Nathan Newman wrote:
>Yes-- and one vote short of half of the House means you've got nothing.
You
>can't even get a vote on a bill. As I've repeated, you want influence by
>progressives, elect more Democrats so they actually can control and set the
>agenda. Imagine a Congress where John Conyers ran the Judiciary Committee,
>Charlie Rangel ran Ways & Means, and so on.
-You don't have nothing. You've got a big platform and a big budget. -You can tie things up and fight relentlessly. The Reps did that as a -minority party.
Not really. When the Republicans could do anything, it was because they were actually acting as de facto majority because they had southern democrats who were really Republicans-- many of whom formally switched in 1994. Under Clinton, the Democrats really had only a one vote margin in both the House and the Senate -- that was the vote totals for Clinton's first budget. And even that wasn't stable; there wasn't a full majority for the jobs bill.
In reality, the margins in the House have stayed very tight since 1981 when the GOP de facto had control of most of the agenda. Back then about 65 Dems regularly voted with the GOP in the House. Now that group is down to a much smaller group, but unfortunately so have the number of moderate Republicans. So nominal party control is increasingly real ideological control.
If the Dems could win with a margin of twenty seats, the GOPers would be as powerless as the Dems largely are now in the House.
>Daschle gets to set the agenda in a negative way because he can block
>legislation with a filibuster, which he has repeatedly. He blocked ANWR,
>blocked judges, blocked the Dec. 2001 tax cut, blocked the bankruptcy bill,
>and so on.
-Eh? The bankruptcy bill? I thought he'd resolved to move it through -during his brief tenure as majority leader, to be frustrated by the -pro-lifers.
No- he refused to appoint members to the conference committee until extremely late in the game, made sure the abortion poison pill was in the bill, then pushed the vote right to before the election when most folks knew the pro-lifers in the House would jump ship. Which they did. And the bill died.
We've been sitting here discussing the bankruptcy bill for almost four years. We know the GOP leadership wants it passed, so if the Dem leadership wanted it passed, it would have been already. I said it wouldn't become law as long as the Dems were in the majority in the Senate and I was right.
-- Nathan Newman