Anyone else feel like Sen. Max Baucus has way too much power?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Had to turn off the TV a while ago. The media is all geared up for the makings of a “deal” in which the “compromise” makes the Republicans 66 2/3% happy and the Democrats 33 1/3% happy.
Inside the beltway, it would be the perfect ending to the year. Just how things are supposed to go in their alternate reality where we didn’t just hold an election that was roundly won, almost across the board, by Democrats.
Because, ya’ know, center-right country and all.
We’ll see.
Just remember, it isn’t all ponies and rainbows at the bottom of the cliff.
Oh, I certainly know that. Not sure that a short term deal is any better. Tired of kicking the can down the road. But the GOP is going to be no less rigid in January. And some of the Democrats will be no less skittish about playing hard ball, either. I just hate pondering the prospect of coming away from all this with the feeling we got rolled……again.
I don’t want a pony or a rainbow. But I want the election which we just had to matter in all of this. That’s why everyone worked their asses off for months and months. Been hanging around here long enough to have been made very aware of the reality of what is possible and not possible in all of this. But we won, damn it! That should make a difference. If it doesn’t, then we should all just fucking pack it in.
Yes, Fox News went absolutely berserk this morning. They should rename it Chicken Little News. Even the Republicans at the table were disgusted.
Just a reminder as to why I watch them. It’s the morning break in the cafeteria and the channel selector is broken on the TV.
Notice something else? Orange Julius wants Miss McConnell to go first. Shows how cowardly The Tan Man really is.
I think everyone knows that Orange Julius is a coward
Is he, though? We saw him try and make his move last week and he got walloped by a freight train for his trouble. I’m not sure what courage he could muster that would compensate for his extreme incompetence at managing the House’s affairs. He’s pretty much screwed no matter what he does.
I suppose you could argue then that the truly brave move would have been to decline to represent his caucus since he clearly wasn’t up to the task, but I don’t know, whatever. How does anybody convince the GOP that they themselves have already passed the bill years and years and years ago that raises taxes in three days? They wrote a law with planned obsolescence, there’s no amount of threats and hostage taking that can change that.
Remember the Gang of SIX early in the Obama administration? Our BOY Max, Kent( Give it away) Conrad, and 4 other Senators from MIDGET STATES! I call states with lots of land, and few people( usually for a GOOD reason) Midget States.
For the small percentage of Americans who these Midget Senators represent, they sure do have a much larger influence on ALL Americans than they should; just like the Southern TAIL that wags the Republicans!
I could be wrong that all of the Gang of Six are from
Midget States. I would like to be corrected if I am wrong.
has a lot of power, no matter the Senator or party. Lawrence O’Donnell has repeated several times that his former boss, Senator Moynihan, said that all you need for a quorum on budget matters for the US is the President and Chairman of Senate Finance.
Baucus is that Chairman now.
yes, I know. It is not a good thing.
What, would you prefer they assign chairmanships by drawing straws? Or are you hoping that the mighty liberal bloc will rise up at last and crush the party’s conservative elements?
Seniority’s a bitch if you ain’t senior.
Understatement of the year.
of Senate Finance have too much power? I would say yes but that goes for all of them. Not just Baucus.
Thing is, “Mad” Max could be crushed in a primary in 2 years. Yes, you read that right. He’d get crushed by a fellow Democrat. It just so happens that the specific Democrat might decide to run for President in ’16.
I don’t know who you are referring to.
The soon-to-be departing Governor, Brian Schweitzer. In a poll, or two, over the summer Baucus was losing to Schweitzer by 20+ in a hypothetical primary.
Thanks! Not sure how I feel about Schweitzer for president, but I’m all in on the idea of crushing Max Baucus. Barely a democrat.
Odd. I remember in 2008 when Tester was asked about who Obama should pick for VP he suggested Schweitzer. Ok, Tester <> (does not equal) Baucus, buy still the Montana Democratic Boys seemed tight.
However, if Schweitzer challenges Doofus I’m all for Schweitzer.
The tea bagging house has no idea how to vote for anything that results in a tax increase. Grover owns the house.
Why we don’t have a public option–Max Baucus.
Why we have a fiscal cliff–Kent Conrad.
Finance, Appropriations, Rules, Budget, Oversight—those are the committees you want to have power on while the progressives stack health, labor, education, and environment committees with a deep bench.
Daniel Patrick Monyihan shut down Hillarycare. Yes, the Senate Finance Committee chair is too powerful, primary because he can fail to bring legislation to the committee as a bargaining tool.
I’m not going to react to the “deal” until there actually is one.
But I am very happy about the news on the filibuster reform:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/filibuster-reform-champions-say-democrats-have-51-votes
During the two years the Democrats had the Senate and House several measures were never introduced because evil-scum-of-the-earth-non-humans like Lieberman and Ben Nelson agreed in advance to join a GOP filibuster for one reason or the other. There are a number of benefits to this change, and I suspect one of them is that members of the Democratic caucus will no longer join GOP filibusters because now such participation will generate national news and they’ll be noticed for doing so.
I suspect that not everyone knows the history behind why the filibuster stopped being the filibuster. The filibuster was originally created by accident as part of some complicated parliamentary rules that the Senate established. Apparently they decided that it was ungentlemanly to limit speaking time of an individual and also that an individual could yield his speaking time to another member of the Senate. Thus the potential for filibuster was born. Over time the rules changed to allow cloture votes to end debate (speaking) with various super-majority thresholds required.
True filibusters were rare and when they occurred all Senate business stopped – and thus they invariably became national news. During the civil rights era it became clear that the racist Southern Senate Democrats were willing to kill the entire country, if necessary, to preserve Southern traditions like freedoms to lynch n***s at random (think I’m exaggerating? Google Strom Thurmand’s 1948 Presidential platform – with which he won the electoral votes from many southern states). Robert Byrd felt that the Senate should be allowed to progress on the nation’s business while the southerners were blocking civil rights legislation so he invented, and got adopted, the two-tract system which allowed for non-speaking filibusters.
Well, it’s time for that to end. It was probably a bad idea at the time.
I suspect this is one of those changes that, like Reagan killing off the Fairness Doctrine, will have far greater impacts than people realize at the time, only this time in a positive way. Realistically Democrats will never use a filibuster like the GOP has the last 4 years. Democrats always have a set of traitors who will sell out to corporate interests (yes, I’m looking at you Mary “Big Oil owns me” Landrieu) or to faux centrism vis-a-vis the “gang of 14”. We don’t filibuster court nominees no matter how vile, and rarely get our shit together on any other bills. And when the Dems DO actually get the guts to filibuster something it’s for a topic that we actually want the national press to cover in detail while a speaking filibuster is ongoing.
Best news I’ve heard all day.
Strom Thurmond’s platform per the google: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25851
Lynching not explicit but implicit in calling for the feds to keep hands off local law enforcement
I need to find the jpeg of one of Thurmond’s 1948 campaign flyers that someone (Atrios? Digby?) used to post from time-to-time. It specifically mentioned federal anti-lynching laws as something his campaign opposed.
Couldn’t find it with 5 minutes searching tonight but will continue to look – it’s a real piece of work.
I’m sure you are right, having seen all the “Don’t Re-Nig” bumper stickers out West last year. I remember things were much more blatant in the 1950’s.
It took a while to find – this was originally posted as a link at Atrios on December 6, 2002 – but although many, many web sites added their own links to the file those links are now all broken.
This is the current link to the Mississippi Democratic Party 1948 Sample Ballot. This is what white southerners voted for in droves that year. Truth be told, most of the GOP today probably would still agree with this if you could feed them truth serum:
http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/images/213.gif
Many thanks for your time finding this. I had trouble for a few days accessing the file with Firefox 15.0.1. I just got through logging in remotely to my Linux server and a simple “wget http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/images/213.gif“ brought it down in seven seconds. Must be a bug in Firefox; it still can’t download it completely. Yes, the official poster called for opposition to the anti-lynching law. Senator James Eastland. I remember that name, too.
I’ll try to embed it here.
Can you see it clearly?
Saw on Facebook:
Obama will issue a statement on the fiscal cliff at 5:45 p.m., per W.H., after congressional leaders emerge with no deal
been saying this for years. A detestable man.
And yet Baucus voted against the FISA reauthorization.
State Senate delegations that voted no:
Alaska
Hawaii
Montana
New Mexico
Oregon
Vermont
Washington
Strange bedfellows.
Sounds like Baucus is fearing a ’14 primary.
Tester won re-election this year; so, I doubt Baucus was thinking of 2014. Plus, the no vote breakdown was: 19 D, 3 R, and 1 I.