A letter to Salon

[bobquasit]

A letter I wrote tonight in response to a rather stupid argument in Salon. The author suggested that Democrats ought to welcome the elimination of the filibuster, because:

In "Dump the filibuster!", Farhad Manjoo says "...however slim the chances are of Democrats' winning 51 Senate seats, they're a lot better than the possibility of their winning 60 seats".

By that logic, I have a lot better chance to spontaneously fly 20 feet upward out of my chair, than 20,000 feet. But I'm not buying a parachute.

Suggestion: The Republicans would not have taken this step if they weren't pretty darn sure that they would never be out of power again. Why would they think that? Perhaps because of the black box voting process, as reported on several occasions in Salon.

After all, we don't know what goes on in those boxes - but we do know that the presidents of the companies that make and run them are fervent right-wing Republicans.

Could it be that Karl Rove knows something that we don't? It would certainly be unprecedented for him to hand a loaded weapon to his political victims, after all.

We'll see if they print it.

Comments

[charibdis.livejournal.com]

I've seen this argument before, that the Republicans control the election machinery and therefore will never be out of power. It may well be true, and that scares me.

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

This replaces a previous reply that had an error in it; I deleted that one but was too tired to type a new one.

Contrary to what Harry Reid says (and what would he know; he's just the Senate Minority Leader :) ) I think that the Democrats have a fair chance of retaking the Senate. The seats they lost in the last election were mostly (four of 'em) in the South where there has been a trending towards the GOP as conservative Southerners change to it, and two of those (in North Caroline and Florida) might well have not been lost had the incumbant Senators not gotten it into their pointy little heads to run for President. Such shifts can work both ways; there are at least five Northern GOP Senators who class themselves as "moderates" and they ain't doin' that out of chutzpah; they do it because otherwise they'd lose their seats to a Democrat. Look at Rhode Island; an abortion rights group (NARAL) endorsed the Republican Chaffee, which likely helps a vulnerable Senator. And some not so moderate Senators in the North (Santorum) might be in trouble.

The thing about the filibuster and judges is, well, the filibuster may be kind of an absurdity but if there is anything the Senate does that should require a supermajority it's lifetime appointments of judges. That, and that the GOP seems to be planning to do a close to blatantly illegal stunt to get rid of it for judicial nominations; that whole "constitutional" argument is a load of crap and they know it.

Now, my big worry with the voting machines isn't a GOP Thousand Year Reich; it's that we'll get a situation where the elections are clearly being stolen and the masses (let's remember, it doesn't need to be a majority) rise up in revolution. Granted that in certain recent revolutions of sorts in former Soviet republics the things were successful witout much violence, but here I think the only way a revolution could work is by producing a dissolution of the Union and a reformation of the parts into two or more new nations; I'm not sure that can be done peacefully, barring the GOP takes up the notion some in the Hard Right have suggested where the Blue States be booted from the Union. Violent revolt is a winner for nobody in this country.