The 41st Senator

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The Republicans now have a filibuster-safe 41-vote (out of 100) minority in the U.S. Senate (source). This means Republicans can now stop any legislation they want and exact concessions from the Democratic majority. The Republicans have shown a record of harshly opposing basically any controversial measure Democrats have proposed, and this means that the signature legislation the Democrats promised in 2008 is now all but impossible: health-care reform, cap-and-trade, and regulation of the financial industry.

For anyone hoping for major progressive reform, it looks like that won't be happening. The Republicans are certain to obstruct in 2010 if only to win points for the elections. This will further erode Democrats' ability to pass legislation.

The people have spoken.

If the GOP can win in Massachusetts, they can win anywhere.

The democrats have two options. Either move towards the center or face decimation in November.

So now the right wing can be successfully obstructionist. Great.

The Democrats already are centrist. We don't have any major left-wing parties in America.

The less legislation, the better. Anytime something is passed, things get worse. It doesn't matter which party is peddling it, because they're both controlled by the same corporate interests.

+1

With the track record of the government on "fixing" things. Gridlock is the best friend freedom-loving Americans have in D.C.

In Massachusetts Democrats outnumber Republicans. It is the Independents who have spoken. In Massachusetts a Republican could not be elected as tree warden without Independent votes.

ruveyn

Except, apparently, New York's 23rd Congressional District.

Reagan and Bush II pushed through a lot of crappy legislation while the Democrats controlled Congress. Surely, if Obama gives up this councillatory nonsense and uses the Presidential Podium as a bully pulpit, he can undo the damage.

And "move towards the centre" is Republican newspeak for "move towards the Republican Party". If Jacoby had his way, there'd be a yocto-cent's worth of difference between the Republican and Centrecrat Parties - rather than the dime's worth that is presently the status quo.

The election in Massachusetts demonstrates the flaw in political duopolies - if one party sucks you have to vote for another party on the pretense it might be less sucky than it was the last time.

So that more progressive Democrats will sit out than already did in the Special Election? Are you trying to sabbotage the Democratic Party?

The way things are going in US politics the center is somewhat right of the middle ground reached in North Korea.

41st Senator. Hmm, Obama now needs real compromise... Which could be good for American democracy but bad for the people.

Imagine this, more deliberation in issues that the people really want to solve...

I am glad, though, that a Republican won in Massachusetts. A divided house that somehow stands still beats one seemingly solid block of... political machinery mechanism...

Houses can be sliced in all sorts of directions. It is a good suggestion to get the politics out of Congress. Eliminate both the Democrats and the Republicans and let the candidates run with no party affiliations as individuals with no financial support at all except from their immediate relatives and children under 10 years old who have no agenda. That should raise the intellectual level of the elections considerably.

Somehow I feel that Sand's views do make sense, et us hope that this will happen in our lifetime.

that just showed that the tea party movement was willing the go against the GOP.

I don't really buy the "progressives" stayed home stuff either, the turn out was extremely high for a special election. Like 22-25% of the democrats went for Brown tho. Brown didn't even do that well in the suburbs like Romney did when he won the governorship in 2002. Brown made up it by doing well in the blue collar areas.

The deomcrats' reaction to this has just shown how full of s**t they are, always talking about striving for unity and collaboration between parties or whatever. Now they have lost their filibuster proof majority OH NO! Now they actually have to collaborate with republicans to get things done!

And knowing the democrats, they now will mostly just complain about how the republicans are screwing up the whole operation due to unwillingness to compromise.

The democrats are going to get shelled in november. And honestly, despite the fact that my politics lean left for sure (although I will never ever affiliate with the democrats), I hope they lose either the house or the senate because perhaps they will then learn a lesson. Not likely though.

I assume that is a joke, and I sincerely hope so.

Well, the GOP is perfectly happy to force things through on a razor-thin majority, but they're also the ones who will filibuster when they're the minority. At one point during the Bush administration, the Dems threatened to filibuster something and the Republicans in turn threatened to change the rules to eliminate the possibility of filibuster.


Do you think the Republicans are likely to compromise on anything? They'll probably filibuster even a token health bill that makes no serious changes.