Responding to Greg Sargent’s question about how much of an issue the use of reconciliation might be in fall elections, Jonathan Bernstein, who is guest blogging for Andrew Sullivan while he’s away on a break — and congrats, Jonathan! — speculates,
This is an easy one: while I suppose it’s vaguely possible that Republicans could raise reconciliation as an issue in the fall, it’s about as certain as anything could be that it won’t affect any votes. First of all, no one knows what reconciliation is; I mean, shockingly few people know what a filibuster is, really, so it’s pretty clear that no one knows what reconciliation is. Be sure to read this great anecdote from Chris Bowers (and a related one from Matt Yglesias). But beyond that, no one cares. Really.
I can understand why Bernstein, Bowers, and Yglesias feel the way that they do, but not surprisingly I’m inclined to counsel against being too dismissive. Without taking on the issue of whether reconciliation is the correct course of action in this instance — and I’m inclined to believe that it is — the fact that it is procedural or arcane or that there is a perception that no one understands what it is or what it’s for does not mean that it won’t be an issue in the election should the Republicans choose to make it one.
This was essentially the exact same tact that Prime Minhister Stephen Harper and his Conservative chose to take with prorogation north of the border and as polls have shown it hurt them.
Now, the parallel isn’t perfect by any means. Shutting down Parliament isn’t the same as passing health care legislation, Stephen Harper ain’t no Barack Obama, and Canadians and Americans are different political animals. But to rest one’s confidence on the fact that the issue at hand is arcane and/or procedural has, at least my experience, been proven to be more risky than one might think.
What I’ve taken from our lesson in Canada is that regardless the issue, if people feel that governmental actions are undermining the integrity of their government, and by extneion their lives, they’ll get plenty upset. And given the Republicans’ audience and their views on health care, I wouldn’t be so quick to wave a dismissive hand.
Of course, the proof is always in the pudding and we have yet to see whether Harper will pay an electoral price for his decision. The Conservatives last week managed to reopen a three percent lead on the Liberals, though it is owing as much to Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s lack of popularity amongst Canadians than anything else. But the Conservatives aren’t anywhere near majority territory anymore, which was the direction in which they were previously headed. And Democrats don’t have the added leverage uncertain timing vis-a-vis their electoral concerns.
At the end of the day, I’m not saying that Democrats shouldn’t use reconciliation. In fact, I’m inclined to believe that they should. But folks like Bernstein, Bowers, and Yglesias — not mention Obama, Reid, and Pelosi — need to come up with a better answer than, “You don’t really care about that, do you?” to angry voters.
Karen Edmisten 
Pierre Corneille 
London conference venues 
Will Truman 
Patrick Cahalan 
Cornelius 
wardsmith 
Tod Kelly 
Borat: “I do a picture, only small, of the Tishnik Masacre. Where many Uzbeks…crushed!”
Kindly Gray Hippie: “How did you feel when you drew this?”
Borat: “Very proud!”.
KGH: “I’m just listening with sadness…a little sadness for your people…?”
Borat: “Yes…no, it is not sad. It is us who do the kill!”
When in doubt,
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It was a huge issue when Democrats threatened to use the filibuster, even though they didn’t. Now that the Republicans filibuster damned near every bill, it’s of no consequence: the conventional wisdom simply becomes that the Senate requires 60 votes to pass a bill.
In other words, I share Scott’s concerns.
Do you mean a better answer then: this is a completely legal procedure that has been used many times mostly be republicans? Then follow that statement by listing the republicans who have voted to use reconciliation several times in the last few years. And then note that reconciliation was used to pass things that will generally be popular like nixing the cornhusker kickback.
Reconciliation won’t be an issue if the Dems do their messaging even half way competently. The only items that would be passed via reconciliation would generally be ice-cream legislation; ie popular stuff. So not only would reconciliation be obscure and arcane, it would also be beside the point.
I would, however, like to take this opportunity to gloat a bit. Obviously it does have shades of counting my chickens before they’re hatched but I distinctly recall predicting on the night of Browns remarkable victory that Pelosi would eventually whip the House into passing the Senate bill and that they’d sand off the edges with reconciliation and get it to Obama to sign. If the current indicators hold it is looking like they’re going to do that very thing.
Now whether this is politically a good thing remains to be proven. I remain convinced that if they pull it off they’ll have solidified their base and made a play for the low info center voters who enjoy gravitating to the winner. They’ll have transformed months of political commentary on Obama’s HCR failure into months of political commentary on Obama’s HCR triumph and they’ll be able to run on the bill that’s actually been passed and not on what it was characterized as. Most importantly they’ll finally be done with it and with their base placated they can spend the rest of the year running to the political center.
It’s very easily possible that I could be wrong on all of that. The populace is an unpredictable bunch.
This reminds me of when Republicans were talking about keeping the Census Bureau in the Commerce Department a campaign issue a year ago. These threats are merely that. If HCR passes, the issue will go away for a while. Republicans won’t repeal it and they won’t want the repeal debate. They wouldn’t be able to repeal everything, as quite a bit of the parts are popular, and the debate about what to leave in place and what to repeal would put the GOP on the defensive while the Dems rip them on trying to get rid of payment caps or what have you. That is exactly the fight Democrats want and Republicans don’t, and while it might be inevitable, my guess that the Republicans want to make their pitch on safer terrain.
I think bringing up senate procedure as a campaign issue is either a non-starter or an excellent way for Republicans to shoot themselves in the foot, one can see the Bunning Blockade based ads just writing themselves…
Health Care is the abortion of the Democrats.
It makes them far more popular when it’s a battle they’re fighting than if it’s a battle they’ve won.
(Of course, this may just be me being cynical.)
We’ll find that out once our team has won the abortion battle.
They’d have to try to win it before they could win it and find out.
Great job with that executive order, by the way.
Well Jay, the way they’re behaving right now suggests they don’t share your views. It looks like Obama and the leadership are getting ready to try and push it across the finish line.
I’ll officially stop being cynical about this the moment the bill is signed.
I don’t believe that.
*ABOUT THIS*
Don’t make promises you can’t keep Jay me lad. It’ll cause wrinkles.
I don’t know, enough Democratic ships have struck and sunk on the shoals of healthcare reform that it’s probably more akin to the Democrats’ Columbus Voyage. Just finding a way to the west even if it hits the wrong continent would be seen as an accomplishment. :p
Lol! So true!
“What I’ve taken from our lesson in Canada is that regardless the issue, if people feel that governmental actions are undermining the integrity of their government, and by extneion their lives, they’ll get plenty upset.”
This is a good point. Let’s clarify that the thing that’s perceived to be undermining the integrity of the government is D’s support for the health care bill itself, not necessarily reconciliation.
As Scott argues, it’s not necessarily correct to argue that the voters don’t care about process. It’s much more likely that they don’t care about process if they don’t care about the outcome. If they feel that they are being cheated in the outcome they are going to be very sensitive to shortcomings in the process as well.
If Democrats use reconciliation to pass HCR, the GOP will have an easy time getting to base to the voting booths. You can hear the rallying cry: “Congressional Democrats will stop at nothing to ensure that Obama’s socialist agenda passed. Midnight, backroom deals. Procedural loopholes. ” etc. It writes itself.
Whether that will resonate with otherwise undecided voters is a big “probably not,” but that’s not the right question.
The GOP base is going to the polls regardless. Nothing motivates a base quite like not being in power. The big question what would HCR do to the Dem base if it was passed and if it were not passed.
I’d compare to Nixon winning in ’72 after Johnson’s War on Poverty passed.
I suspect that it will remove one of the big “YOU NEED TO VOTE FOR US!!!” reasons to vote for them off of the table for a chunk of voters. If the bill passes, what moves up to the most important reasons to vote? If it’s tax cuts, watch out!
(Additionally, there is a number of voters (Marcotte is representative of this subset, I reckon) who see this bill as a betrayal and a corporate giveaway to corporate interests who are engaging in regulatory capture. A sizable number? I dunno. They can be counted upon to not vote Republican but I don’t know if they will be demoralized by the bill to the point where they’d “forget” to vote.)
I’d say quite a few people might be willing to live with another ’72 so long as the legislative accomplishments are similar enough to LBJ’s term in scope.
Obama will do for Health Care what Johnson did for the poor?
I shudder.
Oh pish. Civil Rights Act and Medicare were what I was thinking about. You’re right LBJ’s legacy isn’t spotless and the Great Society wasn’t exactly a great accomplishment.
It’s entirely possible Jay. I honestly don’t know. But either way I’d rather Democrats passed the thing and moved on than suffer them quibbling and temporizing on the subject from now to November.
“You reckon”? Clearly you don’t actually read anything she writes, she’s supported passing the Senate bill in essentially everything she’s written on the subject.
Pardon me, pardon me. Jane Hamsher.
If the commie-dems pass “hcr” it’s game, set, match…assign me a camp!
Oh, Bob. You’ll (I’ll, we’ll) be fine if it passes. We have enough cultural capital to get by and we’ll have the same access to health care we’ve long held. It may be a bit more expensive but, hey. We’ll go out to dinner fewer times a month. We’ll buy the 12 dollar bottle of wine instead of the 18 dollar bottle and we’ll buy the 40 dollar wiskey instead of the 60 dollar wiskey. We (you, me) will get buy.
It’s the poor who will end up shafted.
And since they’ll complain the most about their new entitlement, they’re the ones most likely to be resented by the technocrats who have benevolently provided to them.
They’ll be going into the camps, Bob.
Not us.
We’ll be fine.
Explain this a bit more? This puts the poor in camps how? Because there’s a penalty if they fail to sign up for Medicaid — that’ll get waived?
Look at what happened to the poor after the War on Poverty.
I imagine that similar will happen when health care starts being addressed on a federal level. People who find the handouts from the government insufficient and go into business for themselves will find themselves behind bars.
Folks like us will be fine, of course.
Stuff did happen. Like my mom got some great employment training, and we were lifted out of poverty. Did you think the war on poverty turned everyone on welfare into long-term welfare queens?
In the 1980′s, when Republicans under Reagan were going after those welfare queens in their pink caddies, I happened to work in welfare as a DBA; you know, one of the folks responsible for the quality of the data used to administer the system. While Republicans beat on and on — verging in racism — about welfare queens, the profile of a typical recipient should have been middle-class white women with a couple of kids who’s been abandoned by their husbands/boyfriends. And the average length of benefits was about 2 years; likely long enough to get the kids into public schools.
The life-long generational recipient was/is there, but was pretty small compared to the cost of irresponsible white fathers. It’s why we created a ‘war on deadbeat dads.’
I’m not talking about “welfare queens” and Cadillacs and all that stuff. My point is far more controversial than that.
I’m talking about the disintigration of the African-American family, bastardry, and crime.
The war on poverty *DID NOT HELP*. As a matter of fact, it made things worse. It pretty much imploded the African-American nuclear family… and, of course, the percentage of African-Americans in prison relative to the percentage of African-Americans in society is exceptionally disproportionate.
My flavor of crazy sees these things as connected.
And here’s an interesting falsifiability test:
If, oh, 10 years after Free Health Care kicks in, the numbers get worse?
I’d say that my theory will not have been falsified.
I’d suggest women entering the workforce and the war on drugs as alternatives to the war on poverty.
I’m a fan of women entering the workforce (if they’re a fan of it of course) and I am *NO* fan of the War on Drugs.
But the War on Poverty ostensibly made it easier for women to not have to enter the workforce, no?
We probably need a discussion of “root causes”…
One word – deindustrialization.
Yeah, so what happened to the poor after the War on Poverty, Jay? You’re not saying anything with any meaning for people who don’t already have your mind downloaded onto theirs.
They got poorer and more of them ended up in prison.
Err wasn’t that due to the War on Drugs?
I dunno, JB, I sense you’re wavering a bit on your assurance. The idea of the gummint running hc is of course absurd for all the reasons everyone’s giving. It’s sad, I think, to see just how stupid and servile my nation has become.
Healthcare is too complex for government management. Even if they pass the bill, it will create complications which call for continuous government tweaking. This is going to frustrate people who are accustomed to stability in their plans, even if they get surpises every once in awhile with their present plans and care. I have a feeling this will turn into a nightmare of government regulations and unintended consequences, leaving people with the frustration of not being in control as they are shifted here and there in the system, not knowing what’s coming next. Healthcare providers will also become frustrated by the changing regulations and leave the field, and this will create more problems as inexperienced healthcare providers enter the system and people begin to worry about quality. Healthcare is very personal, and if it becomes a cold, bureacratic, incompetent system, people are not going to be very happy.
Um…it’s alreday a cold, bureacratic, incompetent system. That’s sort of the point.
To the extent of years and years of government regulation, yes, you are correct, but any personalized service left will be gone.
I would hope to SAY shutting down parliament is not a good parallel to passing legislation to a address a universally-acknowledged problem. No legislation ever enjoys consensus support, but when the problem is great enough to be recognized by nearly all, the mere act of settling on a remedy — something which will never enjoy the same level of consensus as the identification of the problem — should not under any circumstances come to be seen as the equivalent of “undermining the integrity of their government.”
Given that, Scott’s point that the fact that people don’t know about reconciliation and it’s history may not prevent Republicans from demagogue-ing the point may be a good one. Because the reality is that the Democrats have the facts of the question on their side; the more information they can get out about the procedure, the more solid the ground they’re on appears. But R’s don’t have to rely on the public having specific knowledge of the procedure in question to say, “The Democrat party was intent on using an arcane parliamentary procedure to ram their massive government takeover of the health industry down the throats of the American people, and they did so.”
That said, if it works, the Democrats ought to be able to counter that with a message of effectiveness (by the seat of their pants). There are aspects of the bill they can sell much more effectively when it is law than now, when it is the object of relentless fearmongering.
It bear remembering that in this environment, the Democrats are certain to lose seats in Nov., so political success/failure for them will be measured strictlyon the margins, and via an unknowable counterfactual, meaning it will be invisible to the media. Barring a Republican takeover (ie a great night), a good night for Republicans is inevitable. So there’s not actually that much at stake here politically. Democrats ought to be willing to use a procedure commonly used by the other party to enact a major plank of their agenda under such circumstances. Failing to show that minimal level of steel is pure lame-sauce.
Michael G. Franc has a good article on reconciliation — don’t depend on the public not understanding.
http://article.nationalreview.com/426612/unprecedented/michael-g-franc
And it’s not being used for controversial sweeping legislation Mike. A point the right repeatedly and conveniently forgets. To refresh our memory the HCR bill PASSED the senate with a supermajority of 60 votes. The only thing reconciliation would be used for are some budgetary adjustments to the bill assuming the house passes it.
assuming the house passes it
I reckon that this is where the bottleneck is. The House has the most new folks and, on top of that, the most bluedogs. I fancy that The House comes closest to actually listening to the crazy people who call up and yell at the poor staffers, as well.
There are a lot of interesting dynamics going on here.
It’s a helluva show.
Oh indeed Jay, up until now everyone has assumed that it was dead in the house. But it’s been getting gradually less dead rather than more dead. Like I said before, I could be wrong, but the signs are pointing more and more to Obama and Pelosi getting their shoulders behind the jalopy of a bill and pushing it across the finish line.
North, oh, I see.
I’m assuming that those who object to the use of reconciliation are pretty well in the Republican camp for November in any case, Mike. On the other hand, those for whom the issue may raise questions but who are inclined to get the relevant information before basing their vote on it will find there is no there there. No one who might have accepted the legislation itself and voted Democratic is going to switch their vote because budget reconciliation was used; no one who wouldn’t have been convinced by the passage of the legislation itself to get out and vote who otherwise wouldn’t have will be so convinced merely because reconciliation was used. It comes down to your view of the legislation itself — whether or not 2009-10 Democratic comprehensive HCR is a voting issue for you. The use of budget reconciliation will merely be one of many talking points — a weak one because it just has little overall salience — Republicans will use to drive that fundamental point in the campaign.
I disagree with all of this.
First, this paragraph is…i don’t even know what,
“I would hope to SAY shutting down parliament is not a good parallel to passing legislation to a address a universally-acknowledged problem. No legislation ever enjoys consensus support, but when the problem is great enough to be recognized by nearly all, the mere act of settling on a remedy — something which will never enjoy the same level of consensus as the identification of the problem — should not under any circumstances come to be seen as the equivalent of “undermining the integrity of their government.”
Scott’s analogy was about process and then you say its a bad parallel because one was procedural and the other was good and wholesome? I’m sure some legislation somewhere has enjoyed consensus support. Also, “the mere act…” Really? Do you even believe that? If you polled the American people on September 12, 2001 about the threat of terrorism, I’m sure you’d find as close to consensus as it gets that we should be concerned about it, still, there are any number of remedies to that problem that could have and did actually undermine the integrity of government. I mean, really? Maybe you meant to be more realistic and specific and less hyperbolic, but the statement that the mere act of settling on a remedy to a widely acknowledged problem shouldn’t under any circumstances be undermine faith in government, is facially ludicrous.
Second, “No one who might have accepted the legislation itself and voted Democratic is going to switch their vote because budget reconciliation was used; no one who wouldn’t have been convinced by the passage of the legislation itself to get out and vote who otherwise wouldn’t have will be so convinced merely because reconciliation was used.”
Because, really, America is divided into two camps and everyone’s minds are already made up so why even bother… /snark.
The real problem here is that independents, that notoriously fickle bunch will be so turned off by the process they will either vote Republican or stay home. There are more electoral factors than us versus them. Do I think it will be a critical issue in the fall but that’s different from arguing that it won’t be an issue at all. It’s also about impressions. Shockingly a fair swath of this country thinks the President’s party should be more bipartisan, it doesn’t take a genius level understanding of reconciliation to understand, “they passed it using rules, tricks, and on a party line vote, after buying votes with your money.”
That will persuade people, maybe not millions but then again, it doesn’t have to.
The reconciliation issue is not going to get people out to the polls who weren’t going to be there anyway, Kyle, sorry. By which I mean, not very many. If the difference between a lot and a few is insignificant I’m not sure what the point in talking about the electoral consequences of anything are.
… or what the point is, for that matter. Or would be, even!
And to everything you ask really? about: yes. Really.
Who knows what the reaction will be, but it’s clear that the Democrats will come off looking as if the rammed it through. The next election, I believe, will have a large voter turn-out, and this doesn’t bode well for Democrats. I think what many people are missing is that the information age has changed the public and the old idea that a political party can simply spin their way out of each bad situation is no longer applicable — the public’s interest has focused on Washington D.C. and they will Google their way through spin. Plus, something as big as healthcare is going to focus attention even more, because everyone is affected by what happens. We don’t know what the outcome will be if the 50% of qualified voters who don’t usually vote actually go to the polls.
I agree we don’t know, and likely won’t know even after the fact, as I expect there to be few detailed exit polls, and even if there are I doubt they will disambiguate the anti-reconciliation vote from the merely anti-HCR vote. Also, a voter reaction to Democratic “ramming” of HCR would be a very honest and justified one — they certainly are in the process of ramming it. But they were ramming it well before they ever had to consider using reconciliation in order to ram successfully. I still think that the ramming will not be ultimately distinct in most actually-voting peoples’ reasons for voting from the mere passing of the legislation, and the basic dislike of it. Even less will the technical question of the use of reconciliation in the ramming process be distinguished in their mind, much less the determining factor in their decision to turn out.
I feel comfortable making these predictions.
It’s crack for political junkies like me. I look forward to seeing how it pans out in the election.
“No legislation ever enjoys consensus support, but when the problem is great enough to be recognized by nearly all, the mere act of settling on a remedy — something which will never enjoy the same level of consensus as the identification of the problem — should not under any circumstances come to be seen as the equivalent of “undermining the integrity of their government.””
There’s a lot wrong in this post, but this is probably the most important part. The reason why the health care bill undermines the integrity of the government is because it fundamentally attempts to reengineer the relationship between the population and the government (and does so at the most inappropriate moment).
In a republic, the citizens are sovereign and the health care bill is an attack on the American republic at exactly that level. See Jonah Goldberg:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTkzYzgwMjZhYTFlMzUxODAxNGQ0ZWExNTMxMDE4MTQ=
That’s an entirely fair argument to make about the bill substantively, but as Kyle was saying the argument was that the process used to pass it is what might be expected to be received as illegitimate. That would be a processed used as recently as 2003 to extend the Bush tax cuts on what turned out to be a 50-50 vote in the Senate.
By all means, let’s move this to a discussion about the merits and legitmacy of the underlying issue and their electoral consequences, rather than stay with trumped-up concern about the electoral consequences of the process that was advanced by someone making fuzzy comparisons to a completely different procedural development in a completely different political culture.
Two comments – first, I agree that shutting down parliament is a horrible ‘parallel’. Abrogation strikes at the very heart of republican/democratic government; it’s more like what a King would do.
I’d add that the American people tend to prefer strong winners; we have more than a touch of the fascist in us. Note that ~40% of the American people supported Bush long after he was clearly a f*ck-up; it really took losing the 2006 election to break the core of his support. I.e., it’s not failure, it’s not malevolence, it’s losing that’s fatal.
Sorry, ‘prorogation’.
The difference between health care and proroguing is that the Democrats can hope that people will be upset with the means, but understand why they wanted these ends; I can’t imagine saying that proroguing was a terrible thing to do, but at least Harper had good ends in mind.
Actually, that should be “prorogation” I think.
A quick online search suggests that “proroguing” is also valid. And it has a much better ring to it, I think.
We just posted our analysis of Republican use of reconciliation in the past. The results: current GOP Senators have voted FOR reconciliation 84.6% of the time it has been presented for vote in their career.
We list each Senator and all reconciliation bills presented for a vote during each Senator’s tenure, along with how they voted.
http://www.thefourthbranch.com/2010/03/republican-use-of-reconciliation-they-love-it-84-6-of-the-time/
Thoughts?
Politicians are shameless liars, hypocrites and exaggerators on issues of process, news at 11? Seriously, anyone who has paid any attention knows that Republicans used reconciliation to pass many of their large initiatives during the Bush administration and their protestations right now are totally hollow.
The point should be that what matters is what legislation the Repubs used reconciliation for not whether they voted for it. Have any other those uses been for such a fundamental shift in the role and power of gov’t? No I don’t think so, and I doubt any Dem will admit it. Let’s not forget that Senator Obama decried the Repubs use of reconciliation but now is more than happy to use it when he can’t even get his own party to pass his legislation. Even the WSJ has a scathing review of Obama’s plan.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704625004575089362731862750.html
“Even” the WSJ? Wow, well I take it all back then.
Need I remind you; again, Scott that Obama has already passed his legislation with a 60 vote supermajority? The reconciliation use that the right is squealing about would be merely some amendments on the overall legislation like eliminating the “cornhusker kickback” or the “Florida giveaway” and otherwise fiddling with the budgetary numbers around the margins. In other words it’s be doing … … exactly what reconciliation is supposed to be used for. The scandal!
It’s not about do they or don’t they understand reconciliation, that doesn’t matter.
I mean people are angry about Ben Nelson’s deal, but how many people actually understand it? How many people understand Bill Nelson’s deal? Or Mary Landrieu’s? Or can remember which deal is which? My guess, not that many.
What people do know, is that millions of taxpayer dollars were promised to secure votes and that’s not cool.
Reconciliation = cries of partisanship and “crazy ideologues behind the wheel of government, who care more about making your premiums go up in a radical government takeover of healthcare than they do cutting the fat and providing jobs.” At this point it’d be politically irresponsible not to run the ad, not that I approve.
No wonk or pol actually thinks we should start over, yet surprisingly, a majority of Americans do. Why? They don’t understand healthcare but they do understand that they don’t like this bill, they don’t like the way it was made. At this point, I don’t think the how it passes really matters. I do think however, it’s impossible to tell whether there’s a constituency of people who will go from upset to apoplectic if the bill passed, where they are, and how they plan on voting in the fall, if at all. Obviously Democrats think it’s a small group, Republicans a large, but without any actual metrics, it’s a high-stakes bet.
True enough, but I do think that the Dems are correct in assuming that the passionate opponents of the bill are lost votes regardless of whether it passes or not. This is a midterm after all so base motivation is very important. I can’t imagine how the party thinks it’ll get its base out if all it has to show for this entire ruckus is a bill abandoned a yard shy of the goal line. Their partisans will stay home in droves and there’s no one in the center who’s going to reward them for giving up on it.
On a related note I hear that Senate Bennet of Wyden-Bennet fame is the #1 target for the tea party challengers. Looks like they want his head on a mantle for collaborating with the enemies. The polling doesn’t look immensely promising for the poor dude, I find that depressing.
I’m hoping Erik can restore the rest of the comments here but yeah, I’ll tag we’ll have to agree to disagree as a wait and see how things go come October/November. If I’m wrong, I’ll gladly admit it.
Yes, poor Bob Bennett (he’s the one with two ‘t’s Bennet one T is the junior senator from Colorado, one of the things I like least about elections is learning new Senators’ names.) I quite agree with you there.
And – at the risk of thread jacking but without a blog of your own, which you totally should have, I’m curious as to your thoughts on this . I know you weren’t the biggest fan of the finale but I found my old reax draft and a non-existent penny for your thoughts?
I’m 100% ready to admit that I was wrong though I’ll admit that my position is less easily falsifiable since one could always say after a Democrat bath that it would have been worse. In the interests of being honest I’ll lay out some bench marks. If the Dems pass HCR and then get flattened in the elections loosing both House and Senate I’ll flat out say I was wrong. If they handily loose just the House I’ll mumble that I was wrong. If they just barely loose the House I’ll call it a tie and if they keep their majorities but loose seats I’ll consider it vindication.
If they don’t pass HCR it’s of course a moot point.
I don’t mind the treadjack. This’ll all probably vanish in the deluge when E.D.’s electronic pixies return the comments in a great flood but in answer to your question I don’t have a blog (maybe I’m angling for one at the league).
I liked your reactions, I especially agree about the Agathons. I always found them excessively contrived and after Helo’s stunt with the infected Cylons I have had a hard time not hating him.
I’m with you on Gaius and Caprica, I guess I would have liked more comeuppance but that may just be me feeling vengeful.
As for the great idiotic cultural suicide pact I have a hard time even blaming Lee Adama for it because it’s so ludicrous, so completely idiotic that it’s too big and poorly written to even accept into the written narrative and then blame on any character. For me especially it towered over the ending like a colossus tainting and immiserating the ending for each character. So the Agathons live and their girl grows up to become some baby factory as all her peers die around her. So the Admiral gets his cabin where he probably dies of pneumonia in the following winter. So Caprica and Gaius start a farm but he probably gets an infected hangnail and dies for want of some antibiotics. And then of course the descendants who survive the plague and famine grow up to be little more than barbarians with all of the accomplishments of their progenitor civilizations forgotten. Goodness I could just rant about this forever. Suffice to say the writers were due a good solid crack on the nose for that idiotic ending. My neighbor’s dog has crapped out more believable and satisfying conclusions.
I really think it’s different with Harper. “Going prorogue” is easy to understand for the lay public (interpreted “I can dismiss Parliament whenever I want, so screw you” by a large chunk of lay public). Passing the laws while having an actual majority – not so much.
I think that there are more people angry at Dems for not being able to pass a good healthcare legislation than there are people who are concerned about reconciliation AND who’re realistically able to switch sides due to it. I believe that whoever thinks that procedure is the problem here is squarely in the Republican camp.
Test.
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