It’s not an excuse. Do you think the Dems have not put pressure on the Republicans to switch their votes, or at least to allow full debate to take place, which would undoubtedly have flushed out more Republican votes? But they have been shut down — obstructed — by more filibusters this year than the previous records for two years. A perfect example was Webb’s bill on redeployment. Warner said he would support it, so that extracted more conciliatory language in the bill. If Warner had come in, others would have come in with him. And then he left Webb hanging out to dry. We made the compromises they wanted, and they left us cursing like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown.

And as for the two party system – perhaps more of a problem is the effective supermajority requirement to get past any threatened filibuster in the Senate. This, for example, has stopped labor reform legislation in its tracks – a coalition of Republicans and right-ish Democrats has been sufficient to block progress for the last couple of decades.

A final note, the need for a super-majority is just a talking point and an excuse for inaction. Pressure could be put on the Republicans and Bush if the Democrats wanted to fight it out on any of a host of issues. When the Democrats were in the minority, they said just wait until we are in the majority. Now that they are in the majority, they now say we need a super-majority (an the WH). Even if they got all this, the next thing they would be saying is that we need a super-super-majority because not all of the Democrats vote with us on every issue. What they really need is a spine and a willingness to fight it out on their core issues.

http://firedoglake.com/2007/12…..o/#respond

I have a hungry offspring calling

I have a hungry stomach calling. Thanks to Jon and Henry!

Analogy between defense & medical care doesn’t work. Defense is to save us from an existential threat (or at least that’s what the wingnuts & the MIC would have us believe) and that is not true for medical care. The major problem with the latter IS its cost (U.S. does not get value for money), so that must be an intrinsic part of the fix.

We use the department of defense for many other things than existential threats. That we have forces in more than a hundred countries has to do with the extension of American power not its existence. Defense should not be a privileged case. We have a national commitment to education for example. And with regard to existential threats, a biological one is probably more likely nowadays than a thermonuclear one.