Slowly, The Light Dawns
by digby
Charles Babington examines the strange notion that the voters are becoming even more partisan even as they say they want more bipartisanship. Whatever can these stupid people be thinking?
Well ...
In a January poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 93 percent agreed there is too much partisan fighting between Democrats and Republicans. In a March Associated Press-GfK poll, 84 percent said it was important that any health care plan have support from both parties in Congress.
Voters' behavior, however, often works against such sentiments.
"People will tell you they don't like partisanship, but their solution is, 'The other side should give in to us,'" said Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz, author of "Voice of the People: Elections and Voting in the United States."
Uhm yes. They want their agenda to be enacted and they don't like the idea that their opponents are standing in the way. When one party say, wins a super-majority, they think they have a perfect right to expect that it will happen. It's a mistaken idea they learned back in civics class in high school, I imagine.
Now, Republicans have good reason to define bipartisanship as Democrats capitulating because there is a history of doing just that. Democrats, not so much, but that's no reason they shouldn't think that "two way street" might be defined as the Republicans doing the same thing when the Dems are in the majority. (Alas, they have learned the hard way that this is not going to happen.) I fairly sure it's only the vaunted "centrists" who define bipartisanship as a Chinese menu or splitting the baby. Everyone else thinks that elections actually mean something.
But here's a very interesting little twist at the very end of that story that made my heart swell:
With partisanship surging, Abramowitz sees two possible routes for Congress. One involves continued gridlock and all the public anger and frustration it generates.
The other is a revived effort to change the Senate's filibuster rules, a daunting task that would make it easier for the majority party to enact bills despite unanimous minority opposition, as the House often does.
Leaders of both parties say Republicans probably will gain House and Senate seats this fall, narrowing, if not wiping out, the Democrats' advantage.
"That can only lead to more polarization," Abramowitz said, "and more pressure to change filibuster rules."
The pressure may grow, but a closer Democratic-Republican divide in the Senate will make a rules change even harder to achieve
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Not if the politicians pay attention to their constituents it won't.
Seriously, even the fact that mainstream news organizations are beginning to entertain this as a serious notion is very good news. It means that we are finally seeing a reluctant acceptance of the idea that this isn't just a "naturally" center right nation that always prefers the congress to enact conservative policy. It seems to be dawning on at least some people that the nation actually is polarized and we are going to have to fight this out rather than simply relying on conservatives like Ben Nelson to be our true north.
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