2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumCan someone please explain why Harry Reid can not bring up the gun background..
Bill every week to remind voters of this country who the cowards are?? I dont get it..
BainsBane
(53,003 posts)and he's a turncoat.
earthside
(6,960 posts)Reid doesn't want any gun legislation.
He is petrified of the NRA.
Get it?
Jenoch
(7,720 posts)is worried about. The NRA doesn't have a vote in Nevada elections.
Skittles
(152,967 posts)busterbrown
(8,515 posts)was a anti Reid rant... and I got kicked off the site.... My have things changed around here.
Skittles
(152,967 posts)he has his moments but all too often it's just not enough
Heather MC
(8,084 posts)I mean it's not like you said
Hi there glad to be here lol
busterbrown
(8,515 posts)Raw Story April 2011. I immediately started fighting with Paulites. Man that was fun. Thought they had found a hero of keeping govt. off their backs They were very confrontational and I loved fucking with them.. So when I found D.U. I was in the habit of being yanked and wanted to see what you guys were like. I immediately stated I was sick of Harry Reid, his age, his manner of speaking..Holy Cow his weak attitude of not striking Repubs hard enough etc. Well I got my ass handed to me and this is when Harry was giving Romney a hard time on his taxes.. So there was a ton of support for him.
Well thats the story which I told tonight because you know something.. I might have been right!!
Heather MC
(8,084 posts)I tend to tick off a lot of them by accident.
They make me laugh.
Harry Reid runs hot and very cold. Lately He has been Antarctic around here.
I think Harry likes to see his lips move on TV. but I would never say that around here LOK
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)it wouldn't be a smart political move because it would only kill voter enthusiasm.
But you can bet it'll come around several times over the next 19 months.
busterbrown
(8,515 posts)Boston Marathon tragedy!!
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Us, Americans, have very short attention spans, and suffer issue fatigue very quickly, even on important things.
CitizenPatriot
(3,783 posts)but if he actually wants to get it passed, he's going to attach it in as an amendment one of these days. He knows it has broad public support.
The vote has already been recorded. The NRA can't do much now. So if he's able, he could put it up under voice vote /unanimous consent to give the senators cover. Fingers crossed.
ETA: Now we can see why he separated all of the gun bills. Everyone was pissed at him for separating them because they thought for sure background checks would pass and assault weapons could ride on it.
busterbrown
(8,515 posts)But a big show wouldnt be so bad... People need to be constantly reminded of how the Repubs are so out of touch..
CitizenPatriot
(3,783 posts)I'm only saying this because of his vote change, which led me to think he was up to something. But yeah, I agree, the NRA and GOP (and four Dems) need to be shamed daily over this utter failure.
premium
(3,731 posts)Sen. Feinstein's AWB only garnered 40 votes, not even a 51 vote majority.
He separated the AWB and mag. limit because he knew it would never pass out of the Senate, much less the House.
CitizenPatriot
(3,783 posts)they didn't believe that it wouldn't pass.
sofa king
(10,857 posts)The bill in question has been reported out of committee. The vote against it was merely a vote to end debate on the bill and bring it to a vote, so it's not dead, not sent directly to jail without passing go, and otherwise not iced or dormant. It's just waiting on a vote to stop talking about it.
If the President and Senator Reid agree to let the bill "hang" for awhile, which they appear to have done, that's just fine.
As long as it's still in the air, it becomes a weapon of unusual flexibility.
For example, because it's reported out, the entire bill can be tacked on as an amendment to another bill, and the GOP's legislative analysts will have to be watching for that move every day. Senator Reid can slip it back into the legislative calendar pretty much whenever he wishes, which means it can be brought up every single day, potentially. Republican Senators can be called back from vacations and important (and much more lucrative) business in their home states to maintain enough votes to oppose it, and a great many of them don't care enough about the business of the Senate to be easily dragged back, which makes the Minority Whip's job a nightmare.
Those issues are complicated by the fact that Republican staves are generally less competent in procedural affairs than their Democratic allies (Why? Because criminals search for ways around the rules first, rather than learning how to work within them. That is the most obvious difference between American liberals and conservatives in Congress--conservatives seek out corrupt routes to what they want first, then try the procedural route once their dirty hand is played. So long as Democrats control the Senate and the President is the shot-blocker, the corrupt route simply will not work.)
Republican Senators must now also keep to a stringent schedule so that they are never caught with their pants down at a quorum call, which means less golf, less booze, and less tail-chasing for them just as the weather begs them to forget the jobs they barely do to begin with.
And none of the above takes into account the real way that the President and Senator Reid have been getting things done, which is to allow Republicans to procedurally block everything until a crisis point is reached, whereupon the issue gets thrown behind closed doors, the President invokes all the special and secret powers the Republican Senators freely gave to the last guy, and everyone comes out of the locked room agreeing to whatever it is the President wants while claiming victory for themselves.
Of course, all of this would be much easier to know if friggin' journalists would provide the goddamned Senate bill number in their stories, but like medieval alchemists they like to keep that detail to themselves, I guess for job security. Here, I'll save you a step and link you to S. 374.
Edit: I should add that most of the real action on this bill and others like it will simmer at a level far below the notice of the press. For example, I have yet to see it mentioned in the press that not one controversial Republican-authored bill has passed out of Congress since 2009. But that's an important thing to know because exceptions can and will be made for Republican Senators who can be enticed to jump the fence on other votes, like this bill. We may be able to detect signs of movement under the covers if some loopy conservative bill suddenly reaches the calendar, and we'll be able to guess that that bill's author has been turned.
hack89
(39,171 posts)doubling down on weakness is never smart.
busterbrown
(8,515 posts)our population... The kind of coverage the media gave the 1st vote down of background checks really hurt
the cowards who voted against it... Nobody in their right mind would consider him weak if he continually pushed this vote down their throats every week. 90% of the pop. agrees. Your argument makes no sense..
hack89
(39,171 posts)yes, 90% support universal background checks but only 4% say gun control is their number one issue. Those that voted no made the calculation that they won't be punished politically - which is a pretty reasonable assumption in the conservative states they represent.
busterbrown
(8,515 posts)We will see how this plays out...
onenote
(42,383 posts)The background check provision was an amendment to S. 649. It was defeated. The underlying bill has not been voted on yet. Reid, by changing his vote to "no" is now allowed to make a motion to reconsider the vote rejecting the background amendment. Once. You can't keep bringing up an item that has been voted on over and over. And the procedural agreement on which the underlying bill is being considered does not allow for any new amendments beyond the nine that were brought up and voted on last week, so you can't create a "new" background check amendment and bring it to a vote.
busterbrown
(8,515 posts)I know all the traditional stuff and I do it. Call and write everyone under the sun.
I say poll those red states and tell the Senators that they are not going to get one ounce of support from any true progressive Dems. living there or funding by national groups. See what happens?
If we loose the Senate, fuck it, let the republicans destroy the country until the people finally get it..Its better than extending this torture for another 100 years. Probably take only 20 years for the republicans
to completely ruin this country..
onenote
(42,383 posts)The answer is no. He can bring it up one more time. And no one can introduce a similar amendment to the underlying bill.
Could someone introduce a new standalone bill that looked like the Manchin/Toomey bill? Yes. But getting it to the floor would be unlikely -- it might well get filibustered before it could even be debated (i.e., there might not be 60 votes to begin consideration, let alone 60 votes to end debate).
And if its brought up on regular order as a measure that requires only 51 votes to pass, repubs will be able to bring up amendments to the bill that could get 50 votes and we'd be in the position of having to filibuster those amendments, which would severely undercut the message that the repubs are frustrating the will of the majority if we are having to block amendments that could get a majority vote.
So Reid is biding his time and likely will, at some point, bring back up the Manchin/Toomey amendment and try it again. If it fails, then its game over for this Congress (absent something that dramatically changes the status quo). If it was to pass, he'd then try to bring the underlying bill, as amended, to a vote.
busterbrown
(8,515 posts)So in your opinion how can desperate people trying to avoid more gun violence get a Bill through during this Congress...
onenote
(42,383 posts)Even if something makes it through the Senate, I don't see any likelihood of it making it through the House without coming back to the Senate in such a stinky form that Democrats would be compelled to vote against it, further muddying the waters in the minds of a public that frankly doesn't pay as much attention to, or understand, the legislative process in general, or the gun debate specifically, as it need to.
marshall
(6,661 posts)He might choose not to do so.
onenote
(42,383 posts)He can bring it up one time as a motion for reconsideration. But that's it. There is no "motion to reconsider a motion to consider."
marshall
(6,661 posts)You are correct that he certainly cannot do it every week, as there are rules of order. But my point is that he will likely play a game of both politics and strategy. So I don't expect him to immediately jump on this every chance he gets.
onenote
(42,383 posts)He will play the strategy, but that doesn't mean he can or will ignore the Senate's rules.
marshall
(6,661 posts)There's a difference between what he can do and what he will do. Of course he can't bring it up as often as he can do. But I don't think what he will do and what he cando will be in sync.