(Worth a wider audience… – promoted by simplify)
The biggest impediment to Senator Leahy’s legacy is – and continues to be – Leahy himself. Consider the following piece that appeared in yesterday’s Rutland Herald entitled “Immigration debate could define Leahy’s legacy in Senate”:
Over nearly four decades, Leahy has compiled an extensive resume of workmanlike accomplishments, lauded but little known beyond the immediate beneficiaries…
They are important achievements, he says, but not the sort carved into marble in the Capitol.
Then came 2013 and two huge tasks, guiding the first major gun control legislation since 1994, then managing the broadest overhaul of U.S. immigration law since Ronald Reagan was president…
“I think this moment, particularly immigration reform, will figure large in how he ultimately is perceived,” Podesta said.
Now, consider the political reality in the US Senate. From last week:
Earlier this week a bipartisan amendment, the Manchin-Toomen amendment, went down to defeat in the U.S. ( U.S. stands for United States – not Useless and Spineless) Senate. The gun control compromise was fashioned by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.)
The amendment, supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans, which would have required background checks on all commercial sales of guns, got the support of 54 members and was opposed by 46. It needed 60 votes to move forward.
Background checks has enormous support from the public, and the Republicans would not even let that issue come to a vote. With Mitch McConnell running for re-election in Kentucky next year, he will continue to use every opportunity to burnish his hard-right bona fides every chance he gets. “Gang of six” or no, that means immigration reform – even watered-down – will never, ever, ever be allowed to come to a vote.
And who is responsible for continuing to allow Mitch MCConnell to wield this kind of absolute power in the Senate – even though he leads the “minority?”
The failure to reform the filibuster is a very bad thing. The question is why so many Democratic senators-including some blue-state representatives like Vermont’s Patrick Leahy and California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer-showed so little inclination to act in the interests of progressive values.
A small group of very powerful Democratic Senators – Leahy among them – stubbornly refuse to accept the fact that is not not the 70s or the 80s anymore – this is the here and now. In the here and now, this Republican Party would sooner tell Mr. Leahy to go f— himself than join him in rebuilding the long-dead Senate chumminess our senior senator clings to the memory of.
The American people suffer from this endless parade of filibusters because a few Senators refuse to accept that most basic message of nature; the need to adapt.
…because the filibuster worked for Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. I’m recommending this diary anyway in hopes that there will be some intelligent discussion about how the filibuster has been taken over by Jimmy Stewart’s (and our) enemies, and what needs to be done without eliminating its use for the right causes. (Maybe this is why the Republicans are using and abusing it) Maybe the Dems, and Sanders, need to go on a filibuster trip themselves–many economic, social, and military (like drones) pieces of proposed legislation could be used by the Dems to get the American people’s attention. I don’t know. Guess I’m old-fashioned. Or cornball. It feels like getting rid of the Voting Rights Act (which we still need). Shit. If Frank Capra were alive today, would he make a movie called Mr. Teabag Goes To Washington?
Back in the 1980s Senator Inyoue bravely led the Democrats in Congress out onto the steps of the Capitol to swear a holy oath before the Press that no Democrat will dare impeach any Republican President ever, even if there is irrefutable proof that the Republican President were to do something really treasonous, like sell anti-tank weapons to the fundamentalist Iranians to raise money to buy guns and bullets for Republican Death Squads in Nicaragua to overthrow the democratically elected government there and install a puppet dictator – you know, something so insanely wrong that any President that did that would be hounded from office and shunned forever.
The Republican’s response to the Democrat’s generosity was to instantly impeach the next Democratic President over the definition of the word ‘is’.
So now we have the Democratic Majority politely preserving the tyranny of the minority in the Senate expecting to use the filibuster to stop the horrific legislation that the GOP would pass the next time they gain the majority.
AS IF! As if the GOP won’t immediately eliminate the filibuster rule to prevent the Dems from doing what the GOP has been doing for the last 5 years.
The only reason to allow the GOP to continue using the filibuster is to make sure not one single piece of work passes out of the Senate that is to the right of John Birch. The Dems are tools of the GOP.
Let’s remember that the same system that elected Leahy also elected Mitch McConnell. The same electoral system elected every senator and rep in congress.
It’s like a poorly designed stamping machine that occasionally spits out a halfway decent product. Mostly it produces rejects.
As a species we are focused on personalities, relationships, and narratives, so we tend to overlook structures. It is the structure that needs attention. We can complain about Leahy (or whomever), but he is only as good as the machine that produced him will allow.