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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of January 10
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
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Joe Biden to back filibuster rule change to push voting rights bill
I have mixed feelings about a change like this, at least in isolation. It's such a complex issue. One of the problems I've always had with Congress is that Congress makes the rules for themselves. I wish there was some other balance of power available to modify how Congress operates, like adding rules about bill stuffing, etc. Because they write their own rules, changes that benefit the public but not Congresspeople will never happen. They'll never work against themselves, and that's a problem, and one without a proper balance.
There are upsides and downsides to the filibuster. Looking through a biased lens I can quickly see all the ways that my political opposites will use this rule change against my interests, but then I also see how it can be used to further my interests. I haven't come to terms with whether it's good or bad to allow an extremely small number of senators to kill proposed laws this way. It seems bad for the idea of representation- but what if a truly bad idea's only preventative is the filibuster, then what? If the majority is always favored, that seems out of balance too? Doesn't the minority deserve some level of control/input, lest they not be represented at all? I truly don't know.
The more I type and think about this the more mixed my feelings get.
Does it change your feelings about it to know that between 1969 and 2014 the filibuster rules were changed/bypassed 161 times in order to get legislation passed? And the filibuster has regularly been used specifically to block civil rights laws to stop things like poll taxes, lynching, and racial discrimination.
Yes, in fact it does. Admittedly I was ignorant of the historical context of the filibuster.
I was not aware it had been changed so often, and especially for those purposes, and was only looking at it through a current lens. With historical context, I want it to be changed.
They'd need the backing of Manchin, and he won't budge on changing the rules. Especially if it can be used against them if Republicans win back the houses.
There's apparently a bipartisan retool being worked on that might hold a little more water for now.
https://www.axios.com/bipartisan-group-electoral-reform-0ffe46fc-4801-4e74-be2c-687922c52fff.html
A Democrat won a US House seat this week with 79 percent of the vote. Her GOP opponent has not conceded.
I hope I'm proven wrong, but I really think 2022 and 2024 are going to be an absolute mess.
Republican McConnell slams Biden voting rights speech as 'unpresidential'
Very hypocritical as, if I recall, Republicans removed the voting thresholds in place to appoint a Supreme Court justice.
Never trust the words of a fascist party.
...and enabled a racist, unpresidential demagogue.
Yes, intentionally and knowingly hypocritical because they can get away with that.