That's what I mean with inside baseball. The only voters that know what the filibuster is are voters that already have their votes locked in. American voters assume that the senate operates in a purely majoritarian fashion. Preserving something that they don't even know exist because we're afraid of their resistance to change is not soun…
That's what I mean with inside baseball. The only voters that know what the filibuster is are voters that already have their votes locked in. American voters assume that the senate operates in a purely majoritarian fashion. Preserving something that they don't even know exist because we're afraid of their resistance to change is not sound thinking.
If we ditched the filibuster entirely the only hit would be from the media for a single news cycle before they lost interest. Remember, in the past few months we've had:
- A presidential candidate drop out
- A presidential candidate shot once with a second assassination attempt
- Dick Cheney endorse a democrat for president
- A presidential candidate convicted of 34 felonies
With I don't know how many other events that even I've mentally moved on from. All of those disappeared from the media cycle in less than a week. These are major events that would have dominated the news for weeks, months, or the entire election cycle in years past. The filibuster being toasted would be forgotten within a week, and likely before that. It's a boring topic to cover and most people are unaware that it exists and/or how it functions. It doesn't hold a candle to those stories, and those could barely last days in our media environment.
But if we make an exception for subject A, we still take that one week of bad coverage. Then when we add an exception for B in the future, we take that hit again. Then again for C, D, E... And then when republicans gain a trifecta at whatever point in the future, they just kill it outright and the media shrugs and says "you started it" and they pass their full agenda in contrast to how we flagellated ourselves for no actual benefit.
That's what I mean with inside baseball. The only voters that know what the filibuster is are voters that already have their votes locked in. American voters assume that the senate operates in a purely majoritarian fashion. Preserving something that they don't even know exist because we're afraid of their resistance to change is not sound thinking.
If we ditched the filibuster entirely the only hit would be from the media for a single news cycle before they lost interest. Remember, in the past few months we've had:
- A presidential candidate drop out
- A presidential candidate shot once with a second assassination attempt
- Dick Cheney endorse a democrat for president
- A presidential candidate convicted of 34 felonies
With I don't know how many other events that even I've mentally moved on from. All of those disappeared from the media cycle in less than a week. These are major events that would have dominated the news for weeks, months, or the entire election cycle in years past. The filibuster being toasted would be forgotten within a week, and likely before that. It's a boring topic to cover and most people are unaware that it exists and/or how it functions. It doesn't hold a candle to those stories, and those could barely last days in our media environment.
But if we make an exception for subject A, we still take that one week of bad coverage. Then when we add an exception for B in the future, we take that hit again. Then again for C, D, E... And then when republicans gain a trifecta at whatever point in the future, they just kill it outright and the media shrugs and says "you started it" and they pass their full agenda in contrast to how we flagellated ourselves for no actual benefit.