Masters degrees) knew the implication of what that bumper sticker ment.

My point by telling that? Meandering at best, and since I'm a white dude I have never experienced what the implicit threat of seeing that means in a real sense. However, you ain't going to end that shit just by ending the filibuster, or by any actions pertaining to it. Signs and portents like that need to be known, they need to be outed, and they need to be shot down as the horrific policies that kept people in chains long after they were physically free of them.

*Still together, btw!

This just in: Romney backer is huge douchebag, coerces employees to donate to Republican candidates, forced them to attend Romney event without pay, fires 160 after Romney loses

Mr. Widget does not believe ending the filibuster would literally end the last remaining trace of the structural and social ramifications of slavery, Jim Crow, and racism in the former Confederacy, but that the filibuster is the final bit of legal manipulation specifically exploited in the attempt to fight civil rights.

Well this is a fun racial datapoint.

Mapping Twitter's post-election racist tweets.

Once again, I'm reminded that Alabama and Mississippi have the most racial polarized voting patterns in the entire country; 85%+ of whites vote GOP.

Oklahoma is a pleasant surprise.

I couldn't disagree more strongly on this. If a rule is fundamentally flawed, and violate principles you hold dear, it's a poor idea to keep it around just for its gamesmanship utility. Some rules are rotten to the core, and the only appropriate thing to do is cut them out of the rulebook as soon as you get the chance.

That statement was not intended to be taken literally. I don't even own a stake!*

Well, no argument there!


*Though I bet I could whip something up with a knife and a broom handle in a pinch. In any case, Confederacy nostalgia is more of a zombie plague than a vampire infestation, IMHO.

Why am I not surprised that the St. Louis area and Chicago have a concentration of racist tweets?

Never? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Just because X senators talked to exercise their filibuster doesn't mean it's required. See here. Previous to the cloture rule, you needed unanimous consent to cut off debate. Now with cloture there's some rules to cut off debate, "but debate" is a joke. "Debate" in the Senate sense does not technically require anyone to talk; it's a rather amusing rules system. This Senate PDF has the best review. The Nation has a FAQ with more stuff.

Near as I can tell two opposing senator on the floor can endlessly alternate speaking for 30 seconds, suggesting amendments (which eats a bunch of time to dispose of them), and doing quorum checks (which eats a bunch off time), tying up the Senate indefinitely, near as I can tell. Quorum checks are especially fun because as soon as 50 senators aren't there, the Senate is immediatelly ground to a halt - it either adjourns for the day or they have to get 50 senators back on the floor quickly. Long-term you need around 20 senators to keep it up day by day to support roll calls.

Once you get a 60 Senator vote for cloture things wind down correctly, but before that there's really no limit.

It's been a while since I dug around but my recollection is that the current operation of the filibuster is a function of senate rules, and there's nothing in the constitution that says anything about senate rules requiring anything but a simple majority to change. The difficulty is on the one hand that the Senate minority and its party might oppose such a move (as "unconstitutional") to the point of provoking a constitutional crisis. And even before that it would be difficult to keep a majority together on side for such a "nuclear" policy, to say nothing of selling it to the Sunday talk show crowd. It's not even clear that there's a firm majority for truly neutering the filibuster: even if in practice it's a Republican plaything, in theory it's a national handbrake available both to Senate minorities in general and Senators themselves in particular. We're talking about some of the biggest egos in politics, the "I should have been President" crowd, and without the filibuster they'd be more like glorified Congressmen.

It's always possible that a new Democratic Senate caucus in a new political environment might finally discover some vision and determination within itself and go for it. In reply to the "near certain constitutional crisis" downside one could say that the Republican congress blithely ignored its clear constitutional responsibilities in the debt ceiling crisis. Certainly from an academic "who is abusing the constitution more" point of view, sharp dealing on the filibuster pales next to the GOP's "try to make us do our constitutional duty, muahaha" hostage tactics.

I was merely responding to your rebuttal that there never was a talking filibuster and that's just a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington hollywood fabrication, which is not factually correct even via the very link you used to support your point.

Perhaps if they changed Senate rules back so that it does work the way people think it works (from the movies!) then it might actually work to resolve the issue. People don't understand parliamentary procedure, and they don't understand filibusters. They do understand people doing asinine things like reading recipes and phonebooks and generally making a mockery of our legistative system.

It still makes you look asinine in a Youtube video if you had a circle of Republican senators endlessly alternating speaking for 30 seconds. Again, perhaps they might be able to win popular support that they're being all heroic if it was being used against some landmark unpopular legislation, but I doubt you'd see that fly against random bills and nominations.

That's goddammed disgusting. I hope something very bad happens to that man.

While I feel bad for anyone that loses a job, those people are going to be better off not working for Murray.

I think that might be wishful thinking :-(

This would work for keeping Democrats in line, but Republicans simply don't give a shit. Near as I can tell there is exactly one Republican left in the Senate that is concerned with the opinions of non-crazy voters and might break a filibuster - Susan Collins.

Yeah. As horrible as that douchebag is, those coal miners probably desperately need their jobs, douchebag or no. Poor guys.

David Frum on Morning Joe discussing "Why Romney Lost"

Wow. Spot on as far as I can tell.

I'm sorry, who did Frum endorse again? Oh, that's right...

Fuck you, clown.

Not exactly the greatest endorsement ever. Frum seems to believe it's the current GOP congress that's the biggest problem and whatever way he can vote to correct that as quickly as possible is his pragmatic duty. That generally Obama's done a good job, and Mitt will most likely do about the the same as Obama but at least his election might later screw the extremist idiotic congressional GOP. It's not quite an "I'm With Mitt" bumper sticker.

Alternative interpretation: Frum thinks we should reward GOP brinksmanship and hostage-taking.

It could be more that Frum thinks that we can't afford not to give in to GOP brinksmanship; that the short-term damage to the country is too high and that it won't have the long-term effects that, say, you and I think it will.

But that might be giving him too much credit.

I think that's certainly giving it too much credit. Frum's a smart guy, but he's also batting for Team Republican. Hence his tortured reasoning for endorsing Romney.

I think Frum's just not that good at lots of things. Dead Right alternates between insightful social commentary and batshit stupid tactical and policy recommendations.

The main thing that's on my list now is that he and his people were in such a bubble about their prospects of winning. Remember GWB's bubble, and how Karl Rove used to ridicule the "reality-based community"? Shit like that gets you into unnecessary wars and causes you to ignore important things like people who want to launch major terrorist attacks on the U.S.

That's a really good contrast to post-election Frum. It's not a stirring endorsement (akin to the Economist's endorsement of Obama), but boy does it undercut his credibility towards a centrist audience. People like him aren't a good direction for the GOP, but they do represent a way for the party to stabilize the bleeding in order to do as much harm as possible before the established versions of the old and bigoted become less politically relevant.

I've unfortunately been catching-up rather than keeping-up on the politics threads here this week, but my mac presented an interesting prep for this thread:

I recently heard Terry Gross' post-election interview of Norm Orenstein. I was prepared to be frustrated, but on the whole it was decent. I was particularly impressed by his proposal to reform the filibuster -- from memory, put the burden on the minority instead of the majority (where it currently rests) and only allow a bill to be blocked once. I think we should get rid of it altogether, but his proposal definitely sounded like a step in the right direction.

Former GW Bush Counselor/PR undersecretary Karen Hughes is obsessed with form over substance when she's not outright lying, but I thought she almost got the point here:

So close, yet so far.

Maureen Dowd pens a pretty good editorial that unfortunately summarizes how a lot of people (yours truly included) feel about Obama...

This does recognize that the Republican Party has become incredibly, unpatriotically, intransigent, but at the same time Obama's refusal to call them out for the same while constantly attempting to reach out to those who seek his destruction, even if it means great harm to the country, has been wildly frustrating.

The hope is that Obama has always been playing the long game and his repeatedly rebuffed attempts at compromise and conciliation will serve as the argument for a more muscular liberal agenda this cycle.

That article is a lot of concentrated stupid and is part of why they need a come to jesus moment as a party. Or whatever you do in order to be less dogmatically stupid.

"Message matters, let's not make people feel unwelcome!" comes right after #2: "Hey guys, we needed to make a better case that the economic disaster wasn't due to lax regulation and unfettered greed, and instead entirely the fault of minorities buying houses irresponsibly!"

Yeah, way to make those minorities feel welcome!

Look, people are turned off to your message because the implications of your message are terrible. "Hard work" isn't a turn off. The implication that if you're struggling it's because you're lazy? THAT is a turn off. The idea that finance professionals selling bullshit to make a quick buck is Capitalism, while people failing to pay their mortgage is a failure of irresponsible poor people? Offensive on every fucking level. That we shouldn't offer birth control coverage due to "sluts" and religious objections to what other people do even though it's actually cheaper to offer insurance that covers it? Offensive to pretty much everyone with a brain.

It's not the messaging. It's the fucking message.

edit: to make it seem like I'm not Dowd bashing.

Obama's winning popular vote margin of 51.4% to 48.6% (+2.8%) is now higher than Bush's 2004 margin of 50.7% to 48.3% (+2.4%).

Time to privatize Social Security!

Good thing so many states approved gay marriage, 'cause this sounds like a MAN DATE.

Slate's John Dickerson provides a post-game look into the Romney campaign's perspective on voter turnout and their game-day problems getting information to and from campaign workers.

I love this little nugget.

Because a lack of funding is what sunk the Romney campaign

I'm going to laugh if a Dem takes the ORCA idea and implements it effectively during the next cycle.

Both sides have been using room-sized WOPR supercomputers - by which I mean complex data analysis-and-use systems - for an election cycle or two now, and I'd lay heavy odds the Dems have the advantage on that one. The Republicans just won the funny name contest for their fail-whale.

Yeah, by the sounds of it, the Dems have already beaten the GOP at the data game, but I don't know the specifics.

I liked that quote from the Romney campaign about minority turnout, though. "We never thought blacks would want to vote for president just like real Americans!"