A majority?
Do you mean that people throughout the political spectrum, and not just on one end, are now afraid?
To answer a different question than the one Exapno and JKellyMap addressed (about the relative change in % of Americans listing ‘immigration’ as a serious issue):
The reason we see many polls indicating a majority of Americans caring about an issue, combined with inaction on that issue, is that it’s expensive to run for Congress.
Thus whoever has the biggest checkbook—and on gun issues, that’s the NRA and associated interests—will determine whether there will be action or inaction on the issue.
Speaking (again) for Exapno, he clearly meant “irrationally afraid.”
There were votes today by the Senate, one on the Trump proposal for funding the government, and a separate one on the Pelosi proposal. Neither one of them received the 60 votes necessary to advance, much less the 2/3 majority needed to override a veto.
So it looks like McConnell has read the Senate correctly.
No he meant that 27 Republicans could dump McConnell as majority leader and install one them as majority leader. Then there would also be enough, with the 47 Democrats, to override a veto. There remains the question of getting 55 Republican representatives to also cave, but if 27 senators did, that would probably happen too.
At that point, I imagine Trump would not want to be overridden so he would either sign it or wait ten days in a fit of pique and let it become law.
I think a case can be made that a sufficient number of Democrats agree with the overwhelming number of Republicans that it falls across the line into majority.
Take this article on a recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.
Not quite a majority, but they can’t all be Republicans. A “Economist/YouGov.com pollfound that 84 percent believe illegal immigration is a “problem” for the United States.” A Quinnipiac poll found “Fifty-four percent of voters surveyed say there is a “security crisis” along the southern border, versus 43 percent who think there is not. Eighty-six percent of Republicans and 54 percent of independents surveyed said there is a security crisis. However, only 25 percent of Democrats said there is a crisis.”
I don’t play games with polls. As I said earlier, the important datum is not the absolute number but the fact that it has risen so drastically in a short amount of time. Whether this particular fear is irrational is irrelevant. Fear campaigns cannot be limited to one segment of the population. They slop over. People are cautious and rightfully so. They’re right to have some fears and a complex world makes it difficult to rate fears above or below one another. Making the world less frightening is a rational strategy. I’m sure lots of Democrats would just like the border issue to go away so they don’t have to worry about it any more. That Trump lies about the amount of crime coming over the border doesn’t make that number zero. As long as trumpeting FEAR FEAR FEAR works, it will work across party lines.
Of course illegal immigration is a problem. But there’s only one solution to it, and you’ll never hear a Republican proposing it.
I know this is an older post, but you missed the point. It’s not about one vote, it’s about the role of the President of the Senate to bring legislation to the floor.
I didn’t know about this poll. That is horrifying not to mention shocking. Is this an outlier?
The kicker is, the Trump proposal lost with a vote of 50-47 while the Schumer proposal lost 52-44. So, more R’s voted for the Democrat proposal than the Trump proposal. Schumer and the Dem’s are getting more Republican support than Trump is garnering.
Wow – that is terrible. As a Latin Americanist human geographer, I have a professional obligation to educated the public that there IS no security crisis – but what an uphill battle. I am actually close to tears as I type this.
When Fear replaces the actual problem as the main problem, no good results are possible.
9/11 started the current plague of Fear. No major outside terrorists attacks have occurred in 17 years but Fear of terrorism pervades the country, and skews it in many warped ways.
Letting Trump start his fence might in some ways assuage the fears of illegal immigration. People actually want the TSA no matter how much they complain about it, and the fence would never be in their faces the same way. The counterargument is that fear of illegals is not a matter of better immigration policy; it’s a symptom of whites knowing that they will forever become a minority - and they know all too well how they treat minorities. It’s different in scale but not in meaning from why the South went insane before the Civil War. (And why the North rammed through anti-immigration laws in the 1920s.) Trumpsters don’t mind poisoning the well because they think they can live on bottled water. We’ll see how true that is.
The presiding officer of the Senate has no substantive role in bringing legislation to the floor, other than recognizing a senator to make a motion to do so.
Nor is the position of presiding officer (as in the selection of whomever is sitting in the chair at any particular moment) subject to any vote. The Senate votes on a resolution to appoint a President Pro Tempore (in this case, Chuck Grassley) and then the PPT appoints other senators to sit in the seat at various times during the day.
Further, the idea of the Senate voting to appoint a new PPT is a non-starter, as the Majority Leader still controls the schedule of what bills or resolutions get called up, when they are voted on, etc.
Senators are not elected by the nation. There are two from every state.
If polls show 60% of all Americans want X, and 60% of the voters in your state don’t want X, how do you think a Senator is going to vote?
Regards,
Shodan