It may be impossible for them to do so and still keep their current jobs past the next election. Nobody else’s job is guaranteed in this country. Why should theirs be?
(The one faint argument that could be made is that if they don’t get through the primaries someone even worse may be elected. However, if they’re going to do the bidding of the “someone worse” for fear of losing the primary, that becomes an argument with nothing to it.)
Getting oneself re-elected is not supposed to be the highest, let alone the only, goal of Congressional representatives.
Nothing that I said implied or went anywhere near that, so I suspect that you’ve misread it or misunderstood something. If you say what you believe I said, I’m happy to explain where you got thrown off?
Which I interpreted to mean as your saying that it’s impossible for representatives to vote in disagreement with what they think are the strongest voices in the party, because otherwise they won’t get re-elected at the end of their two-year terms.
Did you mean something else by that, and if so, what?
And what I intended to say was that it isn’t impossible for them to vote any way they damn please. They might not get re-elected, sure; but that doesn’t make it impossible. If they consider it to be impossible, that’s because they think the most important thing isn’t their ethics, their aims, or the good of the country – it’s only that they themselves get re-elected.
If I say that dangling candies at the edge of cliffs, near tiny children, is a bad procedure and you read that to mean that I think we should build nets and catcher drones that patrol all slopes greater than 20 degrees, then I’d say that 1) are you sure that’s the easiest and most reasonable solution? And 2) no, that’s not the one that I was thinking of. I thought we shouldn’t dangle candies over the edge of cliffs.
So you mean that because of that rule we’ve already elected only Representatives who will obey the strongest voices?
That’s part of the problem – but saying that it’s impossible for them to behave properly isn’t the same thing as saying that it’s entirely possible but we’ve elected people who won’t.
And I note that under the same rules of published votes we appear to have elected Democrats who are quite capable of standing up to their party.
In terms of diversity, Biden was the largest in the last primary, and that’s largely because he’s old and still has views formed in the 70s and 80s.
To my ears, the debates sounded pretty footballish. We have our line on this side, the Republicans have their line on the other side, and the goal is to move the ball between those very set and unconditional lines.
Manchin is the closest to being distinct, that I know of in the party, and the man’s excoriated for it and his legislation is never promoted nor discussed.
I could sit down and list out hundreds of reasonable laws and policies that have nothing to do with either party. I could recruit hundreds of others who could as well.
The Democratic party used to be full of pot smokers that listened to the Beatles and also the KKK and socialists. You currently have the range of Biden to AOC. I guarantee you that it’s minutely tinier it used to be.
And at least some of the Democrats would vote for them, if they were brought to the floor, even though Republicans were voting for them as well – even if it’s Republicans who bring them to the floor.
The current Republicans won’t allow them to be brought to the floor. There’s your difference.
The range of Biden to AOC and Sanders may look narrower to you than it does to me. (For that matter, smoking pot doesn’t IME line up neatly with other politics.)
The Democratic party used to be full of conservatives and even of the KKK because the Democratic party used to be the right wing party. And the Republicans used to be the left wing wild eyed radicals. The two parties spent most of the 20th century gradually changing places. For a while, during the middle of the switch, both parties had a left and a right wing and both of those wings overlapped and that did in fact make it a hell of a lot easier to get things done in Congress.
The switch in positions is now pretty much close to complete – except that the Democrats now have a left wing and a centrist wing and the Republicans have a right wing and a let’s-burn-it-down wing. As far left as I am, I think the country needs a right wing. But we could do without the let’s-burn-it-down wing, at least in power (we’re always going to have it, on both sides and looping around to join hands in the totalitarian blur; but we don’t always have it significantly in power.) And if the right wing is going to follow the orders of the let’s-burn-it-down wing, then we haven’t got a right wing. Which is a huge problem.
If Republicans are actually that incompetent at governing, then they can vote for Jeffries, tuck their tails, and sneak back home. Jesus this shit is pathetic.
(Let me hear it, Democrats have to save the guys that have launched an “impeachement inquiry” of Biden, over they don’t even know what the fuck for, and some other shit about Biden’s son’s alleged laptop. )
Fuck those guys until they can manage to get their very basic and elementary shit together. And if they can’t, then fuck those guys.
I read that article. Every time I read about a “family” and the negotiations that they were having with the other “families”, I had an image quite removed from the halls of Congress.
I feel like I’m belaboring my point, but many, many more Republicans than just the 45 members of the Freedom Caucus will refuse to vote for a compromise “moderate” Republican who can only pass with Democratic votes or abstentions.
Which I read as “if the Democrats are in charge, even as a minority, us voting against everything is kosher, makes us look good, and makes them look ineffective! A big win, if only we could sell it to our radicals, dammit!”
True, it’s not just the 8 or the 22 or the 45. The GOP Establishment if anything would be seeking to internally “overcome” the FC in the sense of getting them to yield and bow to being bound by the procedural majority principle. No more votes against bringing forward a rule or report passed by their own committee majorities.
So does anybody know if any of those nine are relatively sensible?
As in, ‘not going to insist on opposing anything solely on the grounds that Democrats like it’ and ideally as in ‘if it’s needed to keep things running and we can’t get the FC on line (such as, a budget that might pass the Senate) then we’ll go ahead and pass it with the aid of the Democrats if some of them are willing.’
Or are they all basically ‘FC except with just enough wits not to threaten anybody who I need to vote for me’?
Of the nine, seven of them don’t pass the basic test of not trying to overturn the presidential election. Scott and Emmer are the only two who pass that very first hurdle. I don’t know much about them otherwise.
Two-thirds of House Republicans voted to decertify Biden’s presidential electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania. If anything, those seven are simply representing the views and wishes of their party conference.