Why is it suddenly now that you are in power that you need to have 60 votes? And I am serious in this question.
We were told time and time again, "We need 60 votes, then we will pass the legislation you want, just keep helping us". And help them we did.
We helped them in fund raising. We helped them in GOTV. We helped them because we believed in the cause.
But something came to me while I was watching Olberman which inspired me.
Here is the transcript and the money quote:
OLBERMANN: Sixty votes, filibuster-proof, super-majority. It sounds wonderful. It sounds dreamy. I would use the word “dreamy” to describe this.
However, these are Democrats we are talking about.
ALTER: Yes.
OLBERMANN: And it would seem to me there would be possibility if they had 75 votes, they‘d still find some way to screw up that advantage. Is this really a milestone or not?
ALTER: It is a milestone, but I think for some reasons that people don‘t quite get, they go well, but with these reconciliation, you know, tactics, can‘t they really pass things with 51 votes? And the answer to that is technically yes, but practically no. They really do need 60 votes.
Will it be hard to keep them all in line? Do they have to keep Bob Byrd healthy enough to vote and Ted Kennedy to vote? Yes. But they do have more discipline than they used to, and they want to put health care through with 60 votes, not ram it through with 51.
On energy, the way the deal works, they have to have 60 votes .
OLBERMANN: Right.
Right.. is that all you could say Keith? Right?
You see I remember the Bush years.
And the funny thing is.. we can go online and see the votes in Congress.
We can see that back in the Bush years, we didnt NEED 60 votes to pass important legislation. Why, we only needed 50+1. I remember the Republicans threatening the nuclear option if we tried to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee (not much mention of that recently).
Why didn`t you ask Mr. Alter the follow-up which screamed in my mind when he made his statement? Is your memory so short?
And my final question (the REAL can you answer me this)..
Why do we need a "supermajority" to pass Health Care and other legislation. I remember Senator Reid saying "Well even if we filibuster, Bush will veto us" and I believed it (as smart as that was).. but NOW we have a Democratic President, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House.
Whats the damn problem??
P.S. I tried to embed the MSNBC video but kept getting errors. If someone knows the code please post it and I will update it with kudos.
