On the 25th
of August 2009 Ted Kennedy died. With his death the Senate Democrats lost the
votes to defeat a filibuster and pass Obamacare. I spoke to my senators and
told them that it would be impossible to pass a good Healthcare bill using the
rules of the Senate to avoid the undemocratic 60 vote rule.
All the
resulting problems with passing Obamacare that persist to this day are still
traceable to it birth in a Reconciliation bill. If one looked then, you could
see the coming paralysis of today’s Senate.
We are now down to 50-50 with the vice President as a tie breaker. So even
one self-centered Senator can frustrate the President and the American people’s
desire for free and fair elections and the programs contained in the Build Back
Better legislation.
If one
contemplates history one can see the future. Two books and one article are plenty
to convince one of the dire nature of the present paralysis threat will lead to
Totalitarian rule. In 2003 Richard Evans, a British historian wrote, The Coming of the Third Reich, which tells the
tale of what happened before Hitler. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in 2018 wrote, How Democracies Die, which
tells the history of a number of countries that have preceded the USA down the
rabbit-hole into Totalitarianism.
The next
Atlantic Monthly has a article by Barton Gellman, Trump’s Next Coup Has Already
Begun. If the two books don’t make you uneasy this article
will. All three tell the same story from
different perspectives.
Like a fall on a glacier there is a chance to arrest the
slide into disaster. It requires swinging hard and burying your ice axe in the
ice. Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer must
call Sinema and Manchin into their office and deliver an ultimatum. “Either you will vote to amend the Senate
rules by a majority vote or we resign” and you can try to resurrect the Senate
from the ruins of the Tornado. The
Senate will look like Kentucky after the last week but it will be clear that
the Democrats tried to act before we lose the House in the 2022 elections and
our Democracy in 2024.”
This will not solve everything immediately but it will
create momentum to pass election law reform and additions to the safety net
Laws so that the effects will be felt in the election of 2022. Time is rapidly passing and each day of Paralysis
in the Senate is one day closer to the election of an autocrat whomever he or
she may be.
The time has come to Stand in our Democracy rather than
to protect Senatorial privilege. My old friend Warren G Magnuson, when asked
about running for the Presidency or seeking a Supreme court appointment, said, “I’m
not leaving the most exclusive club in the world for anything.”
Standing up for Democracy is worth risking the loss of
status. Nathan Hale, before he was
hanged on 22 September1776, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my
country.”
