Seems like this should be near the top of the list for Democrats to fix if they ever take power again. I mean, if they can muster the effort to make a list. Weird that they didn’t do this in 2009.
The 2009 fillibuster-proof majority was a lot shorter than people think. They needed 60 Democrats in the Senate to override fillibusters from the GOP, and Al Franken was engaged in a legal fight to take his seat in the Senate that took months.
By the Time Franken was seated, Ted Kennedy had stopped showing up and lingered for months until his death. His interim replacement wasn’t seated until right before the Christmas holidays. And then in January the Tea Party had replaced Kennedy with a Republican in a special election.
It’s a miracle they managed to rush through the ACA, but that’s also why it was a broken mess. It should have been fixed in reconciliation with a House version of the bill, but then it would have had to go back to the Senate. The House passed the exact, broken language of the Senate version so the GOP couldn’t fillibuster it.
And the GOP spent the next 7 years blocking any progress. Moscow Mitch sponsored a bill that the Dems backed, then fillibustered his own bill just to stop any progress.
Yes, thank you for reminding the class about how poorly the Democrats managed being in control and how they did not (and still do not) have a real plan with legislation ready to go. It’s always something out of their control, isn’t it?
It’s a pattern in US presidencies: Republican sets new policies, then the next Democrat quietly accepts their predecessor’s platform, even expanding on it as they see fit.
Clinton didn’t push back on the fairness doctrine or the housing finance reforms (giving us sub-prime morgages and the '08 crash) of Regan and Bush Sr.
Obama accepted the war in Afghanistan, the enhanced interrogation, and the PATRIOT act of Bush Jr.
Biden kept and expanded the tariff and trade war policy of Trump’s first term, and continued militarizing the border in an attempt to out-right the right.
Seems like this should be near the top of the list for Democrats to fix if they ever take power again. I mean, if they can muster the effort to make a list. Weird that they didn’t do this in 2009.
The 2009 fillibuster-proof majority was a lot shorter than people think. They needed 60 Democrats in the Senate to override fillibusters from the GOP, and Al Franken was engaged in a legal fight to take his seat in the Senate that took months.
By the Time Franken was seated, Ted Kennedy had stopped showing up and lingered for months until his death. His interim replacement wasn’t seated until right before the Christmas holidays. And then in January the Tea Party had replaced Kennedy with a Republican in a special election.
It’s a miracle they managed to rush through the ACA, but that’s also why it was a broken mess. It should have been fixed in reconciliation with a House version of the bill, but then it would have had to go back to the Senate. The House passed the exact, broken language of the Senate version so the GOP couldn’t fillibuster it.
And the GOP spent the next 7 years blocking any progress. Moscow Mitch sponsored a bill that the Dems backed, then fillibustered his own bill just to stop any progress.
Yes, thank you for reminding the class about how poorly the Democrats managed being in control and how they did not (and still do not) have a real plan with legislation ready to go. It’s always something out of their control, isn’t it?
It’s not weird at all, they’re beholden to billionaire donors, not voters.
It’s a pattern in US presidencies: Republican sets new policies, then the next Democrat quietly accepts their predecessor’s platform, even expanding on it as they see fit.
Clinton didn’t push back on the fairness doctrine or the housing finance reforms (giving us sub-prime morgages and the '08 crash) of Regan and Bush Sr.
Obama accepted the war in Afghanistan, the enhanced interrogation, and the PATRIOT act of Bush Jr.
Biden kept and expanded the tariff and trade war policy of Trump’s first term, and continued militarizing the border in an attempt to out-right the right.
Otherwise known as the ratchet effect.