(not American here and I'm not pro-life or conservative in any way) It seems to me getting rid of the filibuster would be justified by any party, it is extraconstitutional nonsense, and I would dare to say abuse of Senate procedure so much that the nuclear option is a lesser abuse.
On the contrary; the filibuster helps fulfill the Senate's purpose, which is to ensure that whatever is being proposed is something that is not merely the momentary will of 50% + 1 of the people.
That's the point of 2 senators per state. The filibuster is not a part of the constitutional deal. There is such a thing as too much countermajoritarianism.
Of course there is, as in the case of the Polish liberum veto, but effectively requiring 3/5 of the Senate to at least be willing to let a law be passed even if they're not willing to vote for it is nowhere even close to that.
I think given the polarised times it makes political parties incapable of doing the things they were elected to do, even with a trifecta, which I don't think is healthy, even if some of those things are wrong.
I've just realized this moment that I want to write a whole article about the filibuster and the nuclear option, because I have complicated feelings about them both... but I feel like I would have to write and publish it now, before the election, behind the veil of ignorance about who wins (and that obviously won't happen).
Suffice to say that I don't agree with you that it's an abuse of the Constitution, because I read "each house may determine the rules of its proceedings" very broadly, but I also don't think a filibuster is a good thing in a healthy republic or a healthy Senate, but I also don't think we have a healthy republic or a healthy Senate, so I think it serves (badly) as a certain kind of stopgap, but the filibuster's days are clearly numbered anyway so, tactically speaking, I would advise any party with a trifecta to nuke it -- but even that is complicated because I have a lot of reservations about the parliamentary legitimacy of the nuclear option. (Tactically speaking, Harris should definitely nuke it if she wins and has the votes. The consequences of that fill me with horror, but it's still the right call from where she's sitting.)
There. Now, if I write an article post-election, I can quote this comment with the date so everybody knows I'm not just shilling for whatever the Republicans need post-election. :)
I have realized just this moment that I would like to read such an article. My understanding of the filibuster is vague at best, and I live in the US...
I'm not opposed to ending the filibuster in principle, my problem is ending the filibuster at such a hyper-partisan time. Ending the filibuster now would be far more dangerous than it would have been in the past.
On the other hand, I suppose the only time the filibuster WOULD be completely eliminated is during hyper-partisan times.
James I think 2024 is probably more important at the state level here in MN than it is at the federal level, because it will decide whether we’ll have divided government for another 2 years, or 2 more years of a hyper-partisan DFL trifecta. The 2022 elections at the state level in MN may have been one of the most consequential elections in my lifetime.
I think that 2024 should be higher, but I think I judge the likelihood of mass civil unrest/civil war in the event of a close election to be higher. I do grant that 2016 was more important than 2020 or 2024.
That could be. You also might judge the likelihood of a close election higher than I do!
Let's ask it this way: the 2020 election was decided by 65,009 votes. The 2000 election was decided by 537 votes. Let's call the number of deciding votes in 2024 "Number X".
In your opinion, at what point does Number X become small enough that the chance of mass unrest exceeds 50%?
For me, X = ~3000 votes. I could refine this a lot more, but 3,000 will do. I think it's very unlikely that the election will be decided by a number that small, so I think mass unrest is very unlikely.
I think that's the source of much of our difference, then. Since Harris's base accepted just that without violence just 8 years ago, and again 24 years ago, I think it will take considerably more to send them into violence. The problem for translating rage at the Electoral College into violence is that violence arises when there's a sense that the law is suspended -- a legitimacy crisis. Progressives hate the electoral college law and there is a sense in which they consider it illegitimate, but they still see it as law.
1, I think that the "Trump is Hitler" narrative is a lot stronger to leftists today than it was in 2016. J6, as perceived by the Left in particular, is a strong argument in favor of that.
2, I think that the George Floyd protests, and other similar protests during covid, gave the far left a blueprint on how to violently protest without consequences. I still remember reading stories of how many cities were boarding up and preparing for mass riots with the 2020 election, in case Trump won.
3, the extent to which the Biden-Harris/Harris-Walz campaigns have painted this as a referendum on democracy itself will lend itself to a very simple "The will of the people has been ignored, democracy is dead!" rallying cry should Trump win the White House but not the popular vote. I have been hearing leftists opining that the EC needs to be replaced with a straight popular vote for at least the last 8 years (2016 being the second presidential election I could vote in, and the first one I remember much from still...)
Among elections before your time (but not mine), the 1980 election which elected Ronald Reagan and his brand of conservatism, lasting right up to the Trump era, was an important election.
The 1968 election that elected Richard Nixon was important given that it occurred during a time of social upheaval, in society in general and the Democratic Party. (I wonder about an alternate history if RFK were not assassinated, went on to win the Democratic nomination and possibly the White House. Maybe the Vietnam War still gets ended. Maybe society calms down a bit. Definitely Watergate, and the cynicism it bred, never happens).
As to your analysis, I agree with ranking 2016 and 2000 as important. Those are both obvious. Too early to tell about 2020, IMO. And waaay too early about 2024, that an election not concluded can't be fairly evaluated. That will depend on an evaluation of the Trump era, which has not yet ended, and may not for at least 4 more years.
During our generation, the idea that each successive presidential election could be the most important of our lifetimes might be true, because we began digging ourselves a pit that requires more drastic action to climb out of after each successive year of digging deeper.
If Dukakis had won, instead of asking how little H.W. Bush accomplished, we might ask what it might mean to have had a Democratic president who may not have led the party so thoroughly into the neoliberal consensus as Clinton then did.
If Romney had won, Republicans would have learned that hewing to the center works and might not have looked to Trumpism. We would have a president whose outcomes would not have differed much from Obama, but who would have given us a very different future for partisan politics.
Step by step, neoliberalism has paved the way for fascism. Each election, we have failed to reverse that trajectory. Sometimes our meaningful option for changing trajectory was in the primaries rather than the general election, but each passing cycle made a Trump more likely. 2016 was merely the tipping point of the lost opportunities prior. If we had stopped Trump, the conditions leading toward Trumpism would continue to worsen, and another Trump would have arisen within four to eight years.
Trump's eventual death will not mean the end of Trumpism. If we do stop him this election, we will not return to a Republican party committed to your values. We will be fending off the next Trump, and the next, and the next. And each time will be the most important, because the next time one wins, the guardrails defending the Constitution will no longer be strong enough to hold.
I don't really agree with this, but I think it's an interesting alternative viewpoint. A big reason why I disagree with it is that I deliberately excluded primaries from the analysis. This is partly because the thing people always call "the most important election &c." is the general election, and partly because the possibilities of a primary are always essentially infinite, and so not very amenable to being ranked.
There is certainly something to the idea that we have been gradually eroding the guardrails over a very long period of time. I don't think that starts or ends with Clintonian neoliberalism and I'm rather interested in learning what connection you see between the two, if you have the inclination to explain. Given my theory of civil war (that it begins in partisan hatred), I tend to see the erosion starting with the seeds of hyperpartisanship being sown in Congress in the 1980s, and with the beginning of conservatives' loss of faith in the institutions, starting around the time Rush Limbaugh emerges (1988). But, certainly, however we trace the cause, the wheels have been coming off for a long time. Could any given election have stopped or even slowed that process? If you consider the primaries, and allow that anything's possible in a primary, then certainly. Looking at general elections, we can probably point to a few (like 2012, as you note) that might have slowed things down.
However, if each election is an increasingly desperate attempt to fend off an increasingly imminent threat of constitutional collapse, my instinct is that the most important election of our lifetimes is the election at the *beginning* of that chain, not at the end of it. By the end, you're clearly just playing for time. (And I suppose that we both, from very different angles, probably share the view that the U.S.A. has only been playing for time for a few cycles now.) The crucial one to win would be the one at the start of the chain, when you could have nipped it in the bud. But that's just how I see it. I don't think there's One True Meaning of the word "important," so your view that the elections at the end of the chain are more important is perfectly reasonable, too.
Loose thoughts, anyway.
As for the last thing: Certainly the Republican Party will never return to what it was in 2012, for better and for worse. I can play "A Better Way" with Neil Patrick Harris all I want and cry into my beer but I know that fantasy is never actually coming true. Right now, though, the party is trapped in stasis between what it was and what it will become, because what it *is* is a vehicle for Donald Trump's whims, which keep it trapped in stasis and incapable of putting down any stable roots. I am more optimistic than you are about what the GOP becomes under the future leadership of a Vance, DeSantis, Youngkin, Kemp, or (Heaven forfend) some fresh Trump offspring. I think few of these people are Trump 2.0, at least in terms of Trump's utter contempt for the rule of law. (I could be wrong. Vance, in particular, I can't trust until I have seen his performance.) So I think there is at least a good chance that there is a light at the end of the endless tunnel that is the Trump Era.
Feel no obligation to reply to this. For the week or so before the election, I was unable to write long comments, because I was so busy writing that week. Now that the election is over, however, many people are feeling profound despair, and are not inclined to banter lightly about listicles with people from the other side for a while. I understand and respect this.
(not American here and I'm not pro-life or conservative in any way) It seems to me getting rid of the filibuster would be justified by any party, it is extraconstitutional nonsense, and I would dare to say abuse of Senate procedure so much that the nuclear option is a lesser abuse.
On the contrary; the filibuster helps fulfill the Senate's purpose, which is to ensure that whatever is being proposed is something that is not merely the momentary will of 50% + 1 of the people.
That's the point of 2 senators per state. The filibuster is not a part of the constitutional deal. There is such a thing as too much countermajoritarianism.
Of course there is, as in the case of the Polish liberum veto, but effectively requiring 3/5 of the Senate to at least be willing to let a law be passed even if they're not willing to vote for it is nowhere even close to that.
I think given the polarised times it makes political parties incapable of doing the things they were elected to do, even with a trifecta, which I don't think is healthy, even if some of those things are wrong.
I still tentatively think that is healthy.
I'm okay with political parties not being able to do everything their constituents want them to do.
I've just realized this moment that I want to write a whole article about the filibuster and the nuclear option, because I have complicated feelings about them both... but I feel like I would have to write and publish it now, before the election, behind the veil of ignorance about who wins (and that obviously won't happen).
Suffice to say that I don't agree with you that it's an abuse of the Constitution, because I read "each house may determine the rules of its proceedings" very broadly, but I also don't think a filibuster is a good thing in a healthy republic or a healthy Senate, but I also don't think we have a healthy republic or a healthy Senate, so I think it serves (badly) as a certain kind of stopgap, but the filibuster's days are clearly numbered anyway so, tactically speaking, I would advise any party with a trifecta to nuke it -- but even that is complicated because I have a lot of reservations about the parliamentary legitimacy of the nuclear option. (Tactically speaking, Harris should definitely nuke it if she wins and has the votes. The consequences of that fill me with horror, but it's still the right call from where she's sitting.)
There. Now, if I write an article post-election, I can quote this comment with the date so everybody knows I'm not just shilling for whatever the Republicans need post-election. :)
I have realized just this moment that I would like to read such an article. My understanding of the filibuster is vague at best, and I live in the US...
I'm not opposed to ending the filibuster in principle, my problem is ending the filibuster at such a hyper-partisan time. Ending the filibuster now would be far more dangerous than it would have been in the past.
On the other hand, I suppose the only time the filibuster WOULD be completely eliminated is during hyper-partisan times.
James I think 2024 is probably more important at the state level here in MN than it is at the federal level, because it will decide whether we’ll have divided government for another 2 years, or 2 more years of a hyper-partisan DFL trifecta. The 2022 elections at the state level in MN may have been one of the most consequential elections in my lifetime.
Footnote 4 :D Martha from the top rope!
I think that 2024 should be higher, but I think I judge the likelihood of mass civil unrest/civil war in the event of a close election to be higher. I do grant that 2016 was more important than 2020 or 2024.
That could be. You also might judge the likelihood of a close election higher than I do!
Let's ask it this way: the 2020 election was decided by 65,009 votes. The 2000 election was decided by 537 votes. Let's call the number of deciding votes in 2024 "Number X".
In your opinion, at what point does Number X become small enough that the chance of mass unrest exceeds 50%?
For me, X = ~3000 votes. I could refine this a lot more, but 3,000 will do. I think it's very unlikely that the election will be decided by a number that small, so I think mass unrest is very unlikely.
Oh, I would put the over under at "Candidate X wins popular vote but Candidate Y wins election"
I think that's the source of much of our difference, then. Since Harris's base accepted just that without violence just 8 years ago, and again 24 years ago, I think it will take considerably more to send them into violence. The problem for translating rage at the Electoral College into violence is that violence arises when there's a sense that the law is suspended -- a legitimacy crisis. Progressives hate the electoral college law and there is a sense in which they consider it illegitimate, but they still see it as law.
A couple of things on that:
1, I think that the "Trump is Hitler" narrative is a lot stronger to leftists today than it was in 2016. J6, as perceived by the Left in particular, is a strong argument in favor of that.
2, I think that the George Floyd protests, and other similar protests during covid, gave the far left a blueprint on how to violently protest without consequences. I still remember reading stories of how many cities were boarding up and preparing for mass riots with the 2020 election, in case Trump won.
3, the extent to which the Biden-Harris/Harris-Walz campaigns have painted this as a referendum on democracy itself will lend itself to a very simple "The will of the people has been ignored, democracy is dead!" rallying cry should Trump win the White House but not the popular vote. I have been hearing leftists opining that the EC needs to be replaced with a straight popular vote for at least the last 8 years (2016 being the second presidential election I could vote in, and the first one I remember much from still...)
Among elections before your time (but not mine), the 1980 election which elected Ronald Reagan and his brand of conservatism, lasting right up to the Trump era, was an important election.
The 1968 election that elected Richard Nixon was important given that it occurred during a time of social upheaval, in society in general and the Democratic Party. (I wonder about an alternate history if RFK were not assassinated, went on to win the Democratic nomination and possibly the White House. Maybe the Vietnam War still gets ended. Maybe society calms down a bit. Definitely Watergate, and the cynicism it bred, never happens).
As to your analysis, I agree with ranking 2016 and 2000 as important. Those are both obvious. Too early to tell about 2020, IMO. And waaay too early about 2024, that an election not concluded can't be fairly evaluated. That will depend on an evaluation of the Trump era, which has not yet ended, and may not for at least 4 more years.
During our generation, the idea that each successive presidential election could be the most important of our lifetimes might be true, because we began digging ourselves a pit that requires more drastic action to climb out of after each successive year of digging deeper.
If Dukakis had won, instead of asking how little H.W. Bush accomplished, we might ask what it might mean to have had a Democratic president who may not have led the party so thoroughly into the neoliberal consensus as Clinton then did.
If Romney had won, Republicans would have learned that hewing to the center works and might not have looked to Trumpism. We would have a president whose outcomes would not have differed much from Obama, but who would have given us a very different future for partisan politics.
Step by step, neoliberalism has paved the way for fascism. Each election, we have failed to reverse that trajectory. Sometimes our meaningful option for changing trajectory was in the primaries rather than the general election, but each passing cycle made a Trump more likely. 2016 was merely the tipping point of the lost opportunities prior. If we had stopped Trump, the conditions leading toward Trumpism would continue to worsen, and another Trump would have arisen within four to eight years.
Trump's eventual death will not mean the end of Trumpism. If we do stop him this election, we will not return to a Republican party committed to your values. We will be fending off the next Trump, and the next, and the next. And each time will be the most important, because the next time one wins, the guardrails defending the Constitution will no longer be strong enough to hold.
I don't really agree with this, but I think it's an interesting alternative viewpoint. A big reason why I disagree with it is that I deliberately excluded primaries from the analysis. This is partly because the thing people always call "the most important election &c." is the general election, and partly because the possibilities of a primary are always essentially infinite, and so not very amenable to being ranked.
There is certainly something to the idea that we have been gradually eroding the guardrails over a very long period of time. I don't think that starts or ends with Clintonian neoliberalism and I'm rather interested in learning what connection you see between the two, if you have the inclination to explain. Given my theory of civil war (that it begins in partisan hatred), I tend to see the erosion starting with the seeds of hyperpartisanship being sown in Congress in the 1980s, and with the beginning of conservatives' loss of faith in the institutions, starting around the time Rush Limbaugh emerges (1988). But, certainly, however we trace the cause, the wheels have been coming off for a long time. Could any given election have stopped or even slowed that process? If you consider the primaries, and allow that anything's possible in a primary, then certainly. Looking at general elections, we can probably point to a few (like 2012, as you note) that might have slowed things down.
However, if each election is an increasingly desperate attempt to fend off an increasingly imminent threat of constitutional collapse, my instinct is that the most important election of our lifetimes is the election at the *beginning* of that chain, not at the end of it. By the end, you're clearly just playing for time. (And I suppose that we both, from very different angles, probably share the view that the U.S.A. has only been playing for time for a few cycles now.) The crucial one to win would be the one at the start of the chain, when you could have nipped it in the bud. But that's just how I see it. I don't think there's One True Meaning of the word "important," so your view that the elections at the end of the chain are more important is perfectly reasonable, too.
Loose thoughts, anyway.
As for the last thing: Certainly the Republican Party will never return to what it was in 2012, for better and for worse. I can play "A Better Way" with Neil Patrick Harris all I want and cry into my beer but I know that fantasy is never actually coming true. Right now, though, the party is trapped in stasis between what it was and what it will become, because what it *is* is a vehicle for Donald Trump's whims, which keep it trapped in stasis and incapable of putting down any stable roots. I am more optimistic than you are about what the GOP becomes under the future leadership of a Vance, DeSantis, Youngkin, Kemp, or (Heaven forfend) some fresh Trump offspring. I think few of these people are Trump 2.0, at least in terms of Trump's utter contempt for the rule of law. (I could be wrong. Vance, in particular, I can't trust until I have seen his performance.) So I think there is at least a good chance that there is a light at the end of the endless tunnel that is the Trump Era.
Feel no obligation to reply to this. For the week or so before the election, I was unable to write long comments, because I was so busy writing that week. Now that the election is over, however, many people are feeling profound despair, and are not inclined to banter lightly about listicles with people from the other side for a while. I understand and respect this.