The Chicago Sun-Times this morning trumpeted, "GOP Senate win a blow for Obama." I cannot speak for Mr. Obama. True, I have supported him ever since he was running for the Senate in Illinois, way before he was the President of the United States. True, I have donated money to his campaigns for Senate and for President. However, I am of the mind that he is a public servant who serves the people of the United States, and was duly elected to that office so he can do what is necessary for the benefit of those people. More than a blow for Obama, the loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts to a Republican, I feel is a loss for the people of this country.
Martha Coakley may have been a bland candidate, but what in the world were the people of the state of Massachusetts thinking? Remember that filibuster proof majority in the U.S. Senate? History. Gone with the wind, just like Ms. Mitchell's novel. And we haven't even gotten the healthcare reform thing completed yet. Oops. For the love of God, or at least someone godlike, people, there are Americans out there who are in dire straits as regards their healthcare. We are, embarrassingly enough, the only major industrial nation in the world that does not have universal healthcare, and we were on the verge of fixing that. Now that's as endangered as a Siberian tiger.
The sad thing is that the Democratic Party still has a 59-41 advantage in the Senate. That's a sizable margin. Yet that obscure little Senate rule that allows unlimited debate (Can you say filibuster?) unless you have an obscenely large supermajority, allows a minority of right-wing ideologues to cancel the will of the majority. Furthermore, the fact that every state, no matter how large or small, to have 2 Senators gives states with miniscule populations to dictate to those states that actually have the majority of the people in this country. The long and the short of that is that a minority of right-wing politicians, many of whom are from states with populations less than a million, are in a position to stop progress. (For the record, my city has more people than several of those states added together. Can we get a couple of Senators of our own?)
My suggestion is that Congress get their collective butts in gear and pass some version of this healthcare thing before that clown from Massachusetts gets sworn in. At least the people of the United States will get some universal healthcare bill, albeit flawed and limited in its scope. If we have to try to get this thing patched up between the House and the Senate after Mr. Brown takes office, it will get watered down even further.
Given the current state of party politics in Congress, it is doubtful that anything of realistic value will be accomplished there in the near future. Every effort to make any valuable change to benefit this country will be blocked just because the initiatives came from the Democratic Party. If initiatives get passed at all, they will be so severely compromised that they mean nothing. "What's in it for me and my state and my pals politics" will continue to prevail, as they have for the last who knows how long.
When the United States Constitution was written there was a belief in the need to protect the rights of the states. There was a great suspicion of a strong national power. The Senate with its 2 representatives from every state, no matter how large or small, was a way of protecting the little guys. Then the Senate established its rules of procedure so that a minority could debate endlessly, keeping the majority from bringing an issue to a vote, further protecting the rights of minorities. The filibuster was born. It has gotten to the point of absurd. I actually forget the actual numbers, based on the population, but what is going on is that easily less than 1/3 of the population is dictating to over 2/3 of the population. That is democracy gone awry.
I am not suggesting that we need to amend the Constitution and change the makeup of the U.S. Senate, although if I had been one of the founding fathers from a state with a large population, say New York, I have to admit that I would have bristled at the concept of being dictated to by a state with the population of Rhode Island or Connecticut. A modern day analogy would be California vs. North Dakota or Wyoming. It's time the Senate changed its rules of procedure. The filibuster simply serves to frustrate the will of the majority of the people in this nation so a minority can keep progress at bay.
Enough is enough. I want universal healthcare. I want the business community supervised so the rest of us don't get screwed. I want discrimination kept at bay. I want schools that are properly funded and not sold to the highest bidder so we don't have to pay taxes to support them. None of that is happening under the current system. Until we make some rational changes in our governance, we will continue to be governed by politicians who are at the beck and call of special interests. We will continue to be a country where the wing nuts can thwart real change.
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