I have just about had it up to my eyebrows... can we at least get straight who is to blame

[Peacetrain]

For the love of GOD..

Nancy Pelosi did everything but handstands and got over 400 bills passed.. even battling blue dogs.. she had a very comfortable majority.. and she got it done.

Bills got stalled in the senate. The republicans pushed used the filibuster as a battleaxe to stop everything ..

The President could bully pulpit till the cows come home.. and or try to compromise..the house could pass laws on Mars..but it all stopped at the senate.

It was not caving into the right.. it was showing that even if you put their propositions into bill they would vote against it.

And now we have a libertarian group (the Tea Party).. who don't give a damn. It is all about money with libertarians..they will support individual rights up to the point you have to invest in it.. then they are the worst of the worst.

There are a lot of things we can yell at the President about.. a lot of things we can yell at the House leadership about.

But make no mistake.. the Senate filibuster stopped a lot of good things from happening.

How they got as much through, will go down in history .. An amazing amount of things were accomplished..but so much more could have been.

[joeybee12]

1. A slight correction...the THREAT of a fillibuster stopped a lot...

Repukes threatened, Dems caved.

[Peacetrain]

2. The Senate did.. Not the House..

[phleshdef]

9. Bullshit. A handful of Dems threatened and Dems caved.

Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln and maybe Landreiu, all were posing the danger of joining the filibuster, especially Lieberman, who is not a Republican.

Criticism is fine, but get the god damn story right. The absence of a public option from the healthcare bill had nothing to do with Republicans. It had to do with a member of our own caucus. The same goes with DADT. It would be all but repealed all ready had it not been for a handful of Democratic holdouts. We would have only needed one Republican to get cloture.

Republican obstruction in the Senate has been an annoyance, but its the obstruction from a handful of members in our own caucus that really prevented the party from exercising full power.

[johnaries]

14. So you would have felt better if Dems allowed Repukes to follow

through with their threats?

If you know you don't have the votes, then it is a waste of time that could be used in a better way. Such as trying to get the votes.

[Lisa D]

3. +1

Thank you for a reality-based analysis.

[zipplewrath]

4. Please explain

Explain how the senate fillibuster rule caused the White House to claim that a stimulus package that was too small by half, would keep unemployment below 8%?

Explain how the filibuster rule caused the White House to negotiate up front with big Pharma, in secret by the way, and keep single payer advocates "out of the room".

Explain how the filibuster rule caused the Treasury department to be more worried about ensuring that bonus contracts with the banks were enforced than they were about homeowners staying in their homes.

[vi5]

8. And when the tax cuts for the wealthy are extended..

Then somehow that will be Republicans fault as well even though they are in the minority and the fillibuster has nothing to do with it, and "we" have the power of the veto.

And when the Cat Food commmission comes out with it's report that will be used as Right Wing talking point and cable news talking head shark chum (whether or not any of it will actually pass is irrelevant because it will become talking point mantra), then somehow that will be Republicans fault as well even though "we" decided to put the commission together, and "we" picked the chairman.

It's always some sort of spin from "our side" about how we're the poor helpless victims.

[Milo_Bloom]

11. This... plus one...

Explain how the filibuster rule caused the White House to drop the public option from it's own health care plan in Feb 2010? (even after Bernie Sanders said they had the 50 votes to pass it in reconciliation?)

[Nite Owl]

5. But that use of the bully pulpit

would have put the blame where it belonged and the midterms would not have been so bad. They didn't run on the GOP obstructionism because it was also the conservadems, whom Obama seems to love, that blocked and watered down legislation. So did the WH want it watered down, did he agree with them? We will never know that since he refused to call them on it. He even backed Lincoln who blocked just about everything.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[anAustralianobserver]

13. Yes—at times he submitted to the Senate when he needed to 'coequalize' their

aristocratic asses; individually, personally and transparently.

(What opportunities are left in the lame duck session?)

[lunatica]

6. You're going to have to keep repeating that

She shelf life of OPs is practically non-existent and threads seem to fall into Black Holes. There's a definite downside to the internet.

[kentuck]

7. Yes, the Republicans blocked everything...

But can we agree that the Democrats and the White House did not put up very much resistance?

[DirkGently]

12. That's about where the Truth lies. Senate's broken. Doesn't absolve the WH from its timidity.

[butterfly77]

15. Kicked&Recommended..

[political_Dem]

16. Kick. Too late to rec this thread, but thank you for putting this out there.

[Nancy Waterman]

17. Me too - too late to rec

But I totally agree with the post.

[LWolf]

18. Oh, that's right.

It was the Senate that blocked her efforts to hold the Bush administration accountable for crimes by impeaching those responsible.

I forgot.

[rug]

19. "But make no mistake.. the Senate filibuster stopped a lot of good things from happening."

There was no Senate filibuster. The entire legislative agenda failed in the face of a whispered threat of a filibuster. Who is to blame?