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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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No, the problem here is with the Senate, and it's arcane traditions where unanimous consent is required to get anything substantial done, and if the outsize power it gives the Majority Leader and the committee chairs to set the agends, who are only selected by the majority members. With the normal rules it takes 60 votes to get anything done. But if the Majority Leader or the relevant committee chair doesn't like a thing, they get a pocket veto to derail it.
Our current situation at the Supreme Court has everything to do with Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham deciding that the Senate's "advise and consent" role includes being able to perpetually ignore the President by failing to schedule a vote. When RBG died, Republicans made clear that they would have voted down a progressive replacement. I think it was Graham that literally challenged Obama to name a more centrist judge, and gave Garland as an example by name. Then, when Obama nominated Garland, Graham pivoted and said that now that Obama nominated that centrist, the Senate still wouldn't consider the nomination until after the election.
Make no mistake about it, the reason why Graham and McConnell never scheduled a vote is that they knew it would pass. So two Senators essentially vetoed Obama's pick, which is in flagrant opposition to the Constitution, which says the whole Senate has to vote on it. (Then , of course, when the tables were turned 4 years later Mitch and Lindsay came to different conclusions).
Even if Clinton won in 2020, there is no guarantee these Senate Republicans would have played fair and lived up to their commitments. They would have found new and novel ways to screw the country.
Agreed the problem is multi faceted, and it needs to be fought on multiple fronts. If I were an American I would support statehood for DC and PR to address the small-d-democratic deficit of the senate, anti-gerrymandering rules, all that stuff.
But none of these things are made better by not having a Democrat in the White House.
Those are all Band-Aids, the problem doesn't get fixed until the Judiciary is fixed, and so much of that depends on the Senate that we can't fix the Judiciary without fixing the Senate first.
The Senate was originally founded as a check on direct democracy, after all. Senators were appointed directly by State Legislatures, not by popular vote. Which meant that they needed to have direct political connections, both inside their state and outside, to get anything done. And I think that's the origin of their arcane rules, they considered themselves part of an exclusive club, so they made rules that reinforced those personal connections to get anything done.
I doubt the founders ever intended for Lindsay Graham to have a permanent veto on naming Supreme Court Justices, or "Coach" Tuberville to have a permanent veto on confirming high-ranking military appointments. Yet here we are.
Let's be clear. The normal rules are 50 votes to pass legislation. The fillibuster was never meant to be a permanent fixture and needs to be abolished immediately.
It's more than just the Filibuster. The Senate rules are complex, on purpose, to make actually getting things done difficult, and revising those rules required unanimous consent.
Look at what "Coach" Tuberville is doing. There are a bunch of military promotions that require Senate confirmation. The normal process is to debate each one individually. Debating them and approving them together, in one batch, requires changing the rules, which requires Unanimous Consent. Coach is withholding that consent because the military is transporting women in their ranks who need health care that might require abortion to states that allow it. Which has nothing to do with the merits of the promotions.
He is using the Senate rules as a cudgel to hold Military Readiness hostage until he gets his way. And it's the inane structure of the Senate rules that allow this.