Because it’s a stupid question. Democrats didn’t need a filibuster to block Thomas. Very simply put, those Democrats that objected to Thomas being a SC justice should not have voted for confirmation. 11 Democrats thought he should be a SC justice. It was a **bipartisan **confirmation.
As opposed to strictly partisan confirmation attempts that would sometimes necessitate a filibuster. Apples and oranges.
So, if you car battery dies you don’t just replace it, or if that doesn’t work, fix the electrical system. The first thing you do is buy a new car. Brilliant!
And tort reform is not the only thing I suggested doing. Simply scroll up.
Wait—are off you of the mind that Dem President has had a more difficult time getting his Supreme Court Justice nominations approved?
ACA is hardly a new car. It uses the existing system and just regulates it and provides money to help people afford it.
I was just talking about tort reform, and how it’s close to useless. So people should stop pretending that it’s a significant part of a realistic health plan.
Nonsense. Your analogy would work if you said it not like a new type of car, like a flying car. Obamacare changes things in a huge way. You really missed all of the news coverage over these past years?
But I wasn’t, was I? I agree doing that and only that would not be enough. So you’re point is well, pointless.
Now, if theres a plan that reduces costs 2% here and X% there and Y% there, that’s worth looking at. But even if you look at it alone, if you agree that it reduces costs 2%, why do you oppose doing that, regardless of what else you might do? Would you be more in favor of it if it was thought to increase costs by 2%? Come on.
That’s *your *starting point. Probably close to your ending point too, right?
I, I would assume, probably understand the ACA much better than you do, since I don’t rely on RW news sources. 
That said, the ACA keeps the insurance model we have, it just requires that insurance to provide certain standards, makes it easier to afford, and creates exchanges. It’s still the same bones. If we switched to something like Canada’s single payer, or the NHS, I’d see your argument. But we still have a shitty for-profit insurance system between patients and care.
I’m for tort reform, if it isn’t too stringent. If you go to a hospital for a leg amputation, and they cut off the wrong one, I want them to pay a huge amount. If you’re limited to some small number for a goof-up like that, I’d be against it.
Minus the septimus’s obvious hyperbole I think this falls under response 2
It might, but only if Kagan had not also been confirmed on a bi-partisan basis. The “while” is plainly intended to imply that Kagan had a harder time of getting nominated than Thomas, becuase of the GOP filibuster. If you read that and then were told that one of them was confirmed 52-48 and the other was confirmed 63-37, I’m not sure you’d guess which was which.
I am not sure why septumus brought up Kagan at all. Her confirmation was not filibustered.
Not by much.
Tort reform as it was understood at the time was a limit on damages for pain and suffering. All this would have achieved is limiting the size of the awards, it doesn’t affect behaviour because it doesn’t affect liability.
So lets say you’re a doctor and you have a situation where you can order an expensive test to cover your ass on a remote risk or you can ignore the test but risk getting sued for actual economic damages and some limted amount of pain and suffering. Does that limitation to pain and suffering reduce your inclination to order that expensive and probably unnecessary test?
These days, we have some more rational models of tort reform that are inspired by Obamacare. So the notion is to have some government panels codify best practices so that you are at least partially insulated from liability if you follow best practices. But none of these better idea are “easy stuff” or low hanging fruit that we should have implemented before we implemented insurance reform (and Obamcare isn’t health care reform so much as it is health insurance reform).
It was a different time. You can’t compare Pre-Obama to Post-Obama. The senate confirmed Ruth Bader Ginsberg 96-3, a lot of them were Republicans. Times are different now.
So if these are strictly partisan confirmation attempts that justified filibusters, can you please identify what makes these nominees so much more partisan than prior judicial nominees? I’m sorry, but it is the obstruction that is partisan, not the nominees. I don’t know if that fully justifies the nuclear option but its not entirely unjustified.
Your other ideas are worse. Buying insurance across state lines serves absolutely no purpose unless you think that states should not be able to regulate insurance within their own states. Lack of competition is not the reason why health insurance costs more in NYC than Boise, its the cost of health care. There may be some differences ebcause of minimum benefit requirements and minimum solvency reserve requirements but by and large if there was money to be made by operating in another state, people would already be doing it.
Some people think that health care is the biggest economic and fiscal crisis of our time and what you are proposing is like treating the gunpowder burns on a gunshot victim and see how it goes before you try anything as drastic as surgery.
No SCOTUS nominees have ever been successfully filibustered as far as I know. Both of Obama’s nominees were confirmed largely along party lines. I don’t think either of them are as liberal as Ginsberg.
Don’t be silly; there’s also removing the authority of the states to regulate health coverage within their borders, too. That’s another big part of the Republican health coverage plan, you know.
I know! But then the GOP hates State’s Rights and always has. Really. The Federal Government is really the only true solution for this type of problem - just ask the GOP.
Oh, right, you mean their plan to permit cross-border insurance coverage, to spread the Mississippi system nationwide. 
After I called this an enormous win for the Democrats, the usual scoffers scoffed. I replied that we could look back and see whose predictions were better.
Well, in today’s New York Times, I saw this headline: In Defeat for Tea Party, House Passes $1.1 Trillion Spending Bill. It was such a big deal that it made [del]the front page[/del] page 14.
Some excerpts:
Also exactly as predicted, the Republicans who voted for the bill cited the need to show constituents that they were doing something positive rather than merely chanting no, no, no:
The usual scoffers will do exactly that. And probably even try to tell me how this wasn’t an enormous win for the Democrats. And black is white, and up is down.
Mississippi is much too regulated for them. The last time the GOP attempted to allow buying insurance across state lines, they had a definition of state that would have included the Northern Marianas Islands, which are not only exempt from some federal labor laws, but do not have a department of insurance regulation. IOW, no regulations at all on insurance companies there. How long do you think before United Healthcare, BCBS, and the other companies had offices there for selling insurance, if that bill had passed?
The Dems have every reason to change the rules and no reason not to: if and when the Republicans get control of the Senate, ALL the rules that allow the minority to obstruct the majority will be nuclear optioned out of existence the day the Republicans are in control. Reid is a damn fool if he thinks otherwise.
I wouldn’t bet on it. For legislation the filibuster is only critical to a majority party if it also controls the House and the White House. Otherwise you have to bargain with the other side anyways. Unless the GOP were to sweep into full control there wouldn’t be a lot of pressure on the legislative filibuster. And even then it’s popular with senators (because it empowers them) and the GOP doesn’t need it for their main agenda, tax cuts (because they can use the reconciliation process). I figure if push comes to shove enough Dem senators could be found to serve in a “wonderfully moderate and bipartisan” “Group of Howmanyever” to cut a deal for whatever and allowing key Republican bills to come to the floor.
I figure the legislative filibuster is safe enough for now. Whenever the Dems do manage a sweep then that’s the time for them to consider changing the rules for that next Congress. No point in it right now.
But as BrainGlutton points out, the vacancies aren’t being filled as the Dems had hoped because the GOP is still holding them up by objecting to consent requests on motions for nominations. The Senate normally runs by consent. That is, the actual procedure is onerous on senators (who have to spend lots of time gladhandling and begging for money and whatever else) so instead unanimous consent is requested to set aside the rules and do whatever needs doing that day.
So we might expect some further nuclear engineering from the Dems in this Congress. For instance, the motion to proceed could be ruled undebatable. That would help clear the logjam a lot. Due to the fact that senators need time to make themselves available for big votes the rules don’t allow them to be scheduled right away and even when you get cloture there are 30 hours of debate allowed. So it takes about four days for each step of the way. The Senate averages 167 days a session.
I thought reconciliation was only for bills which would decrease the deficit?